> Whenever I read something like this, I think of Sharon and Hartland. Both are in the Upper Valley and pretty close to major employers (DHMC, etc).

Thank you.

Hartford (even closer to DHMC and Dartmouth) has put in several major developments in the last 20 years, including a condo block and a cookie-cutter suburb. It has one of the best elementary schools in the state, and the high school was finally improving last I heard. And they've been building condos and fairly nice cookie cutter suburbs since WW2. At least some stuff is obviously getting permitted. And it's a reasonably attractive town, with a nice mix of neighborhoods.

But it's not enough to keep up. DHMC, Dartmouth and the shopping in West Lebanon can create more jobs than developers can build houses.

> Turns out, solving the housing market is not as simple as opening up the “supply spigot.” Land prices, costs of goods, labor cost, etc all matter for getting housing developed.

Yeah, this is one of the major bottlenecks. Pre-COVID, anything with 3 bedrooms below $300k was either tiny, weird, or needed about $50,000 in urgent roof work. Or had a foundation from hell. It was a really tough market even then.

But part of the problem is that a lot of Vermont houses need work. I've seen countless houses that have gone 25 years too long since they were last painted, and more than a couple that are visibly starting to lean. Look closer, and you'll see warped roof lines.

When so many people bought Vermont homes during COVID, they realized how much work some of those places needed. And so they started employing contractors. If you needed a contractor for something quick, they might be booked out for the next 8 months.

It's getting better now. I can call the usual folks and get someone on site in a week or two, for something quick. And some new people went into business.

But you won't be able to build tons of new housing until you can get enough skilled people to do the work. And many of those people were busy doing major repairs to older houses that were bought without inspection.