Bennington, VT

Bennington, VT’s statistical area has a supplied population of 37,269, but the central decision constraint is an evidence boundary rather than a market label. Zillow provides current asking-rent and home-value indexes dated June 30, 2026, but does not publish enough history here to calculate a trailing-12-month Zillow rent change. That change is unavailable; therefore this report does not assign a score or rank. The evidence can instead frame current economics, affordability benchmarks, labor and listings, migration, mortgage occupancy, and area-level hazard exposure. It cannot turn those differently dated measures into a rent-growth finding or a forecast. Each measure below is kept within its source scope so apparent tensions remain visible rather than being forced into a single directional conclusion.

At June 30, 2026, Zillow’s asking-rent index is $1,893 and its home-value index is $377,573. The home-value index is 1.21% above its stated year-earlier level. The supplied gross-yield figure is 6.02%, an income-to-value relationship based on the packet’s headline measures rather than a statement of property operating performance. This pairing presents current rent and value levels, not a history of executed leases, closed transactions, expenses, vacancy, or financing terms. The lack of a Zillow trailing-12-month rent change matters especially here: a current asking-rent level can coexist with either direction of recent rent movement, and the packet supplies no basis for choosing between them. Zillow therefore informs the value-and-asking-rent side of the decision while leaving rent momentum unresolved.

Census ACS reports median household income of $73,325, with supplied rent-to-income of 30.99% and price-to-income of 5.15. HUD’s FY2026 two-bedroom Fair Market Rent is $1,297. Zillow’s $1,893 asking-rent index is $596 higher than that HUD benchmark, and the supplied rent-versus-FMR ratio is 1.46. These are useful affordability boundaries, but they answer different questions: Census ACS is an income measure, HUD FMR is an administrative rent benchmark, and Zillow is an asking-rent index. Neither the difference nor the ratio demonstrates what any household actually pays, what unit characteristics are included, or whether a particular household is rent-burdened. The measures instead place the listed asking-rent and home-value figures alongside the supplied income and HUD benchmarks without making them interchangeable.

Labor and supply readings do not produce a uniform tight-or-soft signal. BLS LAUS shows metro labor change of -3.02% in the 12 months through May 2026. Census Building Permits Survey records 52 total permits in 2026 year to date through M06, or 1.4 per thousand residents, with zero recorded in the five-or-more category. Redfin’s May 1, 2026 for-sale data show 5.0 months of supply, down 0.4 from 5.4 previously, while median days on market increased by 13 to 63 from 50. The sale-to-list ratio is 99.86%, and price drops rose to 15.38% from 8.62%, an increase of 6.76 percentage points. Fewer months of supply sits beside longer marketing time and more reductions, so none of these indicators should substitute for the others. BLS measures labor change; Census Building Permits measures permitted new supply; and Redfin measures active for-sale conditions. Their dates and definitions do not establish a common cause or a common direction.

IRS county-to-county tax-return migration, aggregated to the market, shows 883 moved in and 927 moved out, for net migration of -44. The reported AGI tied to inbound movement is $88,027, compared with $68,875 outbound, leaving a supplied AGI gap of $19,152. HMDA provides a separate lens: its 2024 purchase-mortgage occupancy evidence records 219 total purchases, of which 12 are investor purchases, for an investor share of 5.48%. The tension is descriptive rather than explanatory: movement counts are negative while the reported inbound AGI figure exceeds the outbound figure. HMDA’s investor share neither measures all forms of acquisition nor converts migration into housing demand; it isolates the financed purchase-occupancy evidence covered by HMDA. IRS and HMDA thus add participant detail without proving why people moved or how the market will respond.

FEMA’s National Risk Index identifies inland flood as the top hazard, classified as water, and reports an NRI risk score of 52.3 with a climate-loss ratio of 0.001291. FEMA supplies expected annual loss evidence at its reported geography; these figures do not identify exposure, damage, insurability, or cost for an individual address. The packet’s directly stated cost-level evidence is limited to Zillow’s asking-rent and home-value indexes, Census ACS income, and HUD’s two-bedroom FMR. It contains no stated insurance, tax, maintenance, repair, or financing-cost measure. Consequently, the 6.02% gross-yield figure cannot be read as a net return, and the FEMA measures cannot be converted from area-level risk evidence into a quantified ownership cost using this packet. The hazard evidence is relevant context, but its financial translation remains unobserved.

The practical due-diligence synthesis is a set of unresolved comparisons, not a directional call. For a rental decision, the open question is whether current offerings relevant to the decision align with Zillow’s $1,893 asking-rent index and how that current level relates to HUD’s $1,297 two-bedroom FMR and the Census ACS income benchmark; the packet cannot answer those unit-level questions. For a landlord or small-investor decision, the unresolved record includes current terms behind Redfin’s aggregate listings, the composition and continuation of permitted supply beyond the 52 reported permits, and the expenses needed to interpret gross yield in an inland-flood risk setting. IRS migration and HMDA occupancy should also remain separate: tax-return movement is not the same observation as financed purchase occupancy. Finally, timing must remain explicit: Zillow is dated June 30, 2026; BLS runs through May 2026; Census Building Permits is through M06; Redfin is May 1, 2026; and HMDA is for 2024. Keeping those boundaries intact identifies what evidence is missing without converting incomplete Zillow rent history into a score, rank, or forecast.