The carve-out that keeps the board in charge

Subsection F is the provision that decides the question for a covenanted community:

“Nothing in this section shall be construed to supersede or limit contracts or agreements between or among individuals or private entities related to the use of real property, including recorded declarations and covenants, the provisions of condominium instruments of a condominium created pursuant to the Virginia Condominium Act (§ 55.1-1900 et seq.), the declaration of a common interest community as defined in § 54.1-2345, the cooperative instruments of a cooperative created pursuant to the Virginia Real Estate Cooperative Act (§ 55.1-2100 et seq.), or any declaration of a property owners' association created pursuant to the Property Owners' Association Act (§ 55.1-1800 et seq.).”

That sentence names all four Virginia community-association regimes by statute. It is not an oversight or an implication drawn from silence; the General Assembly enumerated them.

The practical result from July 1, 2027 is a two-key system in which the association holds the second key. An owner in a covenanted Virginia subdivision who wants a garage apartment will find the county obliged to permit it and the declaration still capable of forbidding it.

Where a declaration actually bites

Very few Virginia declarations contain the phrase “accessory dwelling unit” — most were recorded long before the term entered general use. The restrictions that will do the work are the ordinary ones already on the books: single-family residential use clauses, limits on the number of dwellings per lot, bans on renting part of a dwelling separately, minimum and maximum structure sizes, outbuilding restrictions, and architectural review requirements for any exterior construction.

Whether any of those reaches a particular ADU is a question about the wording of that declaration, and Virginia reads restrictive covenants strictly against the party seeking to enforce them. A board relying on an implied aesthetic power rather than recorded text starts from a weak position under Virginia law.

The exemptions, which matter in Northern Virginia

Three subsections limit the statute's reach. Subsection G exempts existing ADU permits approved before July 1, 2027. Subsection H preserves a locality's own earlier ADU ordinance that “substantially complies” with the section. And subsection I provides that nothing in the section applies to “a locality that adopted an ADU ordinance prior to January 1, 2026.”

That last exemption carves out the Virginia jurisdictions that moved first. Communities in those localities continue under the local ordinance rather than the statewide default — and their declarations continue to operate either way.

The local layer keeps moving independently

Localities have not been waiting. The City of Fairfax council voted 4–2 on July 28, 2026 to permit detached accessory dwelling units by right, with height, footprint, setback and parking conditions.² Fairfax County's separate accessory living unit policy review is still running.

The conditions that change the answer

The effective date is July 1, 2027, and the definition in subsection A is specific: an ADU must provide “complete independent living facilities” with facilities for living, sleeping, eating, cooking and sanitation, on the same lot as a proposed or existing primary residence. A converted basement without a kitchen is not within the section.

Subsection D 8 excludes lots that already have more than one dwelling unit, and D 9 bars selling or subdividing an ADU away from the primary dwelling.

What to watch next

The gap between now and July 2027 is the window in which Virginia boards decide whether their declarations say what they think they say. The statute will not answer that question for them, and it has told them plainly that it is not going to.