Virginia Housing’s sales price and loan limit for the Richmond MSA is $550,000, effective 8/1/2026, on both first-time-buyer tracks: the DPA and CCA grant programmes and the Standard / Bond programmes. That single number decides where a buyer using Virginia Housing assistance can and cannot shop.
So the useful exercise is not to explain the cap. It is to put it next to what houses in each Richmond-area locality actually sold for, and see where the line falls.
The short version
- Six of the eight Richmond-area areas we track posted July 2026 medians under $550,000.
- Hanover County is only $25,000 under the cap at a $525,000 median.
- Goochland County is $105,000 over it at $655,000, which puts assistance out of reach at the county median.
- Henrico County is under the cap at $475,000 but rose 11.8% year over year, the fastest move in the metro.
- The Expanded / Non-bond track has no Virginia Housing sales price limit and a $175,000 qualifying income ceiling, and it is open to repeat buyers. That is the release valve.
The cap against eight real medians
| Area | July 2026 median sales price | YoY | Position against the $550,000 cap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entire MLS | $430,000 | +1.2% | $120,000 under |
| Chesterfield County | $440,000 | -3.3% | $110,000 under |
| Richmond City | $450,000 | -3.4% | $100,000 under |
| Richmond Metro (aggregate) | $460,000 | +2.2% | $90,000 under |
| Henrico County | $475,000 | +11.8% | $75,000 under |
| Powhatan County | $486,250 | -3.4% | $63,750 under |
| Hanover County | $525,000 | +1.0% | $25,000 under |
| Ashland (unincorporated town) | $620,000 | -3.9% | $70,000 OVER, on a thin 17-sale base |
| Goochland County | $655,000 | -3.0% | $105,000 OVER |
| Median price per square foot | [DATA NEEDED: median price per square foot, July 2026, by area] | ||
Two housekeeping points about that table. The cap figure comes from Virginia Housing’s income and sales price / loan limits table. The medians come from Central Virginia Regional MLS via the Richmond Association of REALTORS sortable statistics report for July 2026. July 2026 is the freshest published month; the August 2026 report was not yet published when this was written, so there are no August figures here.
What a median under the cap actually means
Here is where most articles about price caps go wrong. “Chesterfield’s median is $440,000, comfortably under the $550,000 cap” reads like reassurance. It is not reassurance. It is a statement about the middle of last month’s closings and nothing else.
A median is the midpoint. Chesterfield County closed 407 single-family sales in July 2026 at a $440,000 median, so roughly 203 of them cleared at or below that number and roughly 203 above it. Some of that upper half sold well above $550,000. The cap does not knock out half of Chesterfield; it knocks out a slice off the top, and the size of that slice is exactly what a median cannot tell you.
What it does tell you is where the cap bites hardest. In Goochland County, the midpoint of everything that closed was already $105,000 above the ceiling, which means most of the county’s July activity was ineligible. In Chesterfield, the midpoint was $110,000 below it, which means most of the county’s July activity was eligible. That is a real and usable difference in search geography, and it is the honest version of the claim.
It also does not tell you what you can find today. Medians describe closings, and closings are 30 to 60 days behind the contracts that produced them. Our monthly walkthrough in the July 2026 Richmond market update sets out what else the same dataset supports.
Henrico’s 11.8% is the number to watch if you are relying on this programme
Henrico County posted a $475,000 median in July 2026, up 11.8% year over year. That is the largest annual increase of any Richmond-area locality in the dataset, on a base of 287 closings, which is large enough that the direction means something rather than being small-sample noise.
Do the arithmetic on why it matters. Henrico currently sits $75,000 under the cap. A cap is a fixed nominal number; a median is not. The cap does not move on its own schedule to match a county, and a county rising at double digits closes the distance to a fixed ceiling faster than one rising at 1% or falling. We are not forecasting when Henrico crosses $550,000, and anyone who gives you a date for that is guessing. The point is directional: of all the localities on this list, Henrico is the one where a buyer relying on a Virginia Housing first-time-buyer track has the most reason to move deliberately rather than wait a year to see.
The counter-observation, honestly stated: Henrico also carried the shortest days on market in the metro at 16 days, down 11.1%, and just 1.5 months of supply, down 11.8%. Fast and tight is exactly the environment where a buyer with a financing constraint needs to be fully underwritten before touring, not after.
Within the county there are still large price differences that a county median flattens completely. Lakeside and Varina do not trade at the same prices as Short Pump, and none of them are broken out in this source. Which brings us to the caveat that governs this whole article.
Every figure above is county-level, city-level or town-level. Central Virginia Regional MLS publishes no neighborhood-level breakouts in this report, so nothing here is a subdivision or street median, and applying a county median to a specific address will mislead you in both directions.
[DATA NEEDED: median price per square foot, July 2026, by area] – price per square foot would let you compare a $475,000 Henrico house with a $525,000 Hanover house on equal terms. It lives only in the separate Central Virginia Regional MLS Monthly Indicators report, which we could not open for this article.
Free: the Richmond closing-timeline checklist
A cap-constrained purchase leaves less room for a deadline to slip, because a re-negotiated price can push a file over a limit. Our Richmond closing-timeline checklist maps what has to happen in what order from ratified contract to settlement, including where programme approvals sit. Ask us for the closing-timeline checklist and we will send it.
Goochland: assistance is effectively out of reach at the median
Goochland County’s $655,000 median in July 2026 sits $105,000 above the cap. Stated plainly: a buyer purchasing at the middle of Goochland’s market cannot use a Virginia Housing first-time-buyer track, because the purchase price itself disqualifies the loan regardless of income or credit.
Two qualifiers keep that honest. Goochland closed only 44 sales in July 2026, and 44 is a small base, so the median moves easily with the mix of what happened to close. And a median above the cap does not mean nothing in the county clears it. Roughly 22 of those 44 sales closed at or below $655,000, and some fraction of those were under $550,000. Eligible inventory in Goochland exists. It is the lower part of a market whose midpoint is well above the ceiling, which is a different and much harder search than shopping the middle of Chesterfield.
The same logic applies to Ashland’s $620,000 town median, with an extra caveat: 17 closed sales is too thin a base to lean on. We report it, we do not build a conclusion on it.
[COMMUNITY PAGE NEEDED: Ashland] – we have no Ashland community page, so Ashland is covered here against the Hanover County hub.
If land is what is drawing you west, Powhatan County is the more programme-compatible answer than Goochland: a $486,250 median, $63,750 under the cap, with 3.1 months of supply against Goochland’s 2.8 and Henrico’s 1.5. You can see what is actually listed through Richmond-area homes with acreage.
Hanover is $25,000 from the line
Hanover County’s $525,000 median leaves $25,000 of headroom, and that is the tightest position of any locality still under the cap. On 137 closings, up 33.0% year over year, with a median 21 days on market.
What $25,000 of headroom means in practice is that in Hanover, a competitive escalation can end the financing. A buyer under contract at $535,000 who escalates to $555,000 to beat a rival offer has not just paid $20,000 more; they have moved outside the programme entirely and have to re-plan the financing mid-transaction. That is a specific, foreseeable failure mode, and it is worth deciding your true ceiling before you write, not during a counter-offer at 9pm.
The release valve, and it should be named as one
Nobody above the cap is out of options, and this is the part that gets left out of first-time-buyer articles.
Virginia Housing’s Expanded / Non-bond track carries no Virginia Housing sales price limit – the limits page directs you to follow GSE, insurer or guarantor requirements for the loan limit instead – and a $175,000 qualifying income ceiling for all household sizes in the Richmond MSA. It is open to first-time and repeat buyers. Virginia Housing also states on its loan options page that its Conventional non-bond programme does not require first-time homebuyer status and has no sales price limits, while the Conventional bond programme has both unless the purchase is in an Area of Economic Opportunity.
That is the door for a Goochland buyer, a Hanover buyer at $560,000, or a household earning $150,000. What it does not include is the DPA or CCA grant, because the grants live on the bond side. So the trade is honest and specific: give up the grant money, keep the programme. Our companion posts work the other two angles of this – the 2026 income limits and who clears them, and the DPA grant, CCA grant and Plus Second Mortgage compared.
[CLUSTER HUB NEEDED: Virginia Housing first-time buyer programs] – three posts now, no hub page.
What the cap does to a practical search
Turn all of the above into instructions:
- Set your search ceiling below the cap, not at it. Leave room for an escalation, a seller credit structure, or an appraisal-driven renegotiation. In Hanover especially.
- Let the eligible localities lead. Chesterfield at $440,000, Richmond City at $450,000 and Powhatan at $486,250 give a cap-constrained buyer the most room. Start there before Goochland.
- Get underwritten first in the tight ones. Henrico’s 16 days on market and 1.5 months of supply do not accommodate a buyer who is still figuring out their programme.
- Check the whole monthly cost, not the price. Locality tax rates differ enough to change affordability at the same purchase price, which we set out in 2026 real estate tax rates by locality. Run your own figures through our mortgage calculator.
- Look lower than you think you have to. The cap is a ceiling, not a target, and there is real inventory well below it – our roundup of Richmond homes under $325,000 in 2026 is the other end of the same market. Where prices actually softened this summer is mapped in where Richmond-area home prices fell.
Then go look at what is listed. The full Richmond-area property search takes a hard price ceiling, and if you already own and are wondering whether your own equity gets you out of the cap conversation entirely, a free home valuation is the faster answer.
Not legal or lending advice. This article compares two published datasets. It is not legal advice, not a loan commitment and not a rate quote. Virginia Housing limits carry effective dates and change; eligibility is determined by a Virginia Housing-approved lender against your file, not by this page. For legal questions about a contract, title or closing, retain a Virginia real estate attorney. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau publishes free, non-commercial guidance on the mortgage process.
Price the two tracks side by side before you pick a search area
A lender can tell you in one conversation whether you clear the bond-side limits and the grant money, or whether the Expanded / Non-bond track with no price cap is the better instrument for the houses you actually want. That answer should come before you decide which county to shop. See our preferred lenders and ask them to run both.
Frequently asked questions
Is the $550,000 figure a price limit or a loan limit?
Virginia Housing’s table labels the column “Sales Price / Loan Limit”, so it governs both. It also states that loan amounts including financed guaranty fees or mortgage insurance premiums plus a Virginia Housing second mortgage cannot exceed its sales price limits, which means the Plus Second Mortgage’s extra 1.5% borrowing capacity does not let you exceed $550,000 in the Richmond MSA.
Does the cap apply to the appraised value or the contract price?
The limit is published against the sales price and the loan amount. Which figure controls in an edge case where the appraisal and the contract price differ is an underwriting question for a Virginia Housing-approved lender, and we are not going to guess at it in print.
Is $550,000 the same everywhere in Virginia?
No. It is the Richmond MSA figure. Virginia Housing publishes $800,000 for the Washington, Arlington and Alexandria area, $575,000 for Norfolk, Virginia Beach and Newport News, $675,000 for Culpeper, $550,000 for Charlottesville and $500,000 for all other areas of Virginia, all effective 8/1/2026.
Which localities count as the Richmond MSA for this cap?
Virginia Housing’s own list: Amelia County, Charles City County, Chesterfield County, Colonial Heights, Dinwiddie County, Goochland County, Hanover County, Henrico County, Hopewell, King William County, New Kent County, Petersburg, Powhatan County, Prince George County, the City of Richmond and Sussex. That is wider than the market we cover, so several localities on that list are outside our own service area.
The report shows a “Richmond County” row. Is that Richmond City?
The Richmond County row in the July 2026 report duplicates Richmond City’s figures almost exactly, at 218 closings, 17 days on market, a $450,000 median and 1.5 months of supply, which looks like a labelling artefact rather than a separate market. We do not cite “Richmond County” anywhere, and neither should anyone else working from that report.
If Chesterfield’s median is $440,000, can I find a house there for that?
Roughly half of Chesterfield’s 407 July 2026 closings were at or below $440,000, so yes, houses trade at and below that number in real volume. What you cannot infer is what is available on any given day, because a median describes closings rather than current listings, and Chesterfield’s 1.8 months of supply means the standing inventory is thin.
Does a condominium or townhouse purchase use a different limit?
Virginia Housing publishes one sales price / loan limit per area rather than one per property type, so the $550,000 Richmond MSA figure is not split by property type. Note separately that all the market medians in this article are single-family figures; Central Virginia Regional MLS reports condominium and townhouse activity separately.
Do the caps get updated, and how would I know?
They carry an explicit effective date – the current Richmond MSA figures are effective 8/1/2026, and Virginia Housing links a prior 2025 set for applications made before that date. Check the limits page itself rather than any third-party summary, including this one, before you rely on a number in a contract.
