Vermont opens a $30 million rental tax credit round, with a Dec. 7 deadline
Downtown Brattleboro, Vermont. Photo: Quintin Soloviev, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Developers who want to build or preserve affordable rental housing in Vermont have until Dec. 7 to pre-apply for up to $30 million in federal tax credits. The Vermont Housing Finance Agency opened the extra round Monday, and the agency says the next chance after this one won’t come until fall 2027.
The money is part of a $59 million package the agency announced Nov. 3 for rental and homeownership projects. The rental side includes up to $30 million in federal 9% Low-Income Housing Tax Credit equity and up to $13.8 million from the agency’s Rental Revolving Loan Fund, according to VHFA’s request for proposals. A news summary of the announcement from Six State Signal noted the agency’s two pages list different loan-fund totals, $16 million in one place and $13.8 million in the other.
Why there’s a second round
This is the second 9% credit round VHFA has opened in 2026. The agency says it is a supplemental round, set up because a significant amount of credits awarded earlier came back, or was rescinded, from projects that could not meet their placed-in-service deadlines. Opening a new round lets Vermont use its federal allocation before the deadlines pass, VHFA said, so the credits are not lost to the state. The agency has not said how much was returned or which projects gave it up.
The schedule
- Rental housing: pre-applications opened Nov. 9 and are due Dec. 7. Full applications are due Feb. 1, 2027, and the VHFA board is scheduled to act March 11.
- Homeownership development: pre-applications open Dec. 1 and are due Dec. 31. Full applications are due March 1, 2027, with board action set for April 15. That track offers up to $6 million in Vermont State Homeownership Tax Credit equity and up to $6.6 million through the Middle-Income Homeownership Development Program.
Applications that come in after the full-application deadlines won’t be considered. VHFA staff will score and rank them and recommend awards to the board of commissioners.
What’s new for applicants
VHFA is switching to a new pro forma, the financial projection for a project, entered in its Builders Patch software. The agency says it will serve as the single source of financial information and cut down on duplicate data entry. Sponsors enter project details in the online portal after the Dec. 7 pre-application deadline. The agency also says the current qualified allocation plan, its scoring rulebook, sets stricter readiness-to-proceed requirements, which is part of why the next competitive round is pushed to fall 2027.
The push for housing is showing up in local planning too. In Brattleboro, the town, chamber of commerce, development credit corporation and downtown alliance are working toward 802 new households by 2032, and the Vermont Community Foundation has set up a $1 million matching challenge to support the effort, Magic 96.7 reported.
Details and application materials are on VHFA’s website. Questions can go to developmentdept@vhfa.org.
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