We Buy Houses in Virginia

Virginia Is a Buyer-Beware State (Which Cuts Both Ways for Sellers)

Virginia's Residential Property Disclosure Act (Va. Code 55.1-700 et seq.) works differently than the disclosure laws in most states we buy in. Instead of a long form itemizing the roof, the wiring, and the basement, Virginia sellers furnish a statement that mostly disclaims: the buyer is told to rely on their own inspections, not on seller representations. The statute is blunt about it, Va. Code 55.1-703 is literally titled "Required disclosures for buyer to beware." Sellers are not even required to reveal a home's flood history unless the property is a FEMA repetitive-loss property.

For a seller with a house in rough shape, that regime lowers the paperwork barrier about as far as US real estate allows. It does not lower it to zero: fraud and active concealment are never protected anywhere. But when you sell to us, the legal structure and the transaction finally match, we buy on our own walkthrough, price the condition into a written offer, and the as-is sale Virginia law anticipates is exactly the sale that happens.

Virginia Seller Quick Facts

The Clock to Respect: Virginia Foreclosure Is Fast

Virginia forecloses without courts. Nearly every mortgage here is a deed of trust, and once the lender starts, the trustee simply mails notice and advertises the sale. Under Va. Code 55.1-321, that notice must arrive no less than 60 days before the sale for owner-occupied residential property, and only 14 days for everything else: investor property, vacant houses, inherited homes nobody lives in. With the advertising requirements layered on, an owner-occupied home can go to auction roughly 60 days after the notice letter, and a non-owner-occupied property within a few weeks.

That second number is the one that catches people. Heirs managing a vacant inherited house and landlords with an underwater rental often assume they have the same runway an owner-occupant gets. In Virginia, they have a fraction of it. If a trustee letter has arrived, the foreclosure options guide is the place to start today, not this weekend, and our two-to-three-week closings are built to fit inside timelines this short when sellers move on the first notice.

Selling Rules Worth Knowing in Virginia

The grantor's tax

Virginia's seller-side transfer tax is the grantor's tax: $0.50 per $500 of price (about 0.1%), split between the state and your locality. The larger recordation tax, $0.25 per $100, is customarily the buyer's cost. On your settlement statement, the grantor's tax is the only meaningful government charge on your side, roughly $300 on a $300,000 sale.

Probate without a probate court

Virginia has no separate probate court. Wills are probated before the clerk of the Circuit Court, and routine estates are overseen by a Commissioner of Accounts rather than a judge. More useful still: once the will is recorded, real estate passes to the heirs or devisees by operation of law, and an executor need not even qualify if the will does not direct a sale of the property. In many estates, that means the heirs can deed the house directly, no administration bottleneck standing between the family and a closing. The Small Estate Act simplifies personal-property estates of $75,000 or less (Va. Code 64.2-601). The probate guide maps the sequence, and inherited-house sales are among the smoothest transactions we do in Virginia because of it.

Vacant-building registration and rental inspection districts

Virginia lets localities require registration of vacant buildings (Va. Code 15.2-1127), and all five of the cities we cover below operate rental inspection districts, mapped areas where rentals must pass city inspection. If a registration notice or an inspection deadline is what put selling on your calendar, we buy vacant houses and tenant-occupied rentals with those obligations handed off at closing.

Flood history and the Hampton Roads reality

Hampton Roads holds roughly three-quarters of Virginia's FEMA repetitive-loss flood properties, and more than 5,000 southeastern Virginia homes have flooded at least twice (WHRO, Oct 2024), with roughly 1.5 feet of sea-level rise projected by 2050 versus 1992. Owners of repetitive-loss homes face a disclosure obligation most Virginia sellers escape, and rising flood insurance premiums are pushing many of them to sell rather than renew. We price flood-zone houses on their actual economics and buy them as-is.

The Virginia Market Right Now

Hampton Roads is a military economy with civilian depth: Naval Station Norfolk's 82,000+ active-duty personnel, Newport News Shipbuilding's roughly 26,000 workers, Joint Base Langley-Eustis, NAS Oceana, and Little Creek-Fort Story put hundreds of thousands of paychecks behind housing demand, and the constant rotation of military orders keeps transactions moving in every market cycle. Medians run from about $299,000 in Hampton to $415,000 in Virginia Beach, all rising 4-6% year over year (Redfin, mid-2026).

Richmond is the growth story: population climbing (Weldon Cooper Center, 2025), a median around $387,000, up 10.5% year over year, and homes selling in about 17 days (Redfin, mid-2026), one of the hottest markets in our entire footprint. Rising values feed straight into our offers, and in a market this strong, our Retail Buyer Program is worth a look too: it gets sellers more than a typical cash offer while staying as easy as a cash sale, we do the work, no commissions, no fees, and your proceeds agreed in writing.

Where We Buy in Virginia

• Richmond: Church Hill rowhouses, Northside Victorians, and the state's fastest-rising prices
• Virginia Beach: Aragona Village ranches, Kempsville tract homes, and constant PCS turnover in Virginia's largest city
• Norfolk: Park Place, Berkley, Ocean View, and the neighborhoods around the world's largest naval base
• Newport News: the Southeast Community, Hilton Village, and the shipyard economy
• Hampton: Wythe, Phoebus, Buckroe Beach, and eight rental inspection districts

The process is identical everywhere: one walkthrough, a written offer with the after-repair value, repair estimate, and margin itemized, closing at a licensed title company on your date. Two to three weeks is typical once title work clears, and remote closings are routine for out-of-state sellers.

Compare Your Options in Virginia

Want to see how we stack up before you call anyone? We ranked the companies that buy houses in Virginia, including ourselves, with every company's publicly visible evidence shown so you can check our work. And before you sign anything with any buyer, our guide to selling a house in Virginia walks through the state's disclosure rules, foreclosure timeline, taxes, and closing process in plain language. For the two situations we see most, our guides to selling an inherited house in Virginia and the Virginia foreclosure process go statute by statute, and selling a house in Virginia Beach covers the local rules in our biggest Virginia market.