Experts tell House committee increased housing supply can ease prices; debate persists over investor role and projections

Witnesses testifying before the House Committee on General & Housing said boosting housing supply is a necessary part of addressing Vermont's affordability problems, but they differed with some academic critiques and acknowledged open questions about investor activity and demographic shifts.

Maru Weimer of Let’s Build Homes, who identified herself at the hearing, told the committee that short-term population measures around the COVID years make year-to-year population estimates imprecise and that the Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA) is scheduled to explain its methodology to the committee the following day. "There is no doubt that if we were building homes at the kind of rate that we did in the eighties and the nineties ... we would be like numerous other states around the country that are better meeting the high demand for homes with new supply," Weimer said, arguing that supply increases remain central to reducing prices.

Weimer pushed back on a recent Burlington-focused study that some witnesses cited as evidence that new construction does little for affordability, saying the paper was narrowly focused, examined only sales of single-family homes (not rentals), and excluded a large share of transactions as outliers. She noted that other research — including analyses of Minneapolis and a Honolulu case study — shows new construction can create vacancies and a "filtering" effect that lowers prices in the wider metro area.

Representative Burrows asked whether long-term goals had shifted and referenced a higher, longer-term housing target; Weimer responded that the 2024 housing needs assessment presented a 24,000–36,000 range for homes by 2030 and that Let’s Build Homes has generally referenced the midrange (about 30,000). She said VHFA will offer its own perspective on whether the upper end of the range remains appropriate.

Committee members and attendees raised concerns about institutional investor purchases of housing. Some questioned whether new units simply free up homes for higher-income newcomers or out-of-state buyers rather than local households in need. Weimer said discouraging predatory investment is complicated and suggested that substantially increasing supply is one way to reduce incentives for investors to buy and hold large numbers of single-family homes, while acknowledging legal and political limits to more direct regulation.

The committee also heard data-driven testimony from Joe Shavitz, a policy analyst with the Council of State Governments. Shavitz presented national and local figures showing historic declines in housing production per capita, higher construction costs, and rising price-to-income ratios in the Burlington metro area. He said higher vacancy rates and new construction generally slow rent growth, but that the price of new units cannot fall below the cost to build and operate them.

"Increasing supply should generally lower housing prices or at least stabilize the growth of housing prices," Shavitz told members, while adding that filtration and vacancy improvements occur over time and that different unit types matter for outcomes. He also noted that zoning (minimum lot sizes) and construction costs are important constraints: in many parts of Vermont, minimum lot requirements remain large, and national construction-cost data show significant increases over the past decade.

The committee scheduled VHFA to speak the next day about its methodology and paused further action. Chair Mahali closed the session and said the committee will continue the discussion in a follow-up meeting.

The hearing transcript records questions, critiques of specific academic methods, cited vacancy and price ratios, and multiple references to the 24,000–36,000 homes-by-2030 range from the 2024 housing needs assessment. No motions or votes were taken during this session.