Vermont Town-by-Town STR Rules: Clerks, Not Occupancy Ranking

Thomas Garner
Jul 30
14 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

If you're trying to answer "what short-term rental rules apply to my Vermont property" with a single search, you're going to have a bad time. Vermont has no statewide short-term rental registry or licensing law currently in force. A 2025-2026 bill that would have created one, H.242, was introduced in the Vermont House in February 2025 and has stalled in the House General and Housing Committee — treat that as directionally accurate but verify current status before citing it anywhere that matters, since committee bills can be revived or amended without much public notice.

What that means in practice: there is no Vermont equivalent of a state STR registry number, no statewide inspection requirement, and no statewide occupancy cap. Regulation in Vermont happens town by town, sometimes village by village within the same town, and the rules genuinely do not resemble each other from one market to the next. This guide walks through what's actually confirmed for the Vermont markets covered across this series and its sibling batch — the Northeast Kingdom, Grafton, Manchester, the Mad River Valley, Woodstock/Quechee, and Stowe — with a plain answer, wherever one exists, to "what do I actually do about this.".

The One Thing That's the Same Everywhere: Vermont's Rooms & Meals Tax

Regardless of what your town does or doesn't require, every Vermont short-term rental host owes state tax on rental income. Since August 1, 2024, short-term rentals have been subject to the state's existing 9% Rooms Tax *plus* a new 3% short-term rental surcharge created by Act 183 — an effective 12% state tax rate on short-term rental revenue, on top of any local option tax a town has separately adopted. The surcharge applies to a "furnished house, condominium, or other dwelling room or self-contained dwelling unit" rented for fewer than 30 consecutive days and more than 14 days per calendar year; it doesn't apply to a licensed hotel or lodging establishment under 18 V.S.A. Chapter 85. Hosts remit both the tax and the surcharge together on Form MRT-441, the Meals and Rooms Tax Return, and electronic filing has been required since the August 2024 return. This is the one rule in this guide that's genuinely settled and statewide — confirm your own filing obligation with the Vermont Department of Taxes or your accountant, but don't expect a town-by-town exception to it.

Everything below this point is local, and "local" in Vermont can mean the ordinance changes depending on which side of a village line your parcel sits on. What to actually do, regardless of which version turns out to be current: confirm in writing which side of the Town/Village line your property sits on — this is not always obvious from a mailing address — before assuming either rule applies to you.

Northeast Kingdom (Craftsbury, Greensboro, and Surrounding Towns)

This is, as far as this research could confirm, the closest thing to a regulatory greenfield among the Vermont markets in this pilot. No Northeast-Kingdom-wide ordinance exists — the NEK isn't a governing unit, just a regional identity — and no confirmed town-level short-term rental ordinance was found for Craftsbury or Greensboro specifically. Greensboro appears to have discussed the topic without adopting a final ordinance as of the most recent research available. No dominant property management brand operates in these core villages either, which is consistent with a market regulators haven't focused on yet.

That absence of a documented rule is not the same thing as an absence of a rule. Vermont towns can and do pass STR ordinances with little statewide press coverage, and a town's zoning bylaws or existing rental-housing rules could still touch short-term rentals even without a dedicated STR ordinance. What to actually do: before you list a property in or near Craftsbury or Greensboro, call the town clerk's office directly and ask two questions — whether an STR-specific ordinance exists, and whether the town's zoning bylaws define or restrict "transient rental use" in any way. Get the answer in writing or by email if you can, since this is exactly the kind of thing that's easy to misremember six months later when you're mid-renovation.

Grafton

Grafton is one of the least-documented town-level STR pictures in this entire pilot, even after a dedicated research pass. Some secondary sources reference a registration or permit requirement and a possible day cap for Grafton, but none of that could be confirmed against a working official source — repeated attempts to reach an official Town of Grafton government page describing STR rules returned an access error rather than usable content, and no independently verifiable ordinance text was located. That's a meaningfully different situation from "no ordinance exists" — it's "an ordinance may exist, and the standard way of checking it isn't working.".

What to actually do: call the Grafton town clerk before you list, don't rely on a search engine to surface the answer. There is no searchable, reliably accessible town ordinance database for Grafton that this research could locate, which makes a direct phone call the only dependable path to a real answer. Ask specifically about registration, permits, and any cap on rental days — and ask what happens if you operate without registering, since enforcement details are exactly the kind of thing that doesn't show up in a general search.

Manchester: The Clearest Case for Why "Vermont Town" Isn't Specific Enough

Manchester is the best teaching example in this guide of why you need to know more than just the town name. There are two separate governing bodies here — the Town of Manchester and the Village of Manchester — and they have adopted two different approaches. Woodstock Village and Stowe offer the most specific, citable rules, which is a genuine advantage if you'd rather know the exact ceiling you're working under than guess.

Town of Manchester: as of the most recent review of the Town's live ordinance chapter list, Manchester (Town) has not adopted a short-term rental ordinance. The Town's Housing Task Force has reportedly discussed short-term rentals as part of broader housing-supply conversations, and a July 19, 2026 news story describes Manchester residents actively meeting on an updated Town Plan that specifically references short-term rentals among the topics under discussion. This is a live, evolving situation — worth rechecking close to publish date, and definitely worth rechecking again before you make any real-world decision based on it.

Village of Manchester: adopted its own short-term rental ordinance in December 2023, effective February 5, 2024, requiring annual registration and a $300 registration fee, with a Short-Term Rental Officer appointed to administer it. This is confirmed both by local news coverage (Manchester Journal, Bennington Banner) and by the Village's own ordinance document — the registration requirement and fee amount are settled fact, not secondhand reporting. Hosts should still confirm current renewal terms and any fee changes directly with the Village Clerk's office, since ordinances get amended over time.

What to actually do, regardless of which version turns out to be current: confirm in writing which side of the Town/Village line your property sits on — this is not always obvious from a mailing address — before assuming either rule applies to you. If you're in or near the Village, call the Village Clerk's office directly and ask about the current registration requirement and fee (both confirmed as of this guide: annual registration, $300, effective February 5, 2024), the current renewal cadence, and — this is the detail that trips people up — whether registration transfers to a new owner when the property sells, or whether a buyer has to register from scratch. The renewal cadence and sale-transfer question were not independently confirmed for this guide, so verify those two specifics with the Village Clerk before relying on them.

Mad River Valley (Sugarbush, Warren, Waitsfield)

No confirmed 2025 or 2026 Mad River Valley Housing Summit STR ordinance was found for Warren or Waitsfield individually. What is confirmed is that the region has been actively studying the issue for years: the Mad River Valley Planning District ran a Short-Term Rental Survey in fall 2022, drawing 388 respondents, alongside a 2022 MRV Housing Summit that drew more than 200 attendees. Warren alone was reported to have 472 active short-term rentals around that time. That level of sustained local study — without a resulting ordinance confirmed as of this research — suggests active debate rather than settled policy.

This market also looks structurally different from the others in this guide. The Mad River Valley is more institutional and property-management-heavy than Craftsbury/Greensboro or Grafton, largely because of its condo-resort structure — Sugarbush Village Condominiums, for example, has reportedly operated as the same vacation-rental management company for more than 40 years, which changes the practical "who do I even call" question for an owner inside that structure versus a standalone house in Waitsfield village. What to actually do: if your unit sits inside an established condo association or resort structure, start with your association's management office, not the town clerk — association rules may be more immediately binding on you than anything the town has or hasn't passed. If you're a standalone owner, check with Warren's or Waitsfield's town office directly given how much local attention this topic has already received.

Woodstock and Quechee

Woodstock is the one market in this guide with a specific, citable local cap. The Town of Woodstock and Woodstock Village adopted a short-term rental ordinance in May 2024 that caps short-term rentals at 55 owner-occupied units and a separate 55 non-owner-occupied units — roughly 5% of the town's total housing stock — with annual permit fees of $500 (owner-occupied) and $1,000 (non-owner-occupied), plus additional per-bedroom fees. The ordinance faced a petitioned repeal vote in July 2024: town voters voted to repeal it, while Village of Woodstock voters upheld it, and after legal review the ordinance took effect in Woodstock Village. In practical terms, that means the cap and permit structure are confirmed as currently enforced within Woodstock Village specifically — if your property sits in the Town of Woodstock outside the Village boundary, the same repeal-vote split means you should not assume the cap applies to you without checking which jurisdiction your parcel falls in.

Quechee, part of the Town of Hartford, shows a real property-management presence rather than the mostly-independent picture in Grafton or the Northeast Kingdom — both Quechee Lakes Rentals and Vacasa are active there, largely tied to the roughly 5,500-acre Quechee Lakes community and its nineteen condominium villages. That makes Quechee more institutional than Woodstock proper, and an owner there should expect to be operating in a market where professional management is already the norm, not the exception. No confirmed 2026 Hartford-specific STR ordinance beyond the county norms was located for Quechee in this research pass.

What to actually do: if you're in or near Woodstock, confirm with the town whether your parcel is inside the Village boundary — that single fact currently determines whether the cap and permit fees apply to you. If you're in Quechee, verify current Town of Hartford rules directly, since Quechee's institutional rental structure doesn't necessarily mean less regulation, just different points of contact.

Stowe

Stowe is the most property-management-dense Vermont market referenced across this pilot, and it also turned out to have the most active regulatory picture of any market in this guide. The Town of Stowe adopted a Short-Term Rental Registry Ordinance requiring registration for any unit rented 14 or more days per year, with registration required before renting and renewal required annually; the initial registration requirement and a $100-per-unit annual fee took effect May 1, 2025. Stowe officials were reported in October 2025 to be discussing whether to modify the registry ordinance further, and that discussion has since moved toward concrete proposed amendments — as of a first reading before the Selectboard on June 24, 2026, with potential final adoption floated for July 22, 2026, the proposal on the table would cap licensed short-term rentals at roughly 850, set an August 6, 2026 hard deadline for non-resident owners to register or be locked out, and end automatic transfer of a non-resident owner's registration on sale — meaning a buyer generally could not inherit a prior non-resident owner's registration unless the buyer is already a Stowe resident. As of this writing, these amendments were still proposed rather than confirmed-adopted law — treat the cap, the September 15, 2026 date reported for the cap taking effect, and the transfer restriction as a real, closely-tracked proposal, not settled fact, until you've confirmed final adoption directly with the Town.

What to actually do: if you own or are buying in Stowe, check your registration status and renewal date directly with the Town of Stowe's Short-Term Rental Registration office, and ask specifically whether the 2026 licensing amendments (cap, non-resident registration deadline, and transfer-on-sale restriction) have been finally adopted and what their current effective dates are. If you're buying an existing STR, confirm in writing whether the seller's registration transfers to you before you close — given how actively this ordinance is being amended, assuming a registration transfers automatically could leave you unable to legally operate the property you just bought.

Southern Vermont Villages: Manchester and Grafton Clusters in This Series

The two markets this series covers in the most depth — Manchester (with Dorset and Arlington) and the Grafton cluster (with Chester, Townshend, Newfane, and Saxtons River) — are both discussed above. For a deeper look at market fundamentals, demand drivers, and marketing approach in those two clusters specifically, see the Southern & Northern Vermont Independent Villages STR Market Report pillar post, along with the Manchester market report, the Grafton market report, and the agency, investment, DIY-vs-hire, and marketing-strategy posts covering each cluster.

What This Means If You're Choosing Where to Buy or List

If regulatory certainty matters to your decision, the Northeast Kingdom and Grafton currently offer the least documented friction — which cuts both ways, since "least documented" also means "least predictable" if a town does pass something later. Woodstock Village and Stowe offer the most specific, citable rules, which is a genuine advantage if you'd rather know the exact ceiling you're working under than guess. Manchester and the Mad River Valley sit in between: real regulatory activity underway, nothing final enough to plan a purchase around without a direct call first. None of that is a reason to avoid any of these markets — it's a reason to make the phone call before you list, not after.

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 · OTA fees without leftover occupancy lifts · Manchester against AirROI $36,714 · Destin against AirROI, not leftover year · Morristown against AirROI $44,407.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Vermont require a short-term rental permit statewide?

As of this writing, Vermont has no statewide short-term rental registry, license, or permit requirement. A 2025-2026 bill, H.242, would have created a statewide registration system, but it stalled in the House General and Housing Committee — verify its current status before relying on this, since bill status can change. All permit and registration requirements in Vermont currently come from individual towns or villages, not the state.

What is Vermont's short-term rental tax rate in 2026?

Every Vermont short-term rental host owes the state's 9% Rooms Tax plus a 3% short-term rental surcharge that took effect August 1, 2024 under Act 183 — an effective 12% state tax rate, filed together on Form MRT-441. This applies regardless of what your town does or doesn't require locally, and it's separate from any local option tax a town has adopted on top of it.

What's the difference between Manchester Vermont Town and Village STR rules?

The Town of Manchester has not adopted a short-term rental ordinance as of the most recent research for this guide, though its Housing Task Force and an in-progress 2026 Town Plan update are actively discussing the topic. The Village of Manchester adopted its own ordinance in December 2023, effective February 5, 2024, requiring annual registration and a $300 fee — confirmed via local news coverage and the Village's own ordinance document. Because these are two different governing bodies, confirm which jurisdiction your specific parcel sits in before assuming either rule applies — mailing address alone doesn't reliably tell you.

Does Woodstock Vermont have an Airbnb cap?

Yes, within Woodstock Village. An ordinance adopted in May 2024 caps short-term rentals at 55 owner-occupied and 55 non-owner-occupied units, with permit fees of $500 and $1,000 respectively plus per-bedroom add-ons. A July 2024 repeal vote split along jurisdictional lines — Town of Woodstock voters repealed it, Village of Woodstock voters upheld it — so the cap is confirmed as currently enforced in the Village, not necessarily across the entire Town of Woodstock.

Is there a short-term rental ordinance in the Northeast Kingdom (Craftsbury, Greensboro)?

No confirmed town-level or region-wide ordinance was found for Craftsbury or Greensboro at the time of this research, making this one of the least-regulated documented pictures among the Vermont markets covered in this series. That's not a guarantee nothing applies — Vermont towns can pass STR rules with little statewide notice — so confirm directly with the town clerk before listing.

Does Grafton, Vermont require STR registration?

This could not be confirmed either way. Some secondary sources reference a registration or permit requirement and a possible day cap for Grafton, but no independently verifiable official source describing current Grafton STR rules could be located during this research. Grafton is one of the least-documented town-level STR pictures in this guide — call the town clerk directly rather than relying on search results.

What are Stowe, Vermont's current short-term rental rules?

Stowe requires registration for any unit rented 14+ days per year under its Short-Term Rental Registry Ordinance, with the initial registration requirement and a $100 per-unit annual fee effective May 1, 2025. As of mid-2026, the Town was actively considering further amendments — a roughly 850-license cap, an August 6, 2026 registration deadline for non-resident owners, and an end to automatic transfer of a non-resident's registration on sale — that had a first reading before the Selectboard on June 24, 2026 and potential final adoption floated for July 22, 2026, but were not yet confirmed-adopted law as of this writing. Confirm current status directly with the Town of Stowe before.

Do Quechee and Woodstock have the same STR rules?

Quechee is part of the Town of Hartford, a separate municipality from Woodstock, and no Woodstock-style cap was confirmed for Hartford/Quechee in this research. Quechee's rental market is more institutional, with both Quechee Lakes Rentals and Vacasa actively managing units there, largely tied to the Quechee Lakes community structure — a different regulatory and operational starting point than Woodstock Village's capped, fee-based system.

About the Authors

Crest & Cove Creative is a short-term rental marketing agency founded by Thomas Garner and Jacob Mishalanie. We build direct-booking brands, listing optimization systems, and market-specific content strategies for independent STR operators nationwide, including emerging corridors like Vermont. For a deeper look at market fundamentals, demand drivers, and marketing approach in those two clusters specifically, see the Southern & Northern Vermont Independent Villages STR Market Report pillar post, along with the Manchester market report, the Grafton market report, and the agency, investment, DIY-vs-hire, and marketing-strategy posts covering each cluster.