WOODSTOCK — The Woodstock Community Trust, a nonprofit created to tackle a housing shortage in the Upper Connecticut River Valley town, has purchased a duplex that it plans to resell affordably to buyers who pledge to live there full time.
The trust invested in its first project, a three-bedroom home in the village, early last year and sold it in August 2019 for $259,000.
The newest acquisition is a duplex built in the 1980s that the Trust bought last year for $275,000 and has fixed up. It plans to sell each two-bedroom unit for $130,000. The housing market, already tight in resort communities like Woodstock, made it difficult to find another property, said Jill Davies, a Woodstock resident who helped start the Housing Trust.
The state at large faces a large affordability gap. A study published by the National Low Income Housing Coalition in June 2019 said the average Vermont renter makes $13.40 an hour and can afford to spend about $700 per month on rent. The report said the average price for a two-bedroom apartment in the state is $1,215.
One reason for the shortage of full-time rental housing is that there’s a hot market in many areas of Vermont for properties that can be used as short-term rentals.
“We had to outbid 11 people because it’s a perfect property to turn into an Airbnb,” said Davies. “A lot of people were thinking they’d live upstairs and rent downstairs.”
The benefit to the homebuyer is that the Community Trust pays the down payment, lowering the overall cost and making the mortgage more affordable. The goal is to attract middle-income families to the village, which now has many second homes that are unoccupied for much of the year.
The buyers must live in Woodstock at least 11 months of the year and have already been approved for a mortgage. Buyers can’t have a household income of over $150,000 and cannot rent or use the home for commercial purposes. All buyers must take a homeowners’ course from Twin Pines Housing, a nonprofit in the upper Connecticut River Valley that administers the program rules for the Community Trust.
If they decide to move, the buyers can resell the house only to a similarly qualified approved buyer, or back to the Housing Trust.
Ideally, the down payment will then be returned to the program to pay for another house. Davies said the Community Trust will seek to spend only 10%-15% of the home’s value on repairs.
By purchasing the duplex, the Community Trust is ensuring that two families can live there full time, said Seton McIlroy, another member of the Community Trust. The units will be converted to condominiums, with one member of the Community Trust on the board.
“These are people who would not normally be able to afford a condo or house in Woodstock,” McIlroy said.
After renovations, each condo will be worth about $180,000, Davies said. The Trust will contribute $50,000 as down payment for each, making the sale price about $130,000, with no need for a down payment. While it’s illegal to discriminate against single people, the trust and Twin Pines are allowed to use a points system when choosing a buyer, said Davies. The system takes into account family size, and prioritizes people who have jobs with the police department or school system.
“If you have the certain number of people to match the bedrooms, you’ll get more points,” said Davies. “If there’s more than one person who wants to buy it, we have a system of choosing that’s not based on likeability.”
After selling the new property, the Community Trust — which was set up with a $500,000 private donation — will still have $150,000 left over — not enough to buy and renovate another property in Woodstock, said Davies.
“We’ll have to go fundraise again,” she said.
