Seven Days seems fairly straightforward: An old Vermont farmhouse, circa 1840, is available in Shelburne for near-immediate occupancy. It s a one-and-a-half-story, L-shaped farmhouse with wooden siding, a stone foundation, and a newer porch and addition that could be removed by the new owner. Asking price: free for the taking, provided you take it somewhere else. One might assume that a free house would move quickly, given how Vermont s residential real estate market has boomed since the start of the pandemic. According to the Vermont Association of Realtors, the average sales price for a single-family home in January 2021 was $314,949 more than 14 percent higher than in January 2020. But that early 2021 average reflected a slight cooling of the housing market since late last fall. In November, the average sales price for a single-family home was $352,537, more than 26 percent higher than the year before.