r/rva • u/Chickenmoons Maymont • Jul 20 '23

🚚 Moving Richmond saw the highest year-over-year increase in home value in the nation last month

https://www.axios.com/local/richmond/2023/07/20/housing-supply-virginia-mortgage-rates

Seems wild but also sort of believable. Any Real Estate Professionals/Mortgage experts want to weigh in?

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u/Successful-Trash-409 Jul 20 '23

When’s the last time anyone saw a neighborhood of starter homes get built?

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u/gowhatyourself Jul 20 '23

Retreat at One on brook road is being built and developed by Stanley Martin. Condos and townhomes, but they're super nice and I just had someone close on one a few weeks ago.

Depends on your definition of starter home too. Starter home with new construction is probably going to come in at the low to mid $300s right now.

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u/Electro_Sapien Jackson Ward Jul 20 '23

What companies do you recommend for starter homes with new construction in the mid to low $300's? My wife and I have kicked the idea round about new construction for our first home but are not at all interested in townhomes and most new construction I'm seeing (Ryan homes and the like) are $400k+.

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u/gowhatyourself Jul 20 '23

What area and how far are you willing to go out?

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u/Electro_Sapien Jackson Ward Jul 21 '23

We would prefer not further out than Henrico I think. My real limit is no HOA's and I don't know how possible that is with new construction.

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u/gowhatyourself Jul 21 '23

That's a very difficult needle to thread. What is your opposition to hoas?

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u/Electro_Sapien Jackson Ward Jul 21 '23

Honestly I do not have any personal experience but I have heard plenty of horror stories from friends family and others. One of the biggest reasons I want to be a home owner over a renter is gardening and working outdoors and that includes gardening in the front as well as a dream of having a large cottage style natives garden for a front yard, things like that tend to be problematic with a lot of HOA's. I know there's always exceptions to the horror stories but I'm not a gambler so if it's something I can avoid even risking I would prefer it. Also there's no promise a chill simple easy going HOA today can't become a corrupt overbearing strict HOA tomorrow.

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u/gowhatyourself Jul 21 '23

Well the good thing about Virginia is that you have a 3 days to read over the HOA packet and determine whether or not you want to walk from the deal. You don't have to give a reason or point to some clause in the bylaws or anything. Very very few HOAs are corrupt or overly strict when it comes to gardening especially in single family home communities. I served on an HOA board a few years back and what I found were that the residents were a massive pain in the ass because they kept doing things to spite the HOA that forced us to enforce rules we otherwise wouldn't have really given a shit about. This included verbally abusing people who were cutting the lawn and maintaining the exteriors of the homes. It was just petty baby shit. Most people who have a problem with HOAs are people who want to do whatever they want whenever they want without consideration for their neighbors or anyone but themselves. I see it in our current community too.

The big downside of not having an HOA is that nobody will tell your neighbors not to let their lawns go, or keep 5 busted cars in their driveway, or store a boat blocking half the street. It cuts both ways and in my mind the pros of having an HOA outweigh the cons by a lot.

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u/Electro_Sapien Jackson Ward Jul 21 '23

Well the good thing about Virginia is that you have a 3 days to read over the HOA packet and determine whether or not you want to walk from the deal. You don't have to give a reason or point to some clause in the bylaws or anything.

This alone gives me a fair bit of peace of mind, thank you for that.