Travis Bunn
Founder, AppealDesk · Published March 27, 2026 · Updated August 25, 2026
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Vermont doesn't use the word "appeal" for the first step. Under 32 V.S.A. Section 4221, the filing you make against your town's assessed value is called a grievance, and it isn't heard by a dedicated appraisal board. It goes to your own town's Board of Listers, the same local officials, often part-time and elected, who set the value in the first place. In most of this series, the first-level hearing body is a professional assessor's office or a state-appointed board. In Vermont, it's frequently your neighbors.
Here's the part that makes Vermont different from nearly every other state in this series: you might not get a notice at all this year. Under 32 V.S.A. Section 4111(e), listers only have to mail a change-of-appraisal notice to owners whose value actually changed, not to every property owner in town. And under 32 V.S.A. Section 4041a, a full town reappraisal can be as much as six years or more apart, unless the town's Coefficient of Dispersion climbs above 20 and triggers a state-ordered reappraisal. Put those together and a homeowner in a town that hasn't reappraised recently can go year after year with nothing in the mailbox and, on paper, nothing to grieve, even while the town's overall Common Level of Appraisal drifts and the individual number sitting on your bill quietly stops matching what your home would actually sell for. Meanwhile, whatever your escrow account is paying keeps moving on a completely separate federal calendar that has never heard of a grievance day.
Vermont taxes property at 100% of fair market value under 32 V.S.A. Section 3481, defined as the price your home would bring on the open market. That's a simpler ratio than most states in this series, where an assessment ratio or a capped taxable value sits between the appraisal and the bill. In Vermont, there's no fraction to work through: if the number on your grand list is too high, every dollar of that excess is taxed.
The wrinkle is the Common Level of Appraisal, a town-wide ratio the state calculates comparing a town's assessed values to actual sale prices. The CLA adjusts the education tax rate at the town level; it does not change your individual assessed value or give you personal grounds for a grievance on its own. Your grievance still has to stand on your own property's number against real comparable sales. But a town with a CLA that has drifted well off 100% is also a town where individual assessments, including possibly yours, have had years to go stale between full reappraisals under Section 4041a, which is exactly why it's worth checking your number even in a year when no notice arrives.
Check your property record and relevant sales, then confirm the current local appeal window.
Vermont's appeal ladder is one of the deepest in this series, and the first two steps stay entirely local before the case ever reaches a state or judicial forum:
Two local, volunteer-staffed hearings before the case ever reaches a state office or a judge is unusual among the states in this series, and it means a Vermont case can genuinely still be open a year or more after the original grievance, especially once it reaches the Director's office or Superior Court and gets a de novo hearing date.
None of Vermont's statutes control your escrow account. Under Regulation X, 12 CFR 1024.17(c)(3), your mortgage servicer must run an escrow analysis once per computation year, a twelve-month cycle tied to your loan, not to your town's grievance calendar. That analysis looks at what the servicer actually paid your town and projects what it expects to pay next, based on whatever the grand list currently says. It does not ask whether a grievance is open, whether the BCA has ruled, or whether your case is sitting in front of the Director of Property Valuation and Review.
So a homeowner who grieved in May, lost at the BCA in the fall, and escalated to the Director in the following month can watch a full tax cycle, and possibly a second, get funded at the original disputed value before a de novo hearing date even arrives.
Say a homeowner in a Chittenden County town whose last full reappraisal was five years ago, just inside the six-year cap under Section 4041a, gets no change-of-appraisal notice this year because her value didn't change. Her home sits at Vermont's median, $272,000, assessed at 100% of that figure under Section 3481. At Vermont's 1.83% effective rate, that's roughly $4,978 in annual property tax, or about $415 a month if spread evenly into escrow. (Rates and local grand list totals vary by town, so treat this as illustration, not a quote.) She pulls recent comparable sales showing homes like hers selling closer to $245,000, and grieves anyway during her town's posted grievance window in May, even with no notice prompting her. The listers deny it in June. She appeals to the Board of Civil Authority under Section 4404, is heard in August, and is denied again in September. She escalates to the Director of Property Valuation and Review under Section 4461(a) that same month. A de novo hearing date doesn't land until the following spring, roughly a year after she first filed.
A year of escrow disbursements at the disputed value, for a case that started with no notice at all and only existed because she checked her own number. That gap between two calendars, one local and slow-moving, one federal and indifferent, is the whole reason this article exists.
Review the notice, filing instructions, and evidence requirements before ordering a packet.
Whichever level finally rules in your favor, the mechanics from there are the same. The listers update the grand list with the corrected value, the town issues a corrected tax bill or a refund if the disputed amount was already collected, and none of that touches your monthly mortgage payment on its own. Your servicer has to see it. Three federal rules in 12 CFR 1024.17 control what happens next:
If your case climbed all the way to the Director of Property Valuation and Review or Superior Court and took a year or more, don't assume your servicer is tracking it. Nobody in the escrow department is watching a de novo hearing docket for you. The corrected grand list entry and tax bill from your town are the only documents that move your payment, so keep a copy of the decision and the revised bill, and send both the moment they arrive.
The highest-volume appeal jurisdictions in Vermont are Chittenden County, Rutland County, and Washington County. Because grievance windows, reappraisal schedules, and even whether a change-of-appraisal notice goes out at all are set town by town rather than county by county, confirm the specific grievance day and filing procedure with your own town's listers before you file, even if you live in one of these higher-volume counties.
Yes. The change-of-appraisal notice requirement in 32 V.S.A. Section 4111(e) only obligates listers to notify owners whose value actually changed. It does not limit who may grieve. If you believe your assessed value no longer reflects fair market value, comparable sales are the evidence to bring to your town's posted grievance day under Section 4221, whether or not you received any mailing this year.
Functionally, the first-level grievance under 32 V.S.A. Section 4221 does what a first-level appeal does in other states: it challenges the assessed value in front of the body that set it, here your town's own Board of Listers. What's distinctive is that Vermont's statute uses "aggrieved" and "grievance" for this first step, and that the hearing body is town officials rather than a dedicated review board. Later steps, the Board of Civil Authority, the Director of Property Valuation and Review, and Superior Court, are commonly called appeals.
Yes. Your servicer pays whatever bill your town issues, based on the grand list value currently on record, and a pending appeal to the Director under 32 V.S.A. Section 4461(a) does not pause or reduce that. The de novo hearing under Section 4467 can take months to schedule, and your escrow account keeps funding the old value the entire time. The correction only reaches your payment after the grand list is updated and your servicer catches it at an analysis.
Not automatically. The Common Level of Appraisal is a town-wide ratio the state uses to adjust the education tax rate; it doesn't change your individual assessed value or by itself prove your specific property is wrong. It's a useful signal that your town's assessments as a whole have drifted from actual sale prices, which is worth checking against, but your own grievance still needs to stand on your property's number against real comparable sales, not the town-wide ratio alone.
Your town updates the grand list with the corrected value and issues a corrected bill, or a refund if the higher amount was already collected. That correction reaches your mortgage account only when your servicer processes the new bill, typically at the next scheduled or requested escrow analysis, at which point any resulting surplus of $50 or more must be refunded to you within 30 days under 12 CFR 1024.17(f)(2)(i), provided you're current on the loan under (f)(2)(ii).