A new report says Vermont had the tightest rental market in the nation last year.
The Vermont Housing Finance Agency and the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition says a healthy rental market will have a vacancy rate of about 5 percent, but Vermont’s was just 3.5 percent last year.
Their report, called "Between a Rock and a Hard Place," says the average fair-market rent for a modest, two-bedroom apartment in Vermont reached $914 per month in 2008, a 9 percent increase since the previous year.
Forty-five percent of renters were paying more than 30 percent of their incomes for rent and utilities, and a fifth of renter households were paying more than 50 percent of their incomes.