Why common area is hard to value

Condemnation compensation in Virginia is measured by fair market value — what a willing buyer would pay a willing seller. Association common area strains that test at every point.

There is no market. A stormwater management pond, a private street, a tot lot or a strip of buffer landscaping cannot be sold to anyone except the association that must own it. It is encumbered by a recorded declaration, dedicated to the use of the lots it serves, and typically carries an affirmative maintenance obligation rather than an income stream.

Valued as raw land with no market and a maintenance liability attached, a parcel of common area can appraise at close to nothing. Valued as what it actually is — the detention basin without which the subdivision's stormwater permit fails, or the only vehicular access to forty homes — it is worth a great deal to the community that depends on it.

That gap is what “physical characteristics” is doing in the bills. It directs the valuation toward what the parcel is and does, rather than toward a hypothetical sale that cannot occur.

Who bears the loss when common area goes

The association takes the award, and the association loses the function. If a road-widening takes part of a private street, the association still has to maintain what is left and may have to rebuild access. If a basin is taken, the stormwater obligation does not disappear with it.

Where compensation falls short of replacement, the shortfall reaches the owners through a special assessment. Virginia declarations commonly cap what a board may assess without a membership vote, which means a taking can force a vote the community would never otherwise have held.

The Virginia context that makes this live

Virginia is in the middle of a data-centre and transmission-infrastructure build-out that runs directly through developed residential corridors, and the litigation record shows it. The Digital Gateway appeals, decided by the Court of Appeals in March 2026, had a homeowners association as lead plaintiff challenging rezoning ordinances for a data-centre campus on a notice defect — and won, on the ground that the ordinances were void ab initio.

That case was about zoning process, not condemnation. But it is the same collision: large infrastructure meeting established association communities, with the association as the party that has to respond.

What is not in the bills

They do not change who may condemn, what may be condemned, or the procedure. Virginia's eminent domain framework is untouched. They address valuation of one category of property within it.

Nor do they address the related question of who inside the association is entitled to what — whether an award belongs to the association's general fund, to reserves, or is distributable to owners. That is a matter of the declaration.

The conditions that change the answer

Neither bill is law. No section of the Property Owners' Association Act carries a 2026 chapter citation.

The operative text was not read from an official enrolled version for this piece. The description of the bills' effect rests on the Community Associations Institute's end-of-session report and legislative trackers rather than on an official bill text.

Continued bills can be amended. What returns in January 2027 may not be what was filed.

What to watch next

The 2027 session. Three Title 55.1 bills are carried over — these two and HB 621 on declarant-control disclosure — and a 15–0 continuance is the kind of vote that usually precedes a bill returning in better shape rather than not returning at all.