State-portion supplement to the PrepPass national real estate manuscript. Read this chapter alongside the national chapters on agency, contracts, financing, fair housing, and closing. The national material teaches the concepts the exam tests everywhere; this chapter teaches the Vermont rules, forms, dollar figures, and agencies that the Vermont portion of your licensing exam adds on top.
YMYL note on numbers. Fees, education hours, continuing-education (CE) hours, renewal cycles, tax rates, and exam pass scores change by legislation and rulemaking. Throughout this chapter, changeable figures are flagged "verify current with the Vermont Real Estate Commission." The rules — whether a recovery fund exists, whether Vermont charges a transfer tax, what kind of recording act Vermont uses, which classes fair housing protects — are stable and are stated here affirmatively. When you sit for the exam and, later, when you practice, confirm the live numbers with the Commission and the Office of Professional Regulation before you rely on them.
1. The licensing authority: who regulates real estate in Vermont
Real estate licensing in Vermont is administered by the Vermont Real Estate Commission. The Commission is a seven-member board — a mix of licensed real estate professionals and public members — appointed by the Governor. It is not a stand-alone agency. The Commission sits inside the Office of Professional Regulation (OPR), which is part of the Vermont Secretary of State's office. OPR provides the administrative machinery — online applications, license renewals, records, investigators, and prosecuting attorneys — while the Commission sets professional standards, adopts rules, approves education, and decides disciplinary cases.
For exam purposes, hold these relationships in your head:
- The Secretary of State is the constitutional officer at the top.
- The Office of Professional Regulation (OPR) is the umbrella that regulates dozens of professions, real estate among them.
- The Vermont Real Estate Commission is the board with subject-matter authority over brokers and salespersons.
When an exam question asks "who issues a Vermont real estate license?" or "who hears a disciplinary complaint against a Vermont salesperson?", the answer runs through the Vermont Real Estate Commission / OPR, not a private trade association. The Vermont Association of Realtors (VAR) is a private membership organization; it publishes widely used forms and offers education, but it does not license anyone and it is not the regulator. Do not confuse the two on the exam.
The governing statutes are found in the Vermont Statutes Annotated, Title 26 (Professions and Occupations), in the chapter covering real estate brokers and salespersons, together with the Commission's administrative rules. OPR uses an online-only application and renewal platform.
2. License structure and the entry-license name
Vermont issues two principal license levels for real estate practice:
- Real Estate Salesperson — the entry-level license. This is the license a new licensee earns first. In Vermont the exact statutory term is "salesperson" (not "sales agent," not "broker associate"). A salesperson may only act on behalf of, and must always be affiliated with, a licensed broker.
- Real Estate Broker — the advanced license. A broker may operate independently, run a brokerage, hold escrow/trust funds, and supervise affiliated salespersons. Reaching broker generally requires experience as a licensed salesperson plus additional broker-level education and a separate examination.
The entry license you are studying for is the Vermont Real Estate Salesperson license. Everywhere this chapter says "you" as a new licensee, it means a salesperson.
A key structural rule: a Vermont salesperson can never hold an active license "in the air." The license is only active while the salesperson is affiliated with — and supervised by — a licensed Vermont broker (the salesperson's designated or principal broker). All commissions flow to the salesperson through that broker; a salesperson may not accept compensation directly from a buyer or seller, and may not be paid by another salesperson.
3. Requirements to get licensed (pre-license, exam, application)
To qualify for a Vermont salesperson license, an applicant generally must:
- Be at least 18 years old.
- Hold a high-school diploma or its equivalent.
- Complete Commission-approved pre-license education. Vermont requires a pre-licensing course of a set number of classroom/clock hours from an approved provider. (Commonly cited as roughly 40 hours — verify the current required hours with the Vermont Real Estate Commission.)
- Pass the Vermont licensing examination, which combines a national/general portion with a Vermont state-law portion. The exam is delivered by the Commission's contracted testing vendor. (The passing score and per-portion structure can change — verify current pass score and exam format with the Vermont Real Estate Commission.)
- Secure sponsorship by a licensed Vermont broker. You cannot activate the license without a sponsoring broker who agrees to supervise you.
- Submit the application and fees through OPR's online system. (Application, examination, and initial license fees are changeable — verify current fees with the Vermont Real Estate Commission / OPR.)
Vermont, like most OPR professions, screens for good character and may consider prior criminal or disciplinary history; a conviction is not automatically disqualifying, but it must be disclosed and may be reviewed.
Post-license and continuing education
Vermont distinguishes post-license education (a one-time requirement early in your first license term) from ongoing continuing education (CE) required each renewal cycle:
- Post-license education: New salespersons must complete a short mandatory post-licensing course within a limited window after first licensure. (Commonly cited as 8 hours within about 90 days of initial licensure — verify current post-license hours and deadline with the Vermont Real Estate Commission.)
- Continuing education for renewal: Licenses renew on a fixed cycle, and each renewal requires approved CE hours. (Commonly cited as a 2-year cycle with roughly 16 CE hours, often including mandatory topics such as agency, fair housing, and law/ethics updates — verify the current renewal cycle, total CE hours, and mandatory-topic breakdown with the Vermont Real Estate Commission.)
Study tip: Exam questions love to pair a rule ("Vermont requires post-license education for new salespersons — true or false?") with a number ("how many hours?"). Learn the rule cold; treat the specific hour count as verify-before-you-rely.
4. Broker affiliation and supervision
Everything a Vermont salesperson does professionally is legally the responsibility of a supervising broker. Core rules:
- A salesperson must be affiliated with exactly one supervising (principal/designated) broker at a time.
- Listings, buyer-representation agreements, and other brokerage contracts belong to the broker/brokerage, not to the individual salesperson. If a salesperson changes firms, the listings generally stay with the former brokerage unless the parties agree otherwise.
- The broker is responsible for trust/escrow funds, advertising compliance, and supervision of affiliated licensees.
- Compensation flows through the broker. A salesperson is paid by their broker, not directly by the public and not by another salesperson.
- When a salesperson leaves or changes brokers, the affiliation change must be reported to OPR/the Commission so the license record stays accurate.
5. Vermont agency law and the required agency-relationship disclosure
Vermont is a mandatory-agency-disclosure state. Real estate is fundamentally an agency relationship: a licensee owes fiduciary-type duties (loyalty, obedience within the law, disclosure, confidentiality, reasonable care, and accounting) to the party they represent, and owes honesty and fair dealing to everyone else in the transaction.
Required disclosure and its timing. Vermont requires a licensee to make a written agency (brokerage-relationship) disclosure to consumers, delivered early — at first substantive contact / before the consumer discloses confidential information, and in any event before the consumer is committed to a relationship. The disclosure explains, in plain terms:
- whom the licensee represents (seller/landlord, buyer/tenant, both, or neither),
- what a customer versus a client relationship means, and
- that information a customer shares may not be held confidential the way a client's information is.
The practical rule to memorize: disclose the agency relationship in writing, up front, before confidential information changes hands. A licensee who waits until the offer is written has disclosed too late.
Types of agency Vermont recognizes:
- Seller's agent / landlord's agent — represents the owner.
- Buyer's agent / tenant's agent — represents the buyer or tenant.
- Dual agency — the same licensee (or the same brokerage) represents both sides of one transaction. Vermont permits dual agency only with the informed, written consent of both the buyer and the seller. A dual agent's duties are limited: the agent cannot be a full advocate for either side and must keep each party's confidential information (such as how high a buyer will go or how low a seller will accept) confidential from the other.
- Designated agency — within one brokerage, the broker designates one licensee to represent the seller and a different licensee to represent the buyer, so each client gets an advocate while the brokerage as a whole is on both sides. Designated agency, like dual agency, requires disclosure and consent.
For the exam: dual agency is legal in Vermont but only with written informed consent of both parties; an undisclosed dual agency is a serious violation.
6. Vermont property disclosures (seller disclosure posture) + federal lead
This is an area where Vermont's rule surprises people, so learn it precisely.
Vermont does not impose a single, statewide statutory "seller's property condition disclosure form" that every residential seller must complete. There is no state-mandated fill-in-the-blank residential disclosure statute the way some states have. However — and this is the part that matters — Vermont is not a pure "caveat emptor" (buyer beware) state. A seller (and, importantly, a real estate licensee) has an affirmative duty to disclose known material defects and material facts that affect the value or desirability of the property and that are not readily observable to the buyer. Silence about a known latent (hidden) material defect can be actionable misrepresentation.
So the two ideas to hold together:
- No universal state-mandated disclosure form — a seller is generally not compelled by a single statute to fill out a standardized government condition report for every sale.
- A real duty to disclose known material defects — Vermont law does not let a seller or licensee actively conceal or fail to disclose a known hidden problem. "There's no form" is not "there's no duty."
In practice, most Vermont residential transactions use the Seller's Property Information Report (SPIR), a multi-page disclosure form developed by the Vermont Association of Realtors. The SPIR is industry best practice and very widely used, but it is a private-form convention, not a blanket statutory command. Licensees routinely have sellers complete it because it documents disclosures and reduces later disputes.
Vermont statute and regulation do single out specific disclosures that must be made, including:
- whether the property lies in a FEMA-designated flood hazard area or has suffered flood damage during the seller's ownership, and
- whether the property's drinking water comes from a private (non-public) potable water supply rather than a public system.
Federal lead-based paint disclosure (applies in Vermont as everywhere in the U.S.). For housing built before 1978, the federal Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act (Title X) requires the seller or landlord to: give the buyer/tenant the EPA pamphlet ("Protect Your Family from Lead in Your Home"), disclose known lead-based paint and hazards, provide any records/reports, and — for sales — give the buyer a 10-day opportunity to conduct a lead inspection/risk assessment (the parties may agree otherwise). The transaction documents must include the Lead Warning Statement and signatures. Vermont additionally has its own lead-based paint / rental-housing (Essential Maintenance Practices) requirements for older rental housing that go beyond the federal baseline — another example of Vermont layering state duties on top of the federal floor.
For the exam: federal lead rule = pre-1978 housing, EPA pamphlet + disclosure + 10-day inspection window. Vermont adds flood-hazard and private-water-supply disclosures, and there is a genuine duty to disclose known material defects even without a single mandated statewide form.
7. Escrow / trust-account rules, discipline, and the recovery-fund question
Trust / escrow accounts
When a broker holds other people's money — earnest-money deposits, for example — that money is not the broker's money. Vermont requires a broker who holds such funds to keep them in a separate trust / escrow account, not commingled with the broker's own operating or personal funds. Core trust-account principles the exam tests:
- No commingling — client/customer money stays separate from the broker's money.
- No conversion — the broker may never use trust funds for the broker's own purposes.
- Prompt deposit and accurate recordkeeping — deposits go into escrow promptly and the broker keeps records that account for every dollar.
- Disputed deposits — when buyer and seller fight over an earnest-money deposit, the broker holds the funds and does not simply hand them to one side; the funds are released per the parties' written agreement or a proper legal resolution.
Mishandling trust funds is one of the fastest routes to discipline.
Discipline
The Commission, through OPR, investigates complaints and may impose discipline for unprofessional conduct — including misrepresentation, fraud, commingling/conversion of trust funds, undisclosed dual agency, practicing on an expired or lapsed license, failing to supervise (for brokers), and violating fair-housing or advertising rules. Sanctions range from warnings and fines to conditions on practice, suspension, and revocation of the license. Because real estate is a public-facing, money-handling profession, the Commission takes trust-fund and honesty violations seriously.
Recovery / guaranty fund — stated affirmatively
Vermont does not maintain a real estate recovery fund (also called a guaranty or recovery-and-education fund). Some states operate a state-run fund that reimburses consumers who win a judgment against a licensee but cannot collect it; Vermont is not one of them. A Vermont consumer harmed by a licensee's misconduct pursues the licensee directly — through the OPR/Commission disciplinary process (which can sanction the licensee) and through the courts (for money damages) — but there is no state real estate recovery fund standing behind an uncollectible judgment.
For the exam, answer this affirmatively and confidently: Vermont has no real estate recovery/guaranty fund. If a question offers "the Vermont recovery fund pays the claim," that choice is wrong.