How to Finance a Short-Term Rental Purchase in Middlebury, Vermont

Thomas Garner
Aug 16
15 min read

Updated: 7 days ago

Middlebury is a town in Addison County, Vermont. If you are borrowing money to buy a house here and run it as a short-term rental, underwrite the house as a house. AirROI’s Middlebury file, updated August 8, 2026, prints named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31 average annual revenue and a named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31 median month across 67 listings. Those are vendor figures. They are not a debt-service coverage ratio. They are not a note. Cite them separately. Do not pick the prettier middle because a loan officer has one blank for “rental income.”.

The tax stack is not a DSCR either. tax.vermont.gov/business/industry/short-term-rentals, opened for this draft, is 9 percent rooms plus a 3 percent surcharge under Act 183 of 2024 for rents on or after August 1, 2024, plus local option up to 1 percent if the town has enacted it. Confirm the address. Do not invent that Middlebury, Vergennes, or Bristol currently has or lacks the 1 percent. Do not send a lender Vermont’s $4.2 billion visitor spend as income. That figure is a 2024 statewide Tourism Economics study released December 11, 2025. It is not rent. Thetourism datapost keeps the Addison County dollar blank.

This page is second-home versus investment language only. It will not invent a loan product, a rate, or an LTV. It will not invent a furniture package or an insurance premium. No town STR ordinance was opened this pass. A 2023 Selectboard memo existed. Do not invent a 2026 ordinance. Professionally managed share on the file is 1.5 percent. That book is competition only in the thinnest sense. It is not a comparable for your note. Themarket reportis the file. Thestartuppost is the cash stack. This is what you may actually say to a lender.

Underwrite the house as a house

A Middlebury purchase is an Addison County dwelling on a specific lot, with a specific heat bill, a specific plow arrangement, and a specific zoning clerk you can actually call. It may produce STR nights if you collect the stack the Department printed and if guests book the pin you named. It may not. Underwrite the dwelling first: what does this house cost to own if the calendar is empty in March, which is AirROI’s lowest revenue month, and soft again in February and July. If the only way the note works is a $298 ADR at 42.5 percent occupancy every year, you did not underwrite the house. You underwrote a dashboard.

AirROI, trailing August 2025 through July 2026, updated August 8, 2026: 67 active listings, occupancy 42.5 percent, ADR $298, RevPAR $126, typical annual named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31, median month named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31. Supply is up 24.1 percent year over year. Revenue is down 21.9 percent. Entire-home share 80.6 percent. Houses 50.7 percent. Average stay about 4.3 nights. Those are field statistics. Your house is one address. An one-bedroom off the green and a four-bedroom graduation lodge do not share a pro forma. Cite the average and the median. Do not pick a winner because one number sounds more investable.

Second-home language is allowed when the house is a house you would keep if STR nights died. Investment language is allowed when you can say, without a brochure, how the note is paid if they do. This page will not name a program, a rate, or an LTV for either path. Ask the lender what they actually offer for an Addison County dwelling, then for a dwelling they treat as investment, then what documents they want when the town has no opened STR ordinance and the state has a full tax stack. Bring the Department page. Bring the AirROI print with the date on it. Do not bring a Montpelier press release as if it were rent roll.

named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31 is not named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31

AirROI’s average annual revenue is named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31. The median month is named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31. Those numbers live on the same snapshot and they describe different middles. An average is pulled by the top of the file. Top-quartile months print named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31. Top 10 percent months print named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31 or more. The bottom quartile prints named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31. Median occupancy is about 44 percent. Median nightly rate is about $240. If you send a lender only named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31, you sent the prettier middle. If you send only named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31, you still have to say it is a month, not a year, and that August is not March. A stale guestfavorites.com named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31 on 72 listings is not a third middle you get to average in.

Twelve times named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31 is a back-of-envelope some hosts will do. This draft will not treat that multiplication as a T12. Seasonality on the file is not flat. Peak revenue month is August. Lowest is March. Peak-three is August, October, and September. Soft band is February, March, and July. A lender who sees named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31 divided by 12 and a host who sees named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31 are not looking at the same month. Put both numbers on the page. Date the file August 8, 2026. Say n equals 67. Say supply is up 24.1 percent and revenue is down 21.9 percent. That pair belongs in the memo. It is the opposite of a boom caption.

Lead time is about 77 days. An August Saturday is sold in May. Empty March nights are how people discover they bought the average and live in the bottom quartile. Professionally managed share is 1.5 percent. Superhost share is 68.7 percent. Cleaning fees average $111 with a $91 median. A $111 clean on a 4.3-night stay is a guest-total fact, not coverage. None of those lines is named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31, and none of them is named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31. Theshoulderpost is the month you are allowed to look cheap. Theremotepost is the 28.4 percent of the file on a 30-night minimum. Tell the lender which product you are buying. Then show both middles.

The tax stack is not a DSCR

Debt-service coverage is a lending ratio. Rooms tax is a remittance. tax.vermont.gov/business/industry/short-term-rentals says operators collect 9 percent state rooms tax, a 3 percent short-term rental surcharge on rents collected on or after August 1, 2024, and a local option of up to 1 percent if the municipality has one. Platforms collect that stack on platform bookings. Platform-only hosts may not need their own rooms-tax account. Independent bookings require free Department registration. None of that is net operating income divided by debt service. A pass-through on the guest bill is not coverage on the note.

A 13 percent combined rate, if the address sits in a local-option town, is still not a DSCR. A 12 percent combined rate, if it does not, is still not a DSCR. This draft will not lock either total onto Middlebury, Vergennes, or Bristol. Confirm the live table. Do not tell a lender the town is “untaxed Vermont.” Do not tell a lender the tax line is income. Do not tell a lender AirROI’s Low badge means the file is unregulated. No town ordinance, cap, or dedicated permit was opened this pass. The 2023 Selectboard memo is a watch item, not a recorded restriction and not a coverage add-back.

If you are asking a lender to fund the purchase on STR income before you have a year of collected rent, you are asking them to underwrite a dashboard and a college calendar. Say that out loud. Some desks will not treat projected STR nights as qualifying income in a town with no opened local ordinance and a file whose revenue just fell 21.9 percent. That refusal is information. Therulespost is the stack. Thestartuppost is the walk before you spend. Bring both. Bring the honest blank if you do not yet have a folio. A lender who treats a tax registration as if it were twelve months of collected rent is doing the host’s wishful math for them. Do not help.

Statewide visitor spend is not rental income

The Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing / Tourism Economics study of 2024, released December 11, 2025, put statewide visitation at 16 million people and visitor spending at $4.2 billion. Lodging was $1.5 billion. Food and beverage $876 million. Retail $680 million. Gasoline and transport $678 million. Recreation and entertainment $462 million. State and local taxes $293.5 million. Visitor spending about 9 percent of GDP. About 32,000 jobs. That is a state-layer study. It is not rent. It is not a T12. A day tripper who never sleeps in your house is inside 16 million. Your 4.3-night stay is also inside 16 million. The study did not split Addison County for this draft.

Do not divide $4.2 billion by 67 AirROI listings. Do not divide 16 million by 67. Do not multiply either result by $298 and call it market income. Those operations are how thin posts get written and how loan files get embarrassing. The December release named other counties in print. Addison was not among the named cells this draft opened. Do not invent the missing county. Do not assign Chittenden’s well-over-$1-billion share to Otter Creek because both touch a lake. Visit Addison County is an itinerary desk, not a spend study opened this pass.

What a lender can be handed without shame: the purchase contract, the tax-stack print with the date, the free registration confirmation if you take independent bookings, your tax returns, and an AirROI snapshot labeled as a vendor field,, average named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31, median month named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31, supply +24.1 percent, revenue −21.9 percent. What a lender should not be handed: a statewide visitor record formatted as a rent roll, a named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31 stale secondary, or a 700-acre resort’s season as if it were your trailing-twelve. Thetourism datapost exists so you do not do that. Put that post in the appendix if you must. Put the house in the body.

Second-home versus investment language

This page will use only those two ordinary phrases. It will not invent a loan product, a special STR program, a rate, a point, or an LTV. Second-home language fits when you would keep the house if March stayed empty, if a future town rule arrived, and if you slept there enough that a lender’s occupancy questions have answers. Investment language fits when the house is justified as an asset on collected income and you can show the tax path without pretending a vendor dashboard is a lease. Ask the lender which box they are actually putting the file in. The documents change. The reserve questions change.

Do not mix the boxes to get a yes. A second-home story that depends on named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31 top-decile months is an investment story in costume. An investment story that depends on you “using it a lot” is a second-home story in costume. Occupancy on the file is 42.5 percent. Median occupancy is about 44 percent. One-night minimums are 37.3 percent. Two-night minimums are 28.4 percent. Thirty-night minimums are 28.4 percent. Say which product you are. Theremotepost is the month-long slice. Thepersonaspost is the Saturday slice. Thecalendarpost is the college weekend you are not allowed to discount.

New York and Boston are the named guest origins. You may live in one of those metros and buy here as a rail-shed second home. Typical language, not a Saturday door-to-door, still applies to you. The Ethan Allen Express has stopped in Middlebury and at Ferrisburgh-Vergennes since July 29, 2022. That is accessibility, not coverage. TheAmtrakpost is the marketing version. If the only way you “visit” is through a lockbox app, do not call it a second home to a person who makes their living hearing that sentence. Use the word that matches the calendar you will actually keep, not the box that sounded easier.

A 1.5 percent PM field is not a free lunch

AirROI prints 1.5 percent of Middlebury listings as professionally managed. Superhost share is 68.7 percent. Guest Favorite share is 79.1 percent. Rating prints 4.93. No named national property manager — Vacasa, AvantStay, or otherwise — surfaced in Addison County in the research pass that approved this cluster. That is a different competitive texture than a built-out ski town with a professional-management layer already on the search results. It is not a reason to tell a lender you will “just outperform the average.” The average already includes those Superhosts. Independent-majority is true here. Independent-easy is false.

A lender who hears “I will self-manage and beat the file” needs to hear theDIYpost, not a rate fantasy. The craft gap is the first frame: Otter Creek, the college weekend, Basin Harbor, Bartlett Falls — captioned, rechecked, not “Vermont getaway.” Thehow-to-marketpost is conversion. Theagencypost is whether a fee works on a named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31 median month. This draft will not invent a management fee. It will tell you to ask the company for the live split and to underwrite the house both ways: with you doing the work, and with a fee you have actually been quoted.

Competition is not a comparable. The 67-listing file is not three comps for your appraisal, and it is not three comps for your DSCR worksheet. Ask the appraiser what they will actually use on an Addison County house. Ask the lender whether they want STR income at all. Then bring the file, dated, with the 1.5 percent PM share left on and the 21.9 percent revenue decline left on. A memo that erases the decline to make the story independent is a memo that will not survive the first person who opens AirROI. Thecomparepost is the Vermont-markets trade, not three ADRs you get to invent.

Seasonality is the coverage question

Peak revenue month is August. Lowest is March. Peak-three is August, October, and September. Soft band is February, March, and July. Those four sentences are the coverage question. A note that only works if every month prints the August cell is a note that does not work. College weekends punch holes in the soft months — Fall Family Weekend 2026 prints October 30 through November 1 on middlebury.edu; Commencement 2026 already printed May 24; Reunion 2026 already ran. Recheck the live calendar. Treat dated campus weekends as event product. Treat March as the trough the file already measured. Do not invent a Middlebury March occupancy series beyond what AirROI printed.

Theoff-seasonpost is how a host prices stick season and mud season. TheBasin Harborpost is why a Ferrisburgh cottage should treat mid-May through mid-October as its sourced lake window, even though July sits in the file’s soft band. Those are operating facts. They are also underwriting facts. Heat on a lakeshore house in November is not theoretical. If the weekly rate does not cover oil or propane, the house should not be open, and the note should not assume it is. Closing is allowed. A dark listing that still advertises nights is still a listing. A closed calendar is cleaner.

Lead time is about 77 days. A lender who wants to see “next summer booked” in April is asking for a calendar you should have opened in February. Bring the iCal if you have one. Bring the honest empty if you do not. Average stay is 4.3 nights. That is not a 12-month lease. Do not format 4.3 nights as if they were a tenant. Theinvestmentpost is the same underwriting without the loan vocabulary. This section is the month-by-month version: August can carry a story. March cannot carry the same story. A coverage ratio that ignores the floor is not a coverage ratio. It is a wish.

What to actually hand a lender

Hand the contract, the tax-stack print dated the morning of the meeting, the Department registration if you take independent rents, your tax returns, an insurance quote from a Vermont agent on this address, and an AirROI snapshot labeled as a vendor field. Cite named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31 and named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31 separately. Cite 42.5 percent occupancy and about 44 percent median occupancy. Cite August as the peak and March as the floor. Cite supply +24.1 percent and revenue −21.9 percent. Cite 1.5 percent professionally managed. Cite the 2023 memo as a watch item, not as a recorded cap. Cite Vermont’s 16 million visitors and $4.2 billion only as a dated statewide study, never as income.

Do not hand a Lions Club paraphrase. There is not one in this cluster. Do not hand a named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31 stale secondary as if it replaced AirROI. Do not hand a Basin Harbor cottage count as if it were your trailing-twelve. Do not hand an invented loan rate you read on a blog. Do not hand a furniture allowance this pass did not open. Ask the agent about the stove, the flood question if the lot is on water, and the lodging form. This draft will not invent the premium. Thevisitor guideis how you talk about the water to a guest. Do not confuse those audiences. The lender is not booking a Saturday, and the guest is not underwriting the note.

This page will not invent a rate, an LTV, a fee dollar, a spend dollar, a 2026 ordinance, or a local-option 1 percent as current. It will not treat a tax stack as a DSCR or a state press release as a rent roll. Underwrite the house as a house. Bring the live Department page. Bring the dated file. Leave Vermont’s $4.2 billion on the Agency of Commerce URL. Themarket reportis the evidence pile. Thestartuppost is the check you should be willing not to write. This is the conversation that happens after both.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I underwrite a Middlebury STR on AirROI's average?

Underwrite the house as a house. AirROI prints named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31 average annual revenue and a named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31 median month on the August 8, 2026 file. Do not pick the prettier middle. Those are vendor field stats for 67 listings, not your note and not a DSCR you can take to a closing.

Is the Vermont tax stack the same as debt-service coverage?

The live stack is 9 percent plus a 3 percent surcharge on rents on or after August 1, 2024, plus local option up to 1 percent if the town has enacted it. A pass-through on the guest bill is not coverage on the note. tax.vermont.gov/business/industry/short-term-rentals, opened for this draft, is 9 percent rooms plus a 3 percent surcharge under Act 183 of 2024 for rents on or after August 1, 2024, plus local option up to 1 percent if the town has enacted it.

What does Vermont's $4.2 billion visitor-spend figure measure?

VDTM / Tourism Economics put 2024 at 16 million visitors and $4.2 billion statewide, released December 11, 2025. This pass did not open an Addison County cell. Do not divide $4.2 billion by 67 listings. Hand the dated AirROI file, not a Montpelier press release formatted as a rent roll. The Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing / Tourism Economics study of 2024, released December 11, 2025, put statewide visitation at 16 million people and visitor spending at $4.2 billion.

What loan language is safe to use here?

Second-home versus investment language only. This page will not invent a product, a rate, or an LTV. Ask the lender which box they are actually using. Do not dress an investment story as a second home to get a yes. Use the word that matches your calendar, not the easier box. This page is second-home versus investment language only.

Does professional management change the underwriting?

AirROI shows 1.5 percent professionally managed and a 68.7 percent Superhost share. No named national manager surfaced in Addison County in this cluster's research. That field is still competition, not three appraisal comps. This draft will not invent a management fee. Underwrite the house both ways. No named national property manager — Vacasa, AvantStay, or otherwise — surfaced in Addison County in the research pass that approved this cluster.

How should I treat seasonality in the loan file?

Peak revenue month is August. Peak-three is August, October, and September. Soft months include February, March, and July. A note that only works if every month prints August does not work. Cite both middles and the 21.9 percent revenue decline. Do not invent a March occupancy series. A note that only works if every month prints the August cell is a note that does not work.

What about guestfavorites.com's named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31?

That figure on 72 listings is a stale secondary. Use AirROI's 67 listings and named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31. Do not hand a lender the prettier unofficial number as if it replaced the dated vendor file. Cite named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31 and named-town AirROI figures as of 2026-07-31 separately and leave the stale cell off the memo.

What should I actually hand a lender?

The contract, a dated tax.vermont.gov print, Department registration if you take independent rents, your tax returns, a Vermont agent's quote, and an AirROI snapshot labeled as a vendor field. Not $4.2 billion assigned to Otter Creek, not an invented rate, and not a furniture allowance this pass did not open. Hand the contract, the tax-stack print dated the morning of the meeting, the Department registration if you take independent rents, your tax returns, an insurance quote from a Vermont agent on this address, and an AirROI snapshot labeled as a vendor field.

Keep going on Crest & Cove:the Crest & Cove intro·local SEO keywords that actually book·the five elements of a converting hero·how to compare STR marketing agencies·Asheville paddling spots worth the drive·this cluster on named-town facts·Destin against AirROI, not leftover year·the last cluster against named-town facts.

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