Hampton Roads Real Estate Transaction Study: 441 Closings Across 13 Years

Key findings from 13 years of Hampton Roads transactions

My REIN MLS record covers 428 residential transactions closed between June 2014 and August 2026, representing 441 client sides and $141,655,178 in closed volume. The record spans 44 ZIP codes and 270 subdivisions across Hampton Roads.

189 of the 428 transactions — 44.2% — were financed with a VA loan, against roughly 10.6% nationally. In Norfolk the share reaches 57%, the highest of any city in the record. 98 of the 428 were attached homes — condos and townhomes — and 330 were detached.

The largest concentrations are Virginia Beach (139), Chesapeake (99) and Norfolk (96), followed by Hampton (51), Suffolk (20), Portsmouth (15) and Newport News (7).

Two patterns run against intuition. Cheaper homes took longer to sell: a median of 54 days to contract under $200,000, against 12 days above $600,000. And the listing month mattered more than most sellers expect — homes listed in May reached contract in a median of 19 days, against 55 for October listings.

The record includes 70 waterfront transactions totalling $28,084,148 — and waterfront behaves differently from the rest of the book: a median of 46 days to contract against 28 across all closings. At the top of the market there are 11 closings at or above $750,000, five of them above $1 million.

Source: John King’s closed residential transactions recorded in the Real Estate Information Network (REIN) MLS, retrieved August 31, 2026. Descriptive analysis of past transactions; not a prediction of future results.

1. What 441 reps actually look like

Experience is a claim every agent makes. It's also a countable thing, so let's count it.

The National Association of REALTORS® reports that the typical member closed 10 transaction sides in 2024. That figure describes the typical member, and a large share of licensed agents close well below it — or nothing at all — in a given year. Agents sustaining thirty or more closings annually are a small fraction of the licensed population.

Across thirteen years I've averaged 34 a year. Not for one good stretch — for thirteen years, through a refinance boom, a pandemic, a rate shock and a market that has changed shape three times.

That's the volume of practice. What matters more is its variety, because the thing that makes an agent useful isn't having 441 closings — it's having already seen the specific situation you're about to walk into.

Reps by situation

Every number below is a count of times I have personally been through that exact scenario, start to closing table.

And the ground covered: 270 distinct subdivisions across 44 ZIP codes and 8 cities. When I say I know a neighborhood, there is usually a closed file behind it.

The range of what I've seen

Reps only count if they cover different ground. 116 of these went under contract within a week and 121 closed above the asking price — and plenty of others were patient, carefully-priced listings in slower stretches of the market. Bidding wars and long holds, entry-level and waterfront, all inside the same book of business.

That range is the point. Knowing which situation you're actually in, and pricing for it from the start, is most of the job — and it isn't something you can read your way into.

2. The market didn't get more expensive. It got faster.

Everybody talks about prices. Prices are the boring part — they went up, you already knew that. The number that actually changed how you have to buy and sell a house here is how long you get to think about it.

In 2014, the median home I closed sat on the market for 92 days. In 2026, that number is 6 days. That is not a market that got 15× more expensive. It's a market where the decision window collapsed by a factor of fifteen.

The mirror image of that is what buyers had to do to win. In 2014, none of my closings went above asking price. By 2022, half of them did.

What price range do I actually work in?

The fair answer is a range that has moved a long way. My 2014 closings averaged $188,477. My 2025 closings averaged $498,306, and 2025–2026 together average $482,130. Across the full record the average is $330,970, but that figure is weighted by a lot of early-career transactions in the $150–250k range and it doesn't describe what I'm doing now.

So: today I'm closing in the mid-$400s on average, with eleven closings at or above $750,000 and five above a million. The full-record average is on this page because I'd rather show the whole climb than crop it to the flattering part — but the recent number is the one that answers the question.

How fast is fast, really?

Across all 428 closings: 27% went under contract within a week. 53% within a month. Only 15% took 90 days or more — and most of those are concentrated in the early years and in one specific price bracket, which brings me to the finding that surprised me most.

Every closing, on a map

The fastest way to answer the only question most people actually have: does he sell in my neighborhood?

All 428 closings, grouped into the 44 ZIP codes where they happened. Bigger circle, more homes. Click any circle for the average price, typical time on market, VA share and the neighborhoods inside it.

A few things jump out of it that the bar charts don't show. My work is dense along the water — the Ocean View and East Beach side of Norfolk, the Shore Drive corridor and Bayside in Virginia Beach — and dense again through Chesapeake, which is where the largest single concentration sits: 32 closings in 23320 alone. There is steady Peninsula work in Hampton as well, and the map shows where the concentrations are strongest.

If your ZIP code has a big circle on it, I've probably sold a house on your street or the next one over, and I can tell you what it went for without looking anything up.

4. Nearly half the homes I've sold were bought with a VA loan

This is the number that makes my book different from almost any other agent's in the country.

Nationally, VA loans are about 10.6% of home-purchase originations — roughly one in ten. Across my 428 closings, the figure is 44.2%. Add FHA and VHDA and 56.8% of every home I've sold was bought with a government-backed loan.

That isn't a marketing claim, it's the composition of my business, and it's the direct consequence of working a region built around Naval Station Norfolk, NAS Oceana and JEB Little Creek — and of being a Navy veteran that other service members tend to call.

VA loans are slower than conventional — and it's worth knowing by how much

There's a persistent story that sellers should avoid VA offers because they're slow or fragile. My data says they are somewhat slower and not remotely fragile.

Cash closes fastest at a median of 18 days, conventional at 23, VA at 30, FHA at 35. So a VA buyer costs a seller about a week against a conventional buyer — a real difference, and a much smaller one than the folklore suggests. And VA buyers in my book went above asking 35% of the time, more often than conventional buyers at 27%. A week of patience has been worth real money to my sellers.

6. The 37 homes I've sold more than once

This is the part of the dataset I didn't expect to find, and it's the part I'd pay attention to if I were buying here.

Thirty-seven addresses in my book have closed more than once — I sold the house, and then years later I sold the same house again. A few I've sold three times. Those 37 properties account for 77 closings, roughly 18% of everything I've done.

That's a nice thing to know about repeat business. But it's more interesting as data, because it's a true paired sample: the identical house, the identical lot, the identical floor plan, sold twice, years apart. No appraiser adjustments, no "comparable" fudging. Just what one specific home was worth then and what it was worth later.

That last one matters as much as the winner. Hampton Roads is not one market that rises together. Over the same stretch of years, one home in my book gained 127% while another slipped slightly below what it had sold for four years earlier. Anyone who tells you "real estate always goes up around here" is averaging away the neighborhoods where it didn't.

What the repeat sales suggest about holding periods

The median gap between my first and second sale of the same home was several years, not months. At roughly 6.25% annualized, the arithmetic on a short hold is unforgiving: between agent commissions, closing costs, and the Virginia grantor's tax, a typical sale costs somewhere in the range of 7–9% of the price. At 6.25% a year, you need to hold roughly a year and a half just to break even on transaction costs — longer if the market pauses. That's the honest answer to "should I buy if I might get orders in two years," and it's usually not the answer people want.

Methodology, and what this data can't tell you

I'd rather show you the seams than have you assume there aren't any.

How the totals are counted

Three things are worth stating plainly, because volume figures in real estate are easy to inflate and hard to check.

How the 441 is counted. Every closing has two sides — a listing side and a buying side. REIN records 428 sold listings with my name on them. On 14 of those I represented both the buyer and the seller, which is two client sides at a single settlement. On one I appear in the record without having represented either side. So the arithmetic is 428 + 14 − 1 = 441 client sides represented; counted as MLS settlements it is 428. Both numbers are on this page so you can see exactly how the figure is built. The dollar volume of $141,655,178 counts each settlement once and is the more conservative measure; counted the same way as the 441, it would be $145,205,978.

The 428 transactions cover 388 distinct properties. Thirty-seven addresses sold more than once — I sold the house, then sold it again years later — which accounts for 40 of the 428 closings. If you counted each property only once, at its most recent sale, the total would be $130,513,714 rather than $141,655,178. Both are real: a repeat sale is a separate transaction with a separate seller, a separate buyer and a separate closing. I'd rather you know which convention is in use than assume.

Sides split 270 list-side and 171 buyer-side (the 14 double-ended deals appear in both). One additional closing was a co-listing where I was the secondary agent.

Prices on this page are averages, not medians, unless labeled otherwise. Days on market and the repeat-sale appreciation figures are medians, because both distributions are skewed enough that an average would mislead.

On the honest limits of a sample this size

428 transactions is a lot for one agent and a very small number next to a regional market that closes tens of thousands of homes a year. Where I have 139 closings (Virginia Beach) the figures are reasonably stable. Where the count is in single digits, treat the number as illustrative rather than representative — I've shown the counts alongside every figure so you can weigh them yourself. My book also concentrates in the areas I work most, so this is a picture of my corner of Hampton Roads rather than a census of the whole region.

Everything above is descriptive. None of it predicts what your home will do. Real estate values, days on market, and appreciation vary by property, condition, timing and financing, and past results do not indicate future performance. If you want to know what your specific home is likely to do, that's a conversation about your house — not about my averages.

Analysis current as of August 31, 2026. Source data: Real Estate Information Network, Inc. (REIN) MLS. Information deemed reliable but not guaranteed; independently verify.

What this data means if you are the one selling

Everything above describes a market. This section is the short version for a seller — the findings in this dataset that change what you should actually do, rather than what is merely interesting to know.

Figures come from John King’s own REIN MLS closing record — 428 MLS-recorded transactions, 2014–2026 — not a regional average. Sample sizes are shown so you can weigh them. Past results do not predict what any individual home will do.

How to choose a Hampton Roads agent — including how to check me

If you're comparing agents, here is what I'd actually look at. It's the same list I'd use if I were hiring one.

Independent verification

Don't take my word for any of it. Every one of these is a third party you can check without going through me.

Who I am, plainly stated

I'm John King, a licensed REALTOR® in Virginia and a U.S. Navy veteran, working out of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices RW Towne Realty. I sell residential real estate throughout Hampton Roads — Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Chesapeake, Suffolk, Portsmouth, Hampton and Newport News — and I work with buyers and sellers in roughly a 60/40 split toward listings.

My practice concentrates on military relocation and VA loan transactions: service members PCSing into or out of Naval Station Norfolk, NAS Oceana and JEB Little Creek, and veterans using their VA entitlement. Forty-four percent of everything I've closed was VA-financed, against a national rate near 10%. I also do a meaningful amount of waterfront and condo work along the Shore Drive corridor and the Norfolk bayfront — 70 waterfront closings, $28.1 million, 27 of them attached homes.

If you're relocating here on orders, buying with a VA loan, selling a home you bought last tour, or just trying to work out which of these cities fits your budget and commute — that's the conversation I have most days. (757) 270-3994.

The neighborhoods behind these numbers

Every closing in this study happened somewhere specific. These are the areas I've written up in depth — market data, what sells, and what buyers ask me about most.

More about how I work: about John King · all communities · market commentary · get in touch.