Virginia HOA Short-Term Rentals

Quick-Reference Table

Last verified: July 17, 2026

Section 1: Overview — Can an HOA restrict short-term rentals in Virginia?

A Virginia condominium restricts short-term rentals through its declaration (the condominium instruments) operating within the Virginia Condominium Act, and a property owners association does so through its declaration operating within the Virginia Property Owners' Association Act. The two governing statutes are the Condominium Act, Va. Code § 55.1-1900 et seq.,¹ and the Property Owners' Association Act, Va. Code § 55.1-1800 et seq.,² both recodified from former Title 55 into Title 55.1 effective October 1, 2019, so pre-2019 citations to former § 55-79.39 et seq. and former § 55-508 et seq. are obsolete.¹⁴ Neither act is based on the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, and Virginia is not a jurisdiction where the recorded covenants stand alone; each act supplies a statutory frame around the declaration. Both acts also cap the fees an association may charge in connection with a rental and bar an association from conditioning or prohibiting rentals unless the declaration or the act authorizes it.^{4 5} Virginia regulates community association managers through the Common Interest Community Board within the Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation, which licenses managers and management firms and registers associations.⁹ Localities may regulate short-term rentals and establish registries under Va. Code § 15.2-983, an enabling statute that governs the owner-to-government relationship and does not affect association authority.³ Contested enforcement runs from the Circuit Court to the Court of Appeals of Virginia, which has heard civil appeals as a matter of right since January 1, 2022, and then to the Supreme Court of Virginia on discretionary review.¹³ The sections below set out the statutory frame, the amendment and grandfathering mechanics, the tax and local layering, and recent activity.

Section 2: The legal framework for HOA short-term rental restrictions

2A. The two statutes, the Title 55.1 recodification, and the Common Interest Community Board

Virginia governs its two principal community types under separate statutes in the same subtitle. Condominiums fall under the Virginia Condominium Act, Va. Code § 55.1-1900 et seq. (Chapter 19), which applies to all condominiums created in the Commonwealth.¹ Planned communities of single-family homes and townhomes fall under the Virginia Property Owners' Association Act, Va. Code § 55.1-1800 et seq. (Chapter 18), which applies to developments subject to a declaration recorded after January 1, 1959.² Cooperatives are governed separately by the Virginia Real Estate Cooperative Act, § 55.1-2100 et seq. Neither the Condominium Act nor the Property Owners' Association Act is a UCIOA statute, so practitioners cannot import UCIOA default rules.

The single most consequential citation point is the recodification. Effective October 1, 2019, the General Assembly moved former Title 55 ("Property and Conveyances") into a new Title 55.1. The Property Owners' Association Act moved from former § 55-508 et seq. to § 55.1-1800 et seq., and the Condominium Act moved from former § 55-79.39 et seq. to § 55.1-1900 et seq.¹⁴ The recodification renumbered and reorganized the statutes without wholesale substantive change, but every prior citation changed. Older opinions and secondary materials still use the former numbers, so a citation to former Title 55 signals a source that predates October 2019 and must be updated.

Even with both statutes in force, the declaration remains the source of rental authority. Each act sets defaults and limits, but the substantive decision to permit, condition, or prohibit rentals lives in the recorded instruments. Virginia layers a regulator on top of that private framework. The Common Interest Community Board, within the Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation, licenses common interest community managers and management firms, registers associations, and collects annual reports.⁹ A separate Office of the Common Interest Community Ombudsman administers a statutory association-complaint process.¹⁵ The Ombudsman reviews alleged violations of common interest community laws and regulations; it does not adjudicate covenant interpretation or private rental disputes, which remain matters for the association and the courts.¹⁵ This regulatory layer distinguishes Virginia from states with no HOA regulator and no manager licensing, but it does not convert the CICB into a tribunal for rental disagreements. Throughout, the operative distinction is between ordinary leasing, which the acts protect, and short-term or transient rentals, which declarations frequently target for stricter treatment.

2B. Restricting rentals, amendments, and grandfathering

An association strengthens or adds a rental restriction by amending the declaration under the applicable act and the declaration's amendment clause. For condominiums where at least one unit is restricted to residential use and any owner other than the declarant exists, § 55.1-1934(B) requires agreement of unit owners holding two-thirds of the association votes, or a larger majority if the instruments specify.⁷ For property owners associations, § 55.1-1829(D) allows amendment by a two-thirds vote of lot owners unless the declaration provides otherwise.⁸ Both acts impose a one-year limitations period to challenge the validity of a recorded amendment (§ 55.1-1934(C); § 55.1-1829(E)).^{7 8}

Virginia does place a statutory limit on association rental authority, but the limit runs toward protecting the owner's baseline right to lease rather than shielding owners from validly adopted restrictions. Section 55.1-1973 (condominiums) and § 55.1-1806 (property owners associations) provide that, except as authorized in the chapter, in the declaration, or otherwise by law, an association may not condition or prohibit an owner's rental to a tenant, may not charge a rental, application, or processing fee exceeding $50 during the lease term, may not require the association's own lease form, may not demand a deposit, and may not evict a tenant.^{4 5} These provisions confirm that a rental prohibition or cap must be grounded in the declaration (or the act), and they cabin the fees and mechanics an association can attach to leasing. They are not a UCIOA owner-protection provision, and they do not answer the separate grandfathering question.

Because neither act is UCIOA-based, neither contains the 2008 UCIOA rental-restriction owner-protection provision that some states use to exempt existing owners from a newly adopted rental cap. Whether a restriction adopted by amendment binds an owner who bought before the amendment therefore turns on the applicable act, the declaration's own terms, and Virginia common law governing the enforceability of covenants and amendments. Boards should frame this conservatively and should not assume a statutory grandfathering shield of the kind other states use, because Virginia has none. By contrast, California's Davis-Stirling Act protects owners who acquired title before a rental restriction was imposed: Civil Code § 4740 provides that a rental prohibition adopted after an owner took title does not apply to that owner, and Civil Code § 4741 (added by AB 3182 in 2020 and amended effective January 1, 2022) bars rental caps below 25 percent of separate interests.¹⁶ Virginia has no equivalent. Where a Virginia declaration or the amendment itself preserves existing uses, that language controls; where it is silent, the question is a matter of contract and common law for the courts.

2C. Local short-term-rental regulation, tax, and the layering

Localities regulate short-term rentals under Va. Code § 15.2-983, which authorizes any locality to establish a short-term-rental registry by ordinance and to require annual, ministerial registration by operators, with a penalty not to exceed $500 per violation.³ The statute expressly preserves existing local land-use and zoning authority and defines a short-term rental as occupancy for fewer than 30 consecutive days. It is an enabling statute, not a statewide preemption, and it says nothing about association authority. Local regimes vary widely. Virginia Beach confines new short-term rentals largely to overlay districts and the Sandbridge district, requires a conditional use permit in the Oceanfront Resort overlay, and requires a $500 annual STR zoning permit plus registration with the Commissioner of the Revenue.¹⁷ Northern Virginia jurisdictions such as Alexandria operate registries with tax-collection duties,¹⁸ and Charlottesville permits owner-occupied "homestays" under an annual $100 Accessory Use Permit that requires the owner to occupy the property as a permanent residence for at least 185 days per calendar year.¹⁹

On tax, Virginia applies its retail sales and use tax to accommodations (a base rate of 5.3 percent, rising to 6 or 7 percent in certain surtax regions) and layers a local transient occupancy tax that counties, cities, and towns impose by ordinance on stays of fewer than 30 consecutive days (§ 58.1-3819).^{6 20} Since 2022, accommodations intermediaries such as online booking platforms are treated as the seller and must collect and remit the applicable tax and report property addresses and gross receipts to the locality (§ 58.1-3826).¹⁰ A 2025 change lets an owner whose sales are all facilitated by an intermediary file an annual attestation in lieu of monthly returns (§ 58.1-3827).²¹

The layering is the point that most often trips up owners and boards. Local registration, local permitting, and the CICB association registration all govern the owner-to-government relationship. They neither grant nor remove an association's authority over rentals, which comes from the declaration and the two acts. An owner can register the short-term rental locally, confirm the association's CICB registration, and pay every dollar of transient occupancy tax, and still violate a declaration that prohibits transient rentals. The reverse is equally true: a declaration that permits short-term rentals does not excuse an owner from the locality's permit, registry, and tax obligations. Compliance on one track says nothing about compliance on the other.

Section 3: Operational mechanics and enforcement

A. Adopting a valid restriction (the tools)

The most common and most defensible tool is a minimum-lease-term restriction written into the declaration, because both acts tie rental authority to the recorded instruments (§ 55.1-1973; § 55.1-1806).^{4 5} A declaration that sets a floor (for example, a minimum lease of a stated number of months) draws a clean line against transient use without purporting to bar leasing altogether. Rental caps that limit the number or percentage of units that may be leased are not addressed by either act and therefore must rest on express declaration authority; a board cannot manufacture a cap by resolution where the declaration is silent, because § 55.1-1973 and § 55.1-1806 bar conditioning rentals except as the declaration or the chapter allows. Within those limits, an association may require an owner to supply the names and contact information of tenants and occupants, vehicle information, and the tenant's acknowledgment of the association's rules (§ 55.1-1973(B); § 55.1-1806(B)).^{4 5} Fees tied to leasing are capped at $50 during the lease term, and deposits and mandatory association lease forms are prohibited. Each of these internal mechanics is a statutory default that the declaration can supplement only in the direction the act permits.

B. Enforcement and the appellate path

Before charging or fining an owner for a rental violation, an association must give written notice of the alleged violation, a reasonable opportunity to correct it, and, if it remains uncorrected, an opportunity to be heard. Notice of the hearing must be delivered by hand or by registered or certified mail at least 14 days in advance, and the result must be delivered within seven days of the hearing (§ 55.1-1959 for condominiums; § 55.1-1819 for property owners associations).^{11 12} Charges are available only where the declaration or duly adopted rules authorize them, and they are capped at $50 for a single offense or $10 per day for a continuing offense, with continuing charges limited to 90 days. Beyond charges, both acts authorize the association to seek injunctive relief in the general district or circuit court and to treat unpaid authorized charges as an assessment that can be perfected as a lien against the unit or lot (§ 55.1-1966 for condominiums; § 55.1-1833 for property owners associations).^{11 12}

A contested action begins in the Circuit Court, the trial court of general jurisdiction. The appellate path changed on January 1, 2022, when the Court of Appeals of Virginia gained an appeal of right in civil matters under Senate Bill 1261 (§ 17.1-405).¹³ Before that date most civil appeals, including association disputes, went from the Circuit Court directly to the Supreme Court of Virginia on a discretionary basis, so older association opinions reflect that route. The current path runs from the Circuit Court to the Court of Appeals of Virginia as a matter of right and then, on discretionary review, to the Supreme Court of Virginia. Association enforcement is separate from local-government enforcement: a locality can pursue an unpermitted operator under its ordinance while the association separately pursues a covenant violation, and the two proceedings do not depend on each other. The CICB Ombudsman complaint process is available for alleged violations of common interest community law, but it does not resolve covenant interpretation and is not a substitute for the courts.¹⁵

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

No bill enacted in the 2025 or 2026 regular sessions changed the rental-authority provisions of the Condominium Act (§ 55.1-1973) or the Property Owners' Association Act (§ 55.1-1806); those provisions were last amended in 2022.⁴

B. Recent rulings

No published decision of the Court of Appeals of Virginia or the Supreme Court of Virginia in the past 36 months turned on a short-term-rental restriction specifically; Lavering is included because it is the most recent appellate ruling on condominium amendment authority, which controls how a rental restriction is adopted.

C. Active legislative or local debates

Charlottesville is revising its homestay ordinance, with proposals to replace the $100 annual permit with a $500 three-year permit and to add residency-proof requirements, a mandatory safety inspection, and adjusted occupancy limits, while Virginia Beach continues to reconsider its short-term-rental overlay boundaries and enforcement.²³ Both debates concern the owner-to-government relationship and do not change association authority.

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Virginia sits apart from both the UCIOA states and the states that treat recorded covenants as the whole of the law. It maintains separate, bespoke condominium and property-owners-association statutes, recently recodified into Title 55.1, and it regulates community association managers through the Common Interest Community Board, a feature many states lack. On short-term rentals, Virginia enables rather than preempts local regulation and leaves the core rental decision to the declaration, subject to the statutory fee caps and the baseline leasing protection in § 55.1-1973 and § 55.1-1806. That places it between California, whose Davis-Stirling Act limits association rental authority by statute (Civil Code §§ 4740 and 4741), and Arizona, which ties rental authority to the declaration under A.R.S. §§ 33-1260.01 and 33-1806.01, on one hand, and the many states that are silent, on the other.¹⁶ Local short-term-rental regulation, the CICB association registration, and the transient occupancy tax all restrain local governments and owners, not associations. A multi-state operator entering Virginia should update every citation to Title 55.1, plan for mandatory manager licensing, and account for an appellate path that changed in 2022.

HOA Weekly updates its Virginia Short-Term Rentals coverage quarterly as the General Assembly, the Court of Appeals of Virginia and the Supreme Court of Virginia, the Common Interest Community Board, and localities act. Federal frameworks including the Fair Housing Act, the ADA, the FDCPA, the SCRA, and the OTARD rule also apply to Virginia associations regardless of the state framework.

1. Va. Code § 55.1-1900 et seq., Virginia Condominium Act (Definitions; Chapter 19) ↩
2. Va. Code § 55.1-1800 et seq., Virginia Property Owners' Association Act (Definitions; Chapter 18) ↩
3. Va. Code § 15.2-983, Creation of registry for short-term rental of property ↩
4. Va. Code § 55.1-1973, Rental of units (Virginia Condominium Act; last amended 2022, cc. 65, 66) ↩
5. Va. Code § 55.1-1806, Rental of lots (Virginia Property Owners' Association Act) ↩
6. Va. Code § 58.1-3819, Transient occupancy tax (stays "fewer than 30 consecutive days") ↩
7. Va. Code § 55.1-1934, Amendment of condominium instruments (two-thirds vote; § 55.1-1934(E) unanimity categories) ↩
8. Va. Code § 55.1-1829, Amendment to declaration and bylaws (two-thirds vote of lot owners; one-year challenge period) ↩
9. Virginia DPOR, Common Interest Community Board (manager licensing and association registration); see Va. Code § 54.1-2346 ↩
10. Va. Code § 58.1-3826, Scope of transient occupancy tax (accommodations intermediary collection and remittance) ↩
11. Va. Code § 55.1-1959, Corrective action; charges for violations; notice; hearing (Condominium Act; 14-day notice; $50/$10-per-day caps; injunctive relief) ↩
12. Va. Code § 55.1-1819, Adoption and enforcement of rules (Property Owners' Association Act; 14-day notice; $50/$10-per-day caps; injunctive relief; lien via § 55.1-1833) ↩
13. Va. Code § 17.1-405, Appeal of right to the Court of Appeals of Virginia (civil appeal of right effective Jan. 1, 2022, per SB 1261, 2021) ↩
14. Code of Virginia, Title 55.1 recodification effective Oct. 1, 2019 (2019 Acts c. 712); Popular Names index, Virginia Condominium Act and Property Owners' Association Act ↩
15. Virginia DPOR, Office of the Common Interest Community Ombudsman (association complaint process; reviews CIC-law violations, not governing-document interpretation); Va. Code § 54.1-2354.3 ↩
16. Cal. Civ. Code §§ 4740 (grandfathering of pre-restriction owners) and 4741 (25% rental-cap floor; AB 3182 (2020), amended by AB 1584 eff. Jan. 1, 2022); compare A.R.S. §§ 33-1260.01 and 33-1806.01 (Arizona) ↩
17. City of Virginia Beach, Short-Term Rentals (STR overlay districts, conditional use permit, $500 annual zoning permit, Commissioner of the Revenue registration) ↩
18. City of Alexandria, Short-Term Residential Rental Registry ↩
19. City of Charlottesville, Homestays (Accessory Use Permit; 185-day permanent-residence requirement; annual $100 permit) ↩
20. Virginia Department of Taxation, Retail Sales and Use Tax (5.3% base rate; 6%/7% in regional surtax areas), applicable to accommodations ↩
21. HB 2383 (2025 Regular Session, Chapter 458), Transient occupancy tax; administration; amends Va. Code § 58.1-3827 (identical SB 1402) ↩
22. Lavering v. University Village Owners Association, Court of Appeals of Virginia, Rec. No. 1710-24-2, published opinion on rehearing decided June 30, 2026 (VLW 026-7-175 for the withdrawn May 5, 2026 opinion) ↩
23. C-VILLE Weekly, "City officials want to amend Charlottesville's homestay ordinance" (proposed $500 three-year permit; residency proof; safety inspection; occupancy limits) ↩