Virginia’s New Governor Wants More Housing. Here’s What Would Help Most

Virginia’s first female governor, Abigail Spanberger, is set to take office this weekend—and housing affordability is at the top of her agenda.

“No matter where I travel across Virginia—whether I’m in Richmond City or Richmond County, out in Radford, Roanoke, or down in Hampton Roads, I hear about the high cost of housing,” Spanberger said at a June 2025 event focused on her affordability platform. “That’s why today, I’m laying out how my administration will, brick by brick, lay the foundation to lower housing costs for Virginians. Because whether it’s buying a home or paying the rent, we need to make Virginia housing more affordable.”

It’s a mandate that reflects growing urgency. Median list prices in the Commonwealth have climbed 34.4% since 2019. In the Richmond metro area, rents have increased more than 25% over the same period, according to data from Realtor.com®. 

“Virginia is a relatively more affordable state than most others and the country at large, thanks to home prices near the national median and above-median household incomes,” explains Joel Berner, senior economist at Realtor.com.

But those advantages are increasingly limited to high-paid sectors like tech, professional services, and finance, while homeownership remains out of reach for many of the state’s essential workers like teachers, firefighters, and nurses. 

Even though Virginia ranks among the more affordable states in the country, it would still take an annual income of over $100,000 to afford a median priced home there today, assuming a 20% down payment of $85,000 and an interest rate around 6%. Meanwhile, the average salary of a firefighter in the state sits around $60,000.

“I know that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to Virginia’s housing challenges,” Spanberger said at her event. “That’s why Virginians deserve real, thoughtful solutions from their governor—solutions that will deliver results they can see in their bank accounts.”

Her platform calls for more local flexibility, faster permitting, and more affordable options. Here’s where her administration could make the biggest difference.

Spanberger’s housing plan

At the core of Spanberger’s platform is flexibility: giving cities and counties more room to solve their housing problems with tools that match local conditions, rather than forcing every community into the same playbook.

A major piece of that approach is funding. Spanberger wants to expand the ability of local governments to finance housing—particularly through bonding authority—while also directing more state investment toward new construction that expands attainable options for working families. 

Henrico County is already proving how effective this can be. The county is channeling new tax revenue tied to a wave of data-center investment into an Affordable Housing Trust Fund designed to reduce the cost of new homes. Instead of relying solely on slower federal programs, the fund provides incentives to builders and buyers to help local workers earning roughly 60% to 120% of area median income buy homes closer to where they work.

Spanberger’s plan also emphasizes the mechanics of housing production: cutting red tape, speeding up approvals, and smoothing the pathway for redevelopment projects that could add homes faster. The goal is not only to increase supply, but to make it easier for localities to approve housing types that fit their needs on a timeline that makes projects financially viable.

Just as important, the platform treats preservation as a supply strategy in its own right. In addition to building new homes, Spanberger is proposing measures to protect existing affordability by investing in rehabilitation and supporting housing types that already function as entry-level options. 

Manufactured housing is a key example. These homes make up 5% of the total housing stock in the country but almost 8% in the South Atlantic region, according to a National Association of Home Builders American Housing Survey.—underscoring just how potent investments here could be.

It’s a broad vision, and its success will hinge on whether the reforms can translate into more homes built at the price points where demand is most intense.

In other words, the problem isn’t just supply—it’s alignment. And that’s the core challenge Spanberger now faces.

Virginia’s alignment woes

While much of the housing debate centers on how much gets built, Virginia’s deeper issue may be how well that supply matches the market. 

“Virginia is mid-pack when it comes to both new construction premium … and the new construction share of listings on the market,” says Berner.

The reason, Berner explains, is that the state diverges from its regional peers in a critical way:

“It differs from the rest of the South in that the new homes being built in Virginia are priced relatively high.” That price point misalignment means that even when new housing comes online, it often fails to relieve pressure where it’s most intense.

“Even though there are a fair number of them,” Berner notes, “they are not landing in the middle of the market's price distribution.” 

For buyers, this shows up as a frustrating disconnect. Headlines may tout improving inventory, but a recent survey of Virginians found that 73% felt that the state lacks enough affordable homes to rent or buy.

What reforms would help the most

Could Spanberger’s platform improve housing affordability in Virginia? Yes, but only if her administration can execute multiple reforms at once.

That starts with local zoning. 

“More permissive zoning and more expeditious permitting could make a major difference in the state,” says Berner. That's because 75% of the state's land is zoned, broadly gumming up the development process. If, however, Spanberger is able to deliver here, she could see proportionate gains.

Likewise, many types of housing remain off limits in parts of the state.

“Multifamily building is prohibited in most of the state and ADUs are prohibited in 32% of it,” Berner explains. “These laws keep builders from delivering the affordable and dense inventory the state needs.” 

Spanberger’s plan would open the door to that missing density, including legalizing more diverse housing formats like duplexes, townhomes, and accessory dwelling units in places where they’re currently banned, which could move the needle on affordability at scale.

But to see the most success, the governor-elect will need to remain focused on what happens after a project is legally allowed. Long permitting timelines and fragmented approval processes can delay or derail new housing entirely. 

Spanberger’s proposals to streamline redevelopment reviews and direct state resources toward helping localities could provide relief here. But legal and procedural reform alone won’t solve Virginia’s affordability problem. The core issue remains building more homes that Virginians can afford. 

In this regard, the clearest opportunity, according to Berner, is to build smaller.

Spanberger has proposed incentives to support exactly that—encouraging builders to deliver starter homes, smaller homes on smaller lots, and other forms of missing-middle housing that are increasingly scarce in Virginia’s current market.

Her proposed investments in manufactured housing could help here, too. The average cost of a new manufactured home (without the land) is just $124,000, compared with a cost of more than $400,000 to build a site-built home, according to research from the Manufactured Housing Institute.

But any attempt to improve affordability must also keep existing affordable housing from slipping away. Already, the state has seen an 11% increase in the number of Virginians experiencing homelessness since 2017, according to research from the National Alliance to End Homelessness—driven in large part by the disappearance of affordable housing options.

Spanberger’s plan includes measures to preserve that remaining stock, such as giving local governments a transferable right of first refusal to acquire expiring tax-credit properties, and expanding support for community land trusts. But without those protections in place, rising costs risk continuing to push longtime residents out of their homes even as new supply comes online.

These are the reforms most likely to shift the trajectory of Virginia’s housing market. Not by chasing volume alone, but by fixing the systems that shape what’s built.