West Fairlee, Vermont.
Typical home $315,275 (+1.4% in a year). Lebanon, NH-VT metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — $216 (-12%) since Nov 2023.
- 1 year
- Up $4,455 +1%
- $310,820$315,275 since Sep 2025
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- West Fairlee$1,655
- Vermont$2,057
- United States$1,922
Typical home values in West Fairlee, VT rose 1.4% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in West Fairlee, Orange County, Vermont
West Fairlee is a town of 621 people in Orange County. Half its households earn more than $76,500 a year and half less, against $82,232 across Orange County; 7% of its people live below the poverty line. 92% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 8% are rented. Unemployment in Orange County was 2.4% in August 2026, and the county had 1.4% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then manufacturing.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 23 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. West Fairlee is a small Vermont town where nearly everyone owns the home they live in, and renters are few. Incomes run a little below the county's, and a smaller share of people live below the poverty line than you might expect in a rural town. Many adults hold a four-year degree, and winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month and July pleasantly warm.
Work. Across Orange County, jobs are found mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops, and restaurants and hotels also employing many residents. Among the largest workplaces across the county are Vermont State University, Gifford Medical Center and the Oxbow Unified Union School District. The typical commute is a fairly long one, and only a small number of people work from home.
Things to do. Close to town, the Waits River is a short drive away, and Thetford Hill State Park offers protected woodland, also a short drive off. Farther afield, the Enfield Shaker Museum and the Hood Museum of Art are museums worth a longer drive, and Dartmouth Skiway is the nearest ski area on the list.
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- 334households
- 45%of adults have a degree
- 7%below the poverty line
- 28 mintypical commute
- 6%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Orange County had 7,791 jobs in 2025, 1.4% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 25° and lows near 4°; warmest in July, with highs near 77° and lows near 56°. About 43 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Corinth weather station, 8 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Orange County
- Vermont State UniversityUniversity or college1,248
- Gifford Medical CenterCritical access hospital310FTE
- Oxbow Unified Union School District #91School district177FTE
- Orange Southwest Unified Union School District #59School district149FTE
- Paine Mountain Union School District #68School district126FTE
- HannafordGrocery stores112
- Blue Mountain Union School District #21School district100FTE
- Shaws SupermarketsSupermarkets and other grocery stores87
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 8 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,009 people in all across the county; West Fairlee has none of its own. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24), hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- LightningRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms across Orange County, against the rest of the country; all of them together, very low. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Orange County and the Lebanon, NH-VT metro.
West Fairlee home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- West Fairlee$315,275
- Vermont$391,900
- United States$366,157
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Zip codes with a West Fairlee address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls West Fairlee — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zillow publishes no zip-level series with this city on the address.