May 2022 Real Estate Transactions in Charlottesville
Another look at property transactions, sale by sale, parcel by parcel
Another month, another summary of property transactions in Charlottesville. I’ve written about land use issues in the city and Albemarle County for many years, and this is an exercise I began doing toward the end of my time at Charlottesville Tomorrow. I wanted to better understand the finances involved with the business of land development as the Comprehensive Plan review got underway in early 2017.
Real estate is complicated, and now that I ‘m an independent journalist, I want to broaden my knowledge. The way I’ve done that for the past 17 months has been to go transaction by transaction. Each of these is an anecdote, but I’m finding it very interesting to learn what I can and share it with you.
None of this is intended to state that any trend is happening, but that sort of analysis may come in the future. The blurbs may prompt more questions than answers. This is a community that has a lot of interest in housing, especially with the next phase of the Cville Plans Together initiative getting underway this month. I’ll have details on the zoning “Diagnostic and Approach” report in the next regular newsletter.
I also want to share two questions in the back of my head as I put together this month’s installment. I don’t have answers, but I question everything.
It has been 15 months since Council adopted an Affordable Housing Plan. Are the transactions that are happening in any way affected by the goals of the plan?
It has been eight months since Council adopted a new Comprehensive Plan that shows the way towards more residential density. Has that document influenced any of the transactions we’ve seen since?
Some notes on the always changing process, slightly amended from the April transactions list:
I try to always state when corporate entities take possession of a property and name the address in these cases. I’ve been doing these reports for a year and a half now, and observe there are people who know the property market very well. I’m still learning but I see patterns.
Many times people use limited liability companies (LLC) to serve as the technical owner of a property. I will list those names, but I do not list the names of individuals and couples who purchase residential properties. However, readers should know there are many people who own multiple properties under LLC’s.
In cases where the transaction for a residential structure is way over the assessment, I pull details from the city’s building permit database to see if any known/recorded or building-permitted investments were made by previous owners. This is not a complete review.
Now that we are almost halfway through the year, I have included the 2021 assessment less often. I post in cases where I feel it’s interesting to note deviation.
This time around, I am not listing the descriptions for the new Future Land Use Map categories but I always look to see if properties that have been sold at high assessments have had their designation changed so I list that when I can.
I don’t usually list transactions that are title changes or subdivisions, except when it seems relevant. Increasingly, this is going to be relevant.
Questions in the blurbs are not rhetorical. I would like to know the answer, but I also am one person who covers a lot of ground and can’t cover everything. I can become more efficient.
This is one of the few pieces that are sent to paid subscribers of the newsletter. It will be posted to the Information Charlottesville archive in the near future, but I do encourage you to support the work.