Mortgage Payment Estimates for Virginia by Home Price

Why the Virginia payment looks the way it does

Between the two non-financing costs on a $400,000 home — the price point closest to the statewide median — property tax edges out insurance in Virginia: $273/mo against $140/mo. Virginia carries a property tax rate on the lower side of the middle of the pack, ranked 30th nationally, per the Tax Foundation. Home prices are the moving piece: Virginia's median rose 4.8% over the past year, per Zillow, which is already baked into the numbers above.

Virginia's median home price climbed 4.8% over the past year, per Zillow — a pace that's clearly outrunning income growth and is part of why the affordability figures above look the way they do. Prices vary widely by metro: Arlington at $830,000, Alexandria at $720,000, Richmond at $358,000, Virginia Beach at $365,000, Roanoke at $232,000, all per Zillow ZHVI 2026.

The math, step by step

Using the price point closest to Virginia’s own median — $400,000 — here is how every line item adds up to the monthly payment:

Start with financing. At Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey's 2026-06 rate of 6.4% on a standard 30-year fixed loan, a $320,000 loan (20% down on a $400,000 home) amortizes to a principal-and-interest payment of $2,002/mo. Put down only 10% instead and the loan grows to $360,000, which raises principal and interest to $2,252/mo — $250 more every month for a loan that's $40,000 larger, before tax, insurance, or PMI enter the picture.

Property tax adds $273/mo, derived by applying Virginia's 0.8% effective rate (Tax Foundation, statewide average across all taxing jurisdictions) to the home's assessed value and dividing by twelve. That statewide figure hides real county variation: Manassas City taxes at 1.1% against 0.3% in Bath County — a 4.0x spread between the two, so the true monthly tax line on any specific property in Virginia depends heavily on which county it sits in. How that assessed value itself gets set also varies: Annual assessment in most jurisdictions to 100% of fair market value. Some smaller jurisdictions assess every 2–4 years. Northern Virginia localities reassess annually. And the $273/mo figure above is the pre-exemption number: an owner-occupant can bring it down further — No general state homestead exemption. Localities may offer exemptions for elderly (65+) and disabled homeowners with qualifying income and net worth limits. Some jurisdictions offer partial real property tax exemptions for rehabilitated properties.

Hurricanes and tropical storms and 3 other named risks are the kind Virginia insurers price into every policy — the reason the $1,680/yr average premium (÷12 = $140/mo) sits where it does; this is the same per-price-point figure the table above sums, so the two always agree by construction. Unlike principal and interest, that line is flat: it doesn't move with the down payment. Note: this is an earlier snapshot of the same Insurance.com series RealCostIQ now publishes at $1,939/yr in the Insurance section below — the PITI math above hasn't been rebuilt against the newer figure yet, so treat the monthly line here as the modeling basis and the figure below as the current published rate.

Those three lines total $2,415/mo at 20% down — matching the table above, since 20% down clears the PMI threshold here. 20% down ($80,000) skips PMI. 10% down ($40,000) adds it at 0.46% of the loan a year (mortgage-insurer rate card, 720–739 credit score), or $138/mo — $2,803 total instead of $2,415. You can ask the lender to cancel it around month 94, when the balance reaches $320,000 (80% of the original price) — roughly $12,972 paid in before then. If you don't ask, the Homeowners Protection Act requires it to end automatically when the balance is scheduled to reach 78%.

At this $400,000 price point specifically: qualifying at 20% down takes $103,498/yr under the 28% rule ($80,498/yr under the looser 36% rule); at 10% down it's $120,135/yr — $16,637 more, a meaningful jump — dropping to 10% down doesn't just mean a smaller check at closing, it raises the bar to qualify. A household earning Virginia's own median income of $83,775 falls short of the 20%-down bar at this specific price point, by $19,723 — this price point requires an above-median income here. At 10% down, where the higher loan amount raises the bar further, that same median household falls short by $36,360.

What financing costs across the price range

Total interest over the full 30-year term at 20% down runs from $200,291 on a $200,000 Virginia home to $751,093 on a $750,000 one — both figures assume the loan is held to term with no extra principal payments. At the $400,000 price point used throughout this page, that works out to $400,583 in interest on a $320,000 loan. At 10% down instead, PMI adds $6,486 in total premiums on the $200,000 home before it cancels, and $24,323 on the $750,000 home — cost that buys nothing but the right to put down less cash up front, and that a 20%-down buyer avoids at either price.

At 20% down and the 28% front-end DTI rule, a $200,000 home in Virginia needs $54,749/yr to qualify, while a $750,000 home needs $188,809/yr. That's the binding number for a buyer with no other debt. Once other debt is added to the picture, the 36% back-end ratio is the one that governs, and it takes less income to clear — $42,583/yr and $146,851/yr for the same two homes — but only because it's now competing with a car payment or student loan for that same 36%, not because the home got cheaper to finance. That statewide range plays out locally too: Roanoke's median of $232,000 and Arlington's median of $830,000 sit on opposite ends of the same qualifying-income curve.

Can a median-income household actually afford this?

The gap is severe: a household earning Virginia's median income of $83,775 is $30,482 short — 36% below — the $114,257/yr a lender would want to see on the median-priced home at 20% down at 7.03% (Freddie Mac PMMS, week of September 24, 2026). Lenders check two DTI thresholds, not one: the 28% front-end ratio covers housing costs alone ($103,498/yr at this page's $400,000 price point and its 6.4% rate), while the looser 36% back-end ratio also counts other debt and takes less income to clear on housing alone — $80,498/yr here. The catch: that 36% is shared with a car payment or student loan, so a buyer carrying other debt can end up needing MORE total income than the 28% figure suggests, not less. The two income figures use different rates — 6.4% for this page's price points, 7.03% for the median-home figure — so they are not directly comparable. The price a median-income household can actually afford under the 28% rule at 7.03% (Freddie Mac PMMS, week of September 24, 2026) is $303,850 — $118,032 below the statewide median of $421,882. That gap is not uniform statewide: Arlington County, Falls Church City, Alexandria City price out median earners fastest, while Lee County, Buchanan County, Dickenson County stay within reach on a median income.

Cash to close

Virginia runs an elevated closing-cost load — 3.1% of the purchase price (Near average — lower transfer taxes but high NoVA home prices inflate total costs). On this $400,000 home that's $12,400. Title insurance ($1,700) is a relatively small slice of that figure — the rest is lender, escrow, and recording fees. Layered on top of the down payment, total cash to close runs $92,400 at 20% down or $52,400 at 10% down — the closing-cost portion is identical either way; only the down payment changes. Unlike property tax — which runs 1.1% in Manassas City versus 0.3% in Bath County — closing costs don't swing nearly as much by county; the figure above is a reasonable statewide planning number wherever in Virginia the home sits. State Grantor's Tax: $0.50 per $500 (0.10%), paid by seller. State deed recordation tax: 25 cents per $100 (0.25%) of the PRICE (or the property's assessed value, if greater), on the deed — buyer pays by custom (Va. Code §58.1-801, read 2026-09-28: "the tax shall be 25 cents on every $100 or fraction thereof of (i) the consideration of the deed or (ii) the actual value of the property conveyed, whichever is greater"). A separate deed-of-trust recordation tax of 25 cents per $100 (0.25%) applies to the LOAN amount on the deed of trust (Va. Code §58.1-803), also usually buyer-paid, and is not the same tax as the deed-side 0.25%. A locality may add up to one-third of the state recordation tax (Va. Code §58.1-3800); this is not modelled. The figure below is the deed-side 0.25% of price only. On this $400,000 home, that's roughly $1,000 of the total. Virginia does not require an attorney at closing, though buyers may hire one at their own cost. Once the sale closes, Virginia homeowners can file for the homestead exemption described in the property-tax section above — it isn't automatic, and it only reduces the tax line going forward, not any cost at the closing table itself.

Insurance and flood risk

Virginia homeowners pay an average of $1,939/yr for homeowners insurance at $300,000 dwelling coverage ($162/mo), per Insurance.com — Average homeowners insurance rates by state (Rate Analysis 2026) — against a national average of $2,765/yr. The named factors — each explained below — are hurricanes and tropical storms, flooding, tornadoes, nor'easters. That ranks 35th most expensive of the 51 states and D.C. — 70% of the national average. The private insurance market has not seen the large-scale carrier exits reported in some higher-risk states. Flood risk is high in parts of the state, notably Hampton Roads (Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake — fastest sinking major city in U.S.), Northern Neck and Eastern Shore coastal areas, James and Rappahannock River floodplains. Norfolk is the fastest-sinking major coastal city in the U.S., experiencing 5.7mm of land subsidence per year combined with sea level rise — making tidal flooding a recurring problem outside mapped flood zones. Hurricane Helene (2024) caused significant flooding in Southwest Virginia's coalfield communities. The average NFIP premium runs $1,087/yr, and lenders require coverage in FEMA Zones Zone A, Zone AE, Zone V, Zone VE. Premiums vary sharply by county: Highland County (~$800/yr), Bath County (~$850/yr), Alleghany County (~$900/yr) run cheapest, while Accomack County (~$2,400/yr), Northampton County (~$2,200/yr), Virginia Beach (~$2,100/yr) run highest — the statewide average above blends both ends. Private flood insurance is available in Virginia alongside the NFIP, giving buyers outside a mandatory-purchase zone a second option for coverage. 143,000 NFIP policies are currently in force statewide.

Hurricanes and tropical storms — Tidewater and Hampton Roads coastal flooding are a catastrophic, low-frequency event that insurers reinsure against separately — it drives the premium far more than it drives claim frequency in an ordinary year. Flooding — James, Rappahannock, Shenandoah river valleys is typically excluded from a standard homeowners policy outright, which is why NFIP or private flood coverage is a separate line item, not folded into the premium above. Tornadoes — western and central VA are a narrow, high-severity damage path rather than a broad one — insurers price it as a probability-weighted catastrophe even though any single property's odds of a direct hit are low. Nor'easters — northern VA and mountain regions are a catastrophic, low-frequency event that insurers reinsure against separately — it drives the premium far more than it drives claim frequency in an ordinary year.

Rent vs. buy in Virginia

The median asking rent in Virginia is $1,820/mo, putting the statewide price-to-rent ratio at 19.3 — moderate — northern virginia favors renting due to high prices; richmond and roanoke favor buying for stays of 4+ years. On the median-priced home, RealCostIQ's breakeven math puts the point where buying overtakes renting at 5.0 years of ownership, before accounting for any home-price appreciation. Arlington (27.6) and Roanoke (12.1) sit far enough apart that the statewide ratio above is a poor stand-in for either one specifically.

Loan limits

The 2026 conforming loan limit for a single-unit home in Virginia is $832,750 in standard counties, rising to $1,249,125 in the state's FHFA-designated high-cost areas. A loan above the applicable limit is a jumbo loan, which typically carries stricter underwriting and a different rate. A buyer financing the statewide median home at 20% down borrows only about $337,506 — comfortably under the limit, with $495,244 of headroom before jumbo underwriting would apply.

Down payment assistance

Virginia's primary down payment assistance program is Virginia Housing Down Payment Assistance Grant, administered by Virginia Housing (formerly VHDA). It offers up to $9,625 as a outright grant, for buyers under 80% of area median income on homes up to $726,200 — comfortably above Virginia's own median home price, so the cap isn't the binding constraint for a typical buyer here. 1 additional program exists statewide: Community Heroes Grant (up to $3,850, a outright grant). Local programs can generally be stacked with the state program, so a buyer isn't limited to one source of assistance.

First-time buyer mortgage programs

Beyond down payment assistance, Virginia first-time buyers can also use Virginia Housing Conventional Loan, run by Virginia Housing (formerly VHDA): 30-year fixed-rate conventional or FHA mortgage at below-market rates. It covers loans up to $832,750 with as little as 3% down; income limits vary by area; Northern Virginia up to $185,000 for households of 1–2 persons. Eligibility requirement: must not have owned a primary residence in the past 3 years; minimum 620 credit score. Available through Virginia Housing-approved lenders statewide; free homebuyer class required. A second program, Virginia Housing Down Payment Assistance Grant (Virginia Housing), covers grant — no repayment required, up to $8,500 in assistance. Up to 2%–2.5% of purchase price as a grant; amount depends on loan type.

Beyond PITI: what else the payment doesn’t cover

Isolate just the mortgage — principal and interest, nothing else — and the payment on Virginia's median-priced home is $2,108/mo. The number a buyer should actually budget to is $3,282/mo, nearly half again on top of the mortgage payment (56% higher). The single biggest add-on in Virginia is maintenance reserves, at $527/mo — ahead of every other non-mortgage line item in the true-cost breakdown, tax and insurance included. Property tax is the runner-up at $288/mo — the two together are the main reason the true-cost figure runs so far above the mortgage-alone number.

PITI is not the full cost of owning. RealCostIQ's true-monthly model adds $527/mo — $6,328/yr — in maintenance reserves (1.5% of home value annually — humid subtropical climate drives mold, wood rot, and HVAC wear in Tidewater region; freeze-thaw cycles in mountain regions cause foundation and road stress), and $139/mo in electricity plus $80/mo in gas ($219/mo total, per the U.S. Energy Information Administration). Combined, that pushes the true monthly cost of the median home to $3,282 — true monthly cost is 56% higher than mortgage alone. That reserve isn't arbitrary: a typical HVAC system here runs 12-16 years (high humidity and hot summers stress cooling systems), and a typical roof runs 20-25 years (wind and moisture from coastal storms are primary wear factors), per Fannie Mae 1-2% guideline; Bankrate Hidden Costs Study 2025 — both figures already price in Virginia's own climate rather than a national average. The 1.5% reserve rate is sized to replace both on that state-specific schedule, without a special assessment or a credit-card repair. HOAs in Virginia are governed by Virginia Property Owners Association Act (Code of Virginia §55.1-1800 et seq.), which requires associations to maintain a reserve fund; the main cost drivers are Northern Virginia DC-metro communities, Tidewater coastal maintenance, amenity footprint in planned communities.

See the full Virginia homebuyer resource page for property tax by county, first-time buyer programs, and utility costs, or compare payments across all eight price points.