Rental Property in Virginia: What the Numbers Actually Look Like

Every other article in this series arrives at the same conclusion by the same route: the insurance line is what decides the deal. Louisiana's premium is 3.7 times its property tax. Oklahoma's is 2.8 times. Florida's is 2.6 times.

Virginia is the exception. The statewide average premium at $300,000 of dwelling coverage is $1,858 — the lowest in this series — against a property tax bill of $3,355.08 on the statewide median house. Tax is 1.81 times insurance here, and it is 29.3% of operating expenses against insurance's 16.3%.

That inversion produces the second Virginia oddity, and it is the most instructive number in the whole series. Add up principal, interest, taxes and insurance on this article's worked example and you get $2,696.73 a month against an assumed $2,700 rent. A $3.27 surplus. The naive check that fails in every other state in this series — "does the rent cover the mortgage?" — is the one check Virginia passes.

The property still loses $731.13 a month.

Virginia is therefore the state where Section 4 matters most. Leaving out vacancy, management and capital reserves hides 82% of the annual loss here — the largest distortion of the seven states covered — precisely because the visible bills are so well behaved.

The third Virginia story is a genuine intra-state split. Hampton Roads, the Eastern Shore and the lower Chesapeake Bay counties commonly carry a separate hurricane or named-storm deductible. Inland Virginia policies frequently carry none at all. Section 2 turns that into dollars, and the gap is nearly tenfold on the same house.

A note before you start: this is general educational information about how rental property arithmetic works in Virginia. It is not investment, tax, insurance, or legal advice, and it is not a recommendation about any property. Virginia property tax is set locally by city and county, and both counties in our data carry rates well above the statewide figure. Talk to a Virginia CPA about tax treatment, a licensed Virginia insurance agent about a real quote, and a Virginia attorney about anything contractual.

1. What a rental costs to buy here

The Virginia statewide median home price is $453,389 — the highest in this series by a wide margin, roughly 74% above Oklahoma's.

Virginia charges on both the deed and the note, and they land on different parties:

• Grantor tax on the deed: 0.10%, customarily paid by the seller — the lowest transfer tax rate in this series alongside Kentucky's.
• State recordation tax on the deed of trust: 0.25% ($0.25 per $100 of the debt secured) under Va. Code 58.1-803, paid by the grantee — that is, you, the borrower.

And there is a local layer on top of that recordation tax, which catches out-of-state buyers. Va. Code 58.1-814 authorises most Virginia cities and counties to levy an additional local recordation tax of up to one-third of the state tax — commonly about $0.083 per $100, bringing a typical combined rate to roughly 0.33%. Some localities charge more: Fairfax County's local add-on runs about $0.17 per $100, for a combined rate near 0.42%.

So the Virginia buyer's own transaction tax on the loan is roughly 0.33% typically and up to 0.42% in the most expensive localities — a line item most out-of-state investors do not know exists.

Virginia's closing practice varies — some transactions are attorney-closed, some settlement-agent closed. Closing costs run 2% to 3.4%, and this article uses the 2.7% midpoint.

On the $453,389 statewide median at 25% down:

• Down payment: $453,389 x 0.25 = $113,347.25
• Loan amount: $340,041.75
• Closing costs: $453,389 x 2.7% = $12,241.50
• Recordation tax at the typical combined 0.33%: $340,041.75 x 0.33% = $1,122.14
• Total cash in: $126,710.89

For reference, the state statutory floor alone (0.25%) would be $850.10, and the Fairfax-level 0.42% would be $1,428.18 — a $578 spread on the identical loan depending purely on which locality you record in. Some closing-cost estimates already fold recordation in; it is broken out here so you can see it rather than to be double-counted.

On price growth, Virginia's most recent published appreciation figure is +2.36% a year — about $10,700 on this house, which exceeds the $8,773.60 annual cash loss Section 3 computes. As in Kentucky and Arkansas, state that carefully: appreciation is unrealized, backward-looking, before 6% to 8% of selling costs, and it does not service debt or pay a deductible. But it is doing real work in a Virginia pro-forma in a way it simply is not in Oklahoma's.

The homestead exemption Virginia does not have

Virginia has no statewide ad-valorem homestead exemption that reduces annual property tax bills. The state's constitutional "homestead exemption" at Va. Code 34-4 — up to $25,000 to $50,000 depending on filing — is a bankruptcy and creditor-protection exemption, unrelated to property tax. Investors conflate the two constantly.

What exists instead is local and narrow. Va. Code 58.1-3210 authorises but does not require each city or county to offer real property tax relief — exemption, deferral, or both — to homeowners aged 65 or older or permanently disabled, with income and net-worth limits set locally (commonly $50,000 to $75,000 income caps). Separately, Va. Code 58.1-3219.5 provides a full statewide real estate tax exemption for the principal residence of a veteran with a 100% service-connected permanent and total disability, and since a 2024 update for surviving spouses of certain fallen first responders.

For an investor the practical upshot is simple and unusually clean: the seller's tax bill is probably a fair guide to yours, unless the seller is a qualifying senior, disabled homeowner, or 100% disabled veteran — in which case it may be dramatically lower than what you will pay. Ask. And in every case recompute from the purchase price at the locality's rate, because Virginia assessments are local and reassess on their own schedule.

2. The two expenses that decide whether it works

Property tax: the bigger of the two, and the state figure understates both counties

Virginia's statewide effective property tax rate is recorded here as 0.74%, and sources disagree moderately:

• WalletHub: 0.73% (median home value $383,700, average annual tax $2,790)
• propertytaxrates.org: 0.74%
• SmartAsset: 0.71% (median)
• Tax Foundation: 0.78%

The range is 0.71% to 0.78%, and 0.74% is the midpoint. On the $453,389 example: $453,389 x 0.74% = $3,355.08 a year, or $279.59 a month.

Both counties in our data run well above that. Fairfax County is 1.01% and Prince William County is 0.94% — 36% and 27% above the state figure. Virginia property tax is set by city and county, and Northern Virginia sets it high. On the median house those rates would produce $4,579.23 and $4,261.86 respectively, against the statewide $3,355.08. That is a $1,224 a year difference driven purely by which locality you buy in, and it is larger than the entire statewide insurance premium spread.

If you take one operational point from this section: in Virginia, get the locality's rate. The state average is not a usable input.

Insurance: the lowest in this series, and the least decisive

The reference figure is $1,858 a year at $300,000 of dwelling coverage with a $1,000 typical all-perils deductible. Sources range materially and our data flags this as moderate confidence:

• StateCalc: $1,550
• U.S. News: $1,741 (July 2026)
• The $300,000-basis reference figure used here: $1,858
• Insure.com: $2,135
• NerdWallet: $2,265 (9% below their cited national average)
• MoneyGeek: $2,676

That is a spread of roughly $1,550 to $2,676 — proportionally wide, but small in absolute dollars. Here is what it costs you:

Insurance across that entire range is worth 0.33 percentage points of cap rate and $123.50 a month — the narrowest insurance sensitivity in this series by a wide margin. Compare that to $1,224 a year for the Fairfax-versus-statewide tax difference, or to a full point of mortgage rate, which Section 3 puts at about $2,740 a year.

In Virginia, insurance is genuinely not the number that decides the deal. Property tax and price are. That is the opposite of every other state in this series and it should change where you spend your diligence time — with one large exception, which is the next subsection.

Virginia's premium trend is +1.1% year over year, the mildest in this series.

A rental is not insured on a homeowners form. You need a landlord policy — a dwelling fire form with loss-of-rents coverage — priced for the specific address.

The hurricane deductible: a real intra-state split, precisely described

Virginia is one of 19 states plus DC where a separate hurricane or named-storm deductible is an established feature of the homeowners market. But it is not a statewide feature, and describing it as one would be wrong.

Virginia's own regulator says so. The State Corporation Commission Bureau of Insurance tells homeowners in its consumer guide that many insurers apply a separate deductible to wind, hail, or named storms such as hurricanes and tropical storms, IN ADDITION TO the deductible chosen for the policy — written either as a flat amount (the guide's example is $2,000) or as a percentage of the dwelling limit (its worked examples use 2% and 5%).

Note the structure carefully: the guide describes it as in addition to the policy deductible, not as a replacement for it the way South Carolina's named-storm deductible works.

This is not a statewide mandate the way Florida's mandatory-offer statute is. It is carrier practice concentrated where the exposure is, which in Virginia means:

• Hampton Roads — Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake
• The Eastern Shore
• The lower Chesapeake Bay counties

Inland Virginia policies frequently carry no separate wind deductible at all.

Now put that split into dollars, because it is the largest single geographic difference in Virginia and it does not appear anywhere in a premium average.

Virginia construction runs about $245 per square foot to rebuild — the highest in this series alongside South Carolina's. A 2,000 square foot house therefore carries a replacement cost near $490,000, comfortably above the $453,389 median purchase price. Your dwelling limit is set by rebuild cost, not by what you paid.

That is a 9.8x difference in retained risk between an inland Virginia rental and a Hampton Roads rental at 2%, on the identical house. Nothing else about the property changes. The premium difference between those two properties will be a few hundred dollars a year; the difference in what a single storm costs you out of pocket is $8,800.

Section 3 works out that this rental produces $18,374.12 of net operating income in a good year:

• A $1,000 flat deductible is 5.4% of NOI — a nuisance
• A $2,000 flat coastal deductible is 10.9% of NOI
• 2% on a $490,000 limit ($9,800) is 53.3% of NOI
• 5% on a $490,000 limit ($24,500) is 133.4% of NOI — 1.33 years

You cannot pass any of it to a tenant. It is not a lease obligation and it is not billable. Meanwhile the property is likely uninhabitable, so rent stops at the same moment the deductible comes due — which is exactly what loss-of-rents coverage exists for.

And do not confuse this with flood, because the two are constantly conflated in Hampton Roads. Flood is excluded from the homeowners policy entirely. Storm-surge damage in Hampton Roads is an NFIP or private flood claim, not a hurricane-deductible claim. One storm routinely produces both, and holding only one policy leaves half the loss uncovered.

Roof settlement, and a regulation that looks like it helps and does not

Virginia has no matching statute, no matching regulation and no reported matching caselaw, and no Virginia law fixes whether a roof claim settles at replacement cost or actual cash value.

This is worth stating precisely, because Virginia has a claims-settlement regulation that looks like it should cover the point and does not. 14 VAC 5-400-70 sets standards for prompt, fair and equitable settlement, including written denials and explanations — but it contains no matching or uniform-appearance provision. So a Virginia homeowner arguing that undamaged adjacent shingles should be replaced for appearance is arguing from the policy language alone, with no regulatory lever of the kind Kentucky's 806 KAR 12:095 provides.

Settlement basis is decided by roof age and the endorsement attached. Replacement cost is standard on newer roofs; carriers commonly require an inspection or condition certification past roughly 15 to 20 years and then either non-renew or continue coverage only on an actual-cash-value roof settlement or a roof payment schedule that depreciates by age.

Virginia spans two exposures that both push that way: inland and Piedmont hail and wind, and Hampton Roads and Eastern Shore coastal wind, where policies commonly add the separate percentage deductible on top.

Nationally, in March 2026 the Federal Housing Finance Agency relaxed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac requirements so ACV roof coverage can satisfy a lender rather than replacement cost being required.

And here is the gap that distinguishes Virginia from every other state in this series: Virginia has no state roof mitigation grant program and no mandated roof-hardening discount. Louisiana requires a 20-30% hurricane-premium discount for FORTIFIED homes and grants up to $10,000. Arkansas requires 20-35% and grants up to $15,000. Kentucky, Mississippi and South Carolina all run named programs. Virginia has none of it. If you want a hardened roof on a Hampton Roads rental, you pay for it yourself and you negotiate any credit with the carrier directly.

The FAIR plan, and what it actually covers

Virginia does have a backstop, which Arkansas and Oklahoma do not: the Virginia Property Insurance Association, operating since 1968.

Read what it is before relying on it. Virginia's own consumer guide describes it as limited insurance protection and a last resort, because the premium is generally higher and the coverage frequently narrower than a private policy.

• The base policy is named-peril: fire, lightning, removal, hail, explosion, riot, smoke, vandalism and malicious mischief. Glass breakage is NOT included.
• A broader form covering additional causes of loss, including glass breakage, is available to eligible properties.
• Liability and theft coverage can be added only if the property qualifies.
• The property must be in Virginia, must meet minimum underwriting standards including a physical inspection, and must have been declined by private carriers.
• Flood is not covered and must be bought separately.

One genuinely useful Virginia protection: when a Virginia insurer nonrenews a homeowners policy it is required by law to tell the policyholder both about the right to appeal to the Insurance Commissioner and about possible VPIA eligibility. So a nonrenewal notice in Virginia arrives with your options printed on it. Read that notice rather than filing it.

3. A full worked example

The property. A single-family house at the Virginia statewide median of $453,389.

The rent — read this carefully. This site does not carry rent data. The $2,700 a month used below is an assumption chosen to be plausible for a house at that price. It is not a market observation. Pull three to five real comparable listings for the specific neighborhood and substitute the actual number.

The other assumptions:

• Vacancy: 8% of gross rent (roughly one month of turnover a year)
• Property management: 10% of collected rent
• Repairs and maintenance: 5% of gross scheduled rent
• Capital reserve: 5% of gross scheduled rent
• Financing: 25% down, 30-year fixed at 7.00% — the rate is an assumption, not a quote
• No HOA. Northern Virginia in particular has a great deal of HOA-governed housing; add dues if applicable

Step 1 — income

• Gross scheduled rent: $2,700 x 12 = $32,400
• Vacancy loss: $32,400 x 8% = $2,592
• Effective gross income: $32,400 - $2,592 = $29,808

Step 2 — operating expenses

Management is charged on rent actually collected, not scheduled rent:

• Management: $29,808 x 10% = $2,980.80
• Property tax: $453,389 x 0.74% = $3,355.08
• Insurance: $1,858
• Maintenance: $32,400 x 5% = $1,620
• Capital reserve: $32,400 x 5% = $1,620
• Total operating expenses: $11,433.88

Expense ratio: $11,433.88 / $29,808 = 38.36% of collected rent — the lowest of the seven states in this series, and near the bottom of the 35% to 55% band most rentals land in.

Note the composition: property tax is 29.34% of that expense line and insurance is 16.25%. Virginia is the only state in this series where those sit in that order.

Step 3 — net operating income and cap rate

• NOI = $29,808 - $11,433.88 = $18,374.12
• Cap rate = $18,374.12 / $453,389 = 4.05%

That is the highest cap rate of the seven states in this series. The mortgage is deliberately absent from it. Cap rate exists to compare properties independently of how they are financed; putting debt service into it is the most common error in this exercise, and it makes two identical houses look like different investments because one buyer put more down.

Step 4 — debt service and cash flow

Loan: $453,389 x 75% = $340,041.75. At 7.00% over 30 years, principal and interest is $2,262.31 a month, or $27,147.72 a year.

• Annual cash flow = $18,374.12 - $27,147.72 = -$8,773.60
• Monthly cash flow = -$731.13
• Debt service coverage ratio = $18,374.12 / $27,147.72 = 0.68 — the highest in this series, and still well under 1.0

Step 5 — cash-on-cash return

• Cash invested: $126,710.89 (Section 1)
• Cash-on-cash = -$8,773.60 / $126,710.89 = -6.92% — the least negative in this series

Rate sensitivity, since 7.00% was an assumption

• At 6.50%: P&I $2,149.30/mo, annual cash flow -$7,417.48
• At 7.00%: P&I $2,262.31/mo, annual cash flow -$8,773.60
• At 7.50%: P&I $2,377.62/mo, annual cash flow -$10,157.32

A full point of rate is worth about $2,740 a year, the largest per-point figure in this series because the loan is the largest.

The simplest version — and why it lies here

Add up the three bills a lender escrows:

• Principal and interest: $2,262.31
• Property tax: $3,355.08 / 12 = $279.59
• Insurance: $1,858 / 12 = $154.83
• Total: $2,696.73 a month

Against $2,700 of assumed rent, that is a $3.27 SURPLUS.

This is the only state in the series where that check passes, and it is wrong. The property loses $731.13 a month. The $3.27 is what you get when you count only the bills someone mails you and ignore the month the house sits empty, the manager's fee, and the roof.

Virginia is the state where the naive check is most dangerous precisely because Virginia's naive check gives you the answer you wanted. Section 4 is the whole article.

4. The expenses people leave out

Vacancy, management, and capital reserves do not arrive as invoices. Nobody bills you for the month the house sits empty, or for the roof you will need in nine years, or — if you self-manage — for your own weekends. So they fall out of the mental model, and the property looks better than it is.

Virginia produces the largest version of this distortion in the entire series, and Section 3 explains why: with a low premium and a moderate tax bill, the three omitted lines make up a larger share of what is left.

Here is the same house with those three removed and everything else identical:

The three omissions are worth $7,192.80 a year of net operating income — $2,592 of vacancy, $2,980.80 of management, $1,620 of reserve. They flatter the cap rate by 1.59 percentage points and hide 82% of the annual loss — by far the highest share of any state in this series.

Look at what the left column tells a buyer. A 5.64% cap rate, a 0.94 DSCR, and a $132 monthly loss reads as a deal that is essentially at breakeven — one small rent increase, or one slightly better rate, from working. A 0.94 DSCR is close enough to 1.0 to feel like a rounding error.

The truth is a 4.05% cap rate, a 0.68 DSCR, and a $731 monthly loss. That is not close to anything.

The left column's expense ratio is 21.09% — dramatically below the 35% floor of the range most rentals land in, and the clearest tell in the series. Any Virginia analysis showing an expense ratio in the low twenties has left something substantial out, and the site's rental calculator will say so rather than letting it pass.

There is a second-order Virginia effect worth naming. Section 1 showed appreciation of about $10,700 a year against a true cash loss of $8,773.60 — a margin of roughly 1.2x. Run the numbers the wrong way and the same appreciation covers the $1,580.80 loss 6.8 times over. The omission does not just flatter the return; it makes the appreciation argument look far safer than it is.

Vacancy. Eight percent is roughly one month a year, which is what a single clean turnover costs between move-out and the next tenant's first full month. Setting it to zero assumes the house is never empty, including between tenants.

Management. Set it to zero and the return is paying you for your own labor rather than for the property. Self-managing this house saves $2,980.80 a year — the largest management line in this series, because it scales with rent — lifting NOI to $21,354.92 and the cap rate to 4.71%, with cash flow improving to -$482.73 a month. Real saving; does not fix the deal; stops being free the moment you stop being available.

Capital reserves. Roofs, HVAC, water heaters, and flooring have known lives, and Section 2 explains that Virginia carriers commonly demand a roof inspection at 15 to 20 years and then move to ACV or non-renew — with no state mitigation grant and no mandated hardening discount to help. The 5%-of-rent convention above gives you $1,620 a year. On a Hampton Roads property with a 2% deductible of $9,800, that reserve takes six years to fund a single storm.

A harsher and equally common convention is 1% of purchase price a year for maintenance and 1% for capital, which here is $4,533.89 each. Run that way: total operating expenses $17,261.66, expense ratio 57.91%, NOI $12,546.34, cap rate 2.77%, cash flow -$1,216.78 a month, cash-on-cash -11.52%, DSCR 0.46.

Note that the harsh convention bites harder in Virginia than anywhere else in this series, because 1% of a $453,389 price is a much bigger number than 1% of an Oklahoma price. On a high-priced house, the percentage-of-price reserve convention and the percentage-of-rent convention diverge enormously — $9,067.78 against $3,240 here. Which one you pick is a real modelling decision, not a detail.

So the honest cap-rate range for this property is 2.77% to 4.05%. Choose one convention deliberately.

What would actually have to be true

The rent this property needs. For cash flow to reach zero at this price and this financing, gross scheduled rent must reach about $44,451.65 a year, or $3,704.30 a month — 0.82% of purchase price per month, the lowest breakeven bar of the seven states in this series. The assumed $2,700 rent is 0.60% of price.

The price this rent supports. Hold rent at $2,700 and solve for the price at which cash flow reaches zero with 25% down: about $322,980, or 71% of the statewide median — the highest such ratio in this series. Virginia is the state where the breakeven price is closest to the actual market.

The down payment this price needs. Keep the $453,389 price and the $2,700 rent and solve for the loan the NOI can service: about $230,147 — which means roughly $223,242 down, or 49% of the price. Virginia is the only state in this series where that figure comes in under half.

Every one of those three numbers is the friendliest in the series. Virginia's arithmetic is the best of the seven, and it still does not produce positive leveraged cash flow on a median-priced house at 2026 rates.

5. What actually varies by county here

A data gap you should know about before reading this section. Our Virginia county data covers Fairfax and Prince William — both Northern Virginia, both inland, neither in the hurricane-deductible territory Section 2 describes. There is no Hampton Roads or Eastern Shore county file in this data, so the coastal premium and deductible split cannot be shown here with county averages the way Louisiana's or South Carolina's can. Section 2 handles that split with the dwelling-limit arithmetic instead. Separately, our Prince William file carries no county-level insurance average, so the statewide $1,858 is used as a proxy for it below — an assumption, not an observation.

With that stated, the Northern Virginia comparison is still instructive, because it is a pure test of price versus rent.

• Fairfax County: effective rate 1.01%, insurance $1,194, median price $813,000
• Prince William County: effective rate 0.94%, median price $616,000
• Statewide: 0.74%, $1,858, $453,389

Take the identical $453,389 house at $2,700 rent and apply each locality's tax rate and premium:

Fairfax has the higher tax rate and still beats Prince William, because its $1,194 average premium — the lowest county figure anywhere in this seven-state series — more than offsets the extra $317.37 of tax. That is a narrow result and it depends entirely on the Prince William insurance proxy being roughly right; get a real quote.

Now run each county at its own median price and a rent scaled to it, which is the comparison an actual buyer faces:

• Prince William at $616,000 with an assumed $3,200 rent, 0.94% tax and the $1,858 state-proxy premium: loan $462,000, P&I $3,073.70, recordation $1,524.60, cash in $172,156.60, tax $5,790.40, total opex $15,021.20, expense ratio 42.52%, NOI $20,306.80, cap rate 3.30%, cash flow -$1,381.47 a month, cash-on-cash -9.63%, DSCR 0.55.
• Fairfax at $813,000 with an assumed $3,900 rent, 1.01% tax and $1,194 insurance: loan $609,750, P&I $4,056.68, recordation $2,012.18, cash in $227,213.18, tax $8,211.30, total opex $18,390.90, expense ratio 42.71%, NOI $24,665.10, cap rate 3.03%, cash flow -$2,001.26 a month, cash-on-cash -10.57%, DSCR 0.51.

Fairfax requires $55,056.58 more cash, produces $4,358.30 more net operating income, and delivers a worse cap rate (3.03% versus 3.30%), $619.79 a month worse cash flow, and a worse cash-on-cash return (-10.57% versus -9.63%).

Same pattern as Benton County, Arkansas and Charleston County, South Carolina: price outruns rent. Fairfax's median is 32% above Prince William's; the rent assumption here is 22% above. And note how far both Northern Virginia counties fall below the statewide 4.05% cap rate — 3.30% and 3.03%. The highest-priced counties in the highest-priced state in this series produce the weakest returns in it.

One financing detail that only shows up in these two counties. The conforming loan limit in Fairfax and Prince William is $1,249,125 against $832,750 for most of Virginia — they sit in a designated high-cost area. On a $813,000 Fairfax purchase at 75% LTV the loan is $609,750, comfortably conforming either way, but at higher price points the Northern Virginia limit is what keeps a purchase out of jumbo territory and its pricing.

6. Financing a rental is not financing a home

These are the standard mechanisms across the mortgage market. Any specific rate or overlay is your lender's, not this article's.

Down payment. Conventional financing on a non-owner-occupied one-unit property generally requires more equity than an owner-occupied purchase — 20% is usually the floor and 25% the common expectation, which is why this article models 25%. FHA and VA are not available for a property you do not occupy. The genuine exception is house hacking: a two-to-four-unit property you live in one unit of qualifies for owner-occupied programs.

Rate. Investment-property loans price above owner-occupied loans. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac apply loan-level price adjustments for investment occupancy that scale with loan-to-value and credit score; lenders pass those through as rate or points. The 7.00% modeled above is an assumption. Get a real quote.

The recordation tax makes refinancing more expensive than you think. Va. Code 58.1-803 applies to the deed of trust, so a refinance that records a new deed of trust generally attracts it again. At a typical combined 0.33% on a $340,041.75 loan that is $1,122.14 per refinance, and about $1,428 at Fairfax rates. Worth knowing before you build a strategy around refinancing into a lower rate. Confirm with your settlement agent how your locality treats refinance recordation, because the treatment is not uniform.

Conforming limits are locality-dependent. $832,750 for most of Virginia, $1,249,125 in the Northern Virginia high-cost area. On a high-priced Virginia purchase this can be the difference between conforming and jumbo pricing.

Reserves. Lenders typically require post-closing reserves — months of principal, interest, taxes, and insurance held in liquid assets — scaling with the number of financed properties you own. In inland Virginia the lender's PITI-months formula is a reasonable guide, because your wind retention is the flat $1,000. In Hampton Roads or on the Eastern Shore it is not — size the reserve against the percentage deductible on your actual dwelling limit, which Section 2 shows can be $9,800 at 2%.

Rental income counting. Lenders credit a portion of market or lease rent toward qualifying, not all of it. Ask what percentage yours uses and whether they need an appraiser's rent schedule.

DSCR loans. A debt service coverage ratio loan qualifies the property rather than the borrower, comparing property income to debt service and largely skipping personal income documentation. The trade is a higher rate, a larger down payment, frequent prepayment penalties, and a minimum DSCR — commonly stated at or above 1.0 and often above 1.2.

Look at Section 3. This property's DSCR is 0.68 — the highest in this series and still well short of 1.0. Even with vacancy, management, and reserves stripped out it is 0.94, which is close enough to 1.0 to be genuinely misleading. The gap between 0.94 and 0.68 is the whole subject of Section 4, and DSCR underwriting will price the 0.68.

Insurance is a closing condition. A four-point inspection (roof, electrical, plumbing, HVAC) is routinely required to bind coverage, and a roof past 15 to 20 years can trigger a certification requirement, an ACV endorsement, or a non-renewal. Get a bindable landlord quote for the specific address during your inspection period — and in Hampton Roads, get the flood quote separately at the same time.

7. What to check before you buy in this state

Property tax first, because in Virginia it is the bigger of the two lines.

1. Get the locality's rate, not the state's. Virginia property tax is set by city and county. Fairfax is 1.01% and Prince William 0.94% against a statewide 0.74% — a $1,224 a year difference on a median house, larger than the entire statewide insurance premium.
2. Recompute from your purchase price. Virginia assessments are local and reassess on their own schedule.
3. Ask whether the seller holds a local senior/disability exemption (Va. Code 58.1-3210) or the 100% disabled veteran exemption (Va. Code 58.1-3219.5). If so, their bill is dramatically below what you will pay. If not, their bill is a fair guide — which is unusual and useful.
4. Do not confuse Va. Code 34-4 with a property tax exemption. It is a bankruptcy and creditor-protection provision and has nothing to do with your annual bill.

Insurance, and the question is the deductible, not the premium.

1. Get a bindable landlord policy quote for the specific address.
2. Ask explicitly whether a separate wind, hail, or named-storm deductible applies, and whether it is flat or a percentage. In Hampton Roads, on the Eastern Shore and in the lower Chesapeake Bay counties, expect one. Inland, expect none — but confirm rather than assume, because the SCC guide describes it as carrier practice, not geography-locked rule.
3. If it is a percentage, get your actual dwelling limit and compute the dollars against it. At $245 per square foot a 2,000 square foot house carries roughly a $490,000 limit, on which 2% is $9,800 — not the $6,000 a $300,000 example implies. That figure is your minimum cash reserve.
4. Note that Virginia's guide describes the storm deductible as applying in addition to the policy deductible, not instead of it. Confirm which structure your policy uses.
5. In Hampton Roads, get the flood quote separately. Storm surge is a flood claim, not a hurricane-deductible claim, and one storm produces both.
6. Get the roof age in writing and ask whether it settles at replacement cost, actual cash value, or on a payment schedule. Virginia has no matching regulation — 14 VAC 5-400-70 does not contain one — so you are arguing from the policy language alone.
7. Understand that Virginia has no state roof mitigation grant and no mandated hardening discount. If you want a FORTIFIED-standard roof you fund it and negotiate the credit yourself.
8. Confirm the policy carries loss of rents coverage and find out how many months it pays.
9. If you receive a nonrenewal notice, read it: Virginia law requires it to tell you about your right to appeal to the Insurance Commissioner and about possible VPIA eligibility. VPIA's base form is named-peril and excludes glass breakage; a broader form exists for eligible properties.

The transaction costs, which are buyer-side here.

1. Budget the recordation tax on the deed of trust — 0.25% state plus a local add-on of up to a third more, typically about 0.33% combined and roughly 0.42% in Fairfax. On a $340,000 loan that is $1,122 to $1,428, and it recurs on refinance.

The rent, from the market.

1. Pull three to five genuine comparable rentals for the specific neighborhood and note how long they sat.
2. Divide monthly rent by purchase price. Section 4's breakeven for this example was 0.82% — the lowest bar in this series.
3. Do not stop at the PITI check. Virginia is the one state here where the rent covers principal, interest, tax and insurance and the property still loses $731 a month. Run the full analysis with vacancy, management and reserves before you form a view.

The law, from the statute rather than from an article.

1. Do not take eviction timelines, notice periods, security-deposit handling, or late-fee rules from a blog — including this one. Virginia residential tenancies are governed by the Virginia Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, Va. Code Title 55.1, Chapter 12 (sections 55.1-1200 and following), with unlawful detainer procedure in Title 8.01. Read the code at Virginia's own official site, https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/, or have a Virginia attorney walk you through it. Security-deposit handling in particular carries specific requirements that are easy and expensive to get wrong.
2. Check the city and county separately: rental registration, inspection requirements, and short-term rental restrictions are local, and Virginia's independent cities set their own rules distinct from the surrounding county.

The money and the tax treatment.

1. Size your cash reserves against the wind deductible in dollars against your real dwelling limit if the property is coastal, and against the ordinary PITI-months formula if it is not. Those are very different numbers in Virginia.
2. Ask a Virginia CPA how the property will be taxed, including depreciation, passive activity loss rules, Virginia income tax treatment of rental income, and treatment on sale.

What to do next

Every figure above came from a data file or was computed in front of you. Re-run all of it with your own numbers.

The Virginia rental analysis calculator does exactly the work in Sections 3 and 4 — enter your price, your real local rent, and your own vacancy, management, and reserve assumptions, and it produces NOI, cap rate, cash flow, cash-on-cash, and DSCR. In Virginia this is the tool that matters most, because Section 3 shows the PITI check passes here and is wrong by $734 a month. Watch the expense ratio: anything near 21% means the three omitted lines are missing.

Because the coastal deductible rather than the premium is what varies in Virginia, use the Virginia insurance premium estimator to convert a 2% or 5% hurricane deductible into actual dollars against a specific dwelling limit — which at Virginia rebuild costs will likely be above your purchase price.

The Virginia mortgage payment calculator gives you the principal and interest figure for the rate you are actually quoted, which Section 3 shows is worth about $2,740 a year per point — the largest per-point figure in this series.

This article is general educational information about rental property arithmetic in Virginia, based on figures current as of August 2026. It is not investment, tax, insurance, or legal advice. The rent figures in the worked examples are stated assumptions, not market data, and the Prince William County insurance figure is a statewide proxy rather than a county observation. Insurance premiums, property tax assessments, and mortgage rates change and vary by property and by locality. Consult a Virginia CPA, a licensed Virginia insurance agent, and a Virginia attorney before buying.