Virginia Beach, VA Home Loans

NAS Oceana, the Navy’s East Coast Master Jet Base, is home to 17 aviation squadrons, 16 of them flying F/A-18 Super Hornets. With Dam Neck Annex and its auxiliary landing field it counts about 10,500 active Navy personnel, 10,000 family members and 4,500 civilians, which the Navy says makes it Virginia Beach’s second largest employer after Little Creek-Fort Story. The airfield runs around the clock with no curfew, though the Navy lists noise abatement steps. Dam Neck Annex, a training site five miles south of the Oceanfront, covers more than 1,100 acres.

Naval Station Norfolk hosts U.S. Fleet Forces Command, Naval Air Forces Atlantic and Naval Surface Forces Atlantic, with 42 Navy ships and 16 submarines among its tenants. Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story, established October 1, 2009, joined the former Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek with the Army’s Fort Story. Norfolk Naval Shipyard, founded in 1767, has about 12,000 military and civilian personnel and handles repair, overhaul and outfitting of ships. Coast Guard Base Portsmouth, at 4000 Coast Guard Boulevard, hosts Sector Virginia and seven cutters. The gates of each base, the drive times and profiles of the nearby cities and neighborhoods are below.

Debbie Haberny’s Vetted VA Professional designation is part of what our team brings to Hampton Roads: whether you are arriving on PCS orders (a permanent change of station) or already live here, we explain how a VA purchase works for active-duty, Guard, Reserve and veteran buyers. Guard and Reserve members have their own route to eligibility, with six creditable years of service among the options.

Virginia Beach

Virginia Beach had 459,470 residents in the 2020 census and an estimated 453,737 in July 2025, with 52,520 veterans, a $382,500 median owner-occupied home value and a 23.4-minute mean commute for 2020 to 2024. NAS Oceana and Little Creek-Fort Story are its two largest employers, by the Navy’s account. City Hall on Courthouse Drive is about 15 minutes from Oceana’s main gate and 12 from Dam Neck’s without traffic. Voters approved a flood protection package in November 2021, and the Planning Department, where the flood maps are available at 2403 Courthouse Drive, handles flood zone determinations at (757) 385-4621.

Kempsville

Kempsville Area Library is at 832 Kempsville Road. Without traffic, all six destinations measured are within 16 to 30 minutes, the tightest range of any place on this page: 16 to Little Creek’s Gate 3, 21 to the shipyard, 23 to Dam Neck, 24 to Oceana, 25 to Naval Station Norfolk and 30 to the Coast Guard base.

Great Neck

Great Neck Area Library is at 1251 Bayne Drive. Without traffic it is about 14 minutes from Oceana’s main gate, 16 from Dam Neck, 20 from Little Creek’s Gate 3 and 17 from Fort Story’s Atlantic Avenue checkpoint, but 35 from Naval Station Norfolk’s Gate 2 and 39 from the Coast Guard base.

Red Mill

Red Mill is in southern Virginia Beach. The city notes added fill restrictions in its special flood hazard area in the southern part of the city, so check the flood map for a specific address. It is the closest place measured to the annex and the airfield, about 7 minutes from Dam Neck’s main gate and 10 from Oceana’s without traffic, and about 28 from Little Creek’s Gate 3.

Western Branch

Chesapeake’s Western Branch Satellite Office is at 2808 Taylor Road. Without traffic it is about 12 minutes from the Coast Guard base’s gate, 17 from the shipyard, 30 from Naval Station Norfolk’s Gate 2 and 34 from Little Creek’s Gate 3; Oceana and Dam Neck are 48 minutes away, past the commute radius.

Churchland

Churchland is the Portsmouth neighborhood around Coast Guard Boulevard, which meets Cedar Lane and ends at the base gate. Without traffic it is about 6 minutes from the Coast Guard base, 15 from the shipyard and 24 from Naval Station Norfolk’s Gate 2, and 46 from Oceana and Dam Neck, past the commute radius.

These Census numbers sketch the market and are not asking prices. In 2020 to 2024 the typical owner-occupied home was valued at $382,500 in Virginia Beach, $378,400 in Chesapeake and $246,900 in Portsmouth, with typical gross rent of $1,714, $1,586 and $1,300. About 65 percent of Virginia Beach homes are owner-occupied, against 74 percent in Chesapeake and 58 percent in Portsmouth.

Near NAS Oceana, ask where a home sits relative to the Navy’s noise contours (65 to 69, 70 to 74 and 75-plus decibels) and its accident potential zones. Virginia requires a seller of residential property in a locality with a military air installation to disclose whether the parcel is in a noise zone or accident potential zone on the official zoning map, and landlords must give tenants the same notice in writing before a lease starts. Virginia Beach also requires noise attenuation in new homes in noise zones of 65 Ldn or greater, and the Navy holds easements that generally bar homes in parts of those zones.

Schools. Virginia Beach says about 25 percent of its students are military-connected, employs two full-time military school counselors and runs Anchored4Life in elementary schools and Student 2 Student teams in middle and high schools. In December 2022 the division announced 46 new Purple Star schools, for 75 since 2018. Chesapeake Public Schools serves about 9,000 military-connected students, has a Navy school liaison and holds Purple Star division status, meaning every school has an active designation. On October 27, 2025 the Virginia Department of Education named Portsmouth City Public Schools a Purple Star division too, and designations last three years. School zones follow addresses, so check each home with the division.

Gates. Naval Station Norfolk’s Gate 2, on Hampton Boulevard, is the one gate both of the Navy’s gate pages show open 24 hours, and Little Creek-Fort Story lists Gates 3, 6 and 8 open 24 hours.

Drive Times. Typical drive without traffic, measured October 7, 2026 (OpenStreetMap routing): about 12 minutes from Virginia Beach City Hall to Dam Neck, 15 to Oceana, 25 to Little Creek and 35 to Naval Station Norfolk, and 4 minutes from Portsmouth City Hall to the shipyard, with traffic and tolls left out; the full table is above.

Tunnels and Tolls. The Downtown and Midtown tunnels carry tolls between Portsmouth and Norfolk, and VDOT’s Toll Relief Program takes 50 percent off up to 14 trips a week for eligible Hampton Roads residents who earn $65,000 or less a year and have a Virginia E-ZPass account. Routes from Virginia Beach to the shipyard and the Coast Guard base use the Downtown Tunnel. On I-64, the Chesapeake Express Lanes run about 14 miles from Bowers Hill across the High Rise Bridge to Norfolk around the clock; a solo driver can pay a toll to use them, and the general lanes stay free.

Workers in Virginia Beach averaged 23.4 minutes getting to work in 2020 to 2024, against 25.8 in Chesapeake and 23.7 in Portsmouth; those are citywide figures, not base commutes. Basic Allowance for Housing is set by duty station, with different allowances for members with and without dependents; the Department of Defense posts the official calculator, and we leave allowance figures off this page because they change every year. Bring your numbers to us and we will compare what they buy in each city.

Virginia lifts real estate tax from the home and up to one acre of land for a veteran who lives there and whose VA disability rating is 100 percent, service-connected, permanent and total; a surviving spouse inherits the exemption for a veteran whose death came on or after January 1, 2011, as long as the spouse does not remarry. You apply through your city’s Commissioner of the Revenue: Virginia Beach’s Real Estate Qualification Division is at (757) 385-4385, and Chesapeake lists the program with its Commissioner of the Revenue at (757) 382-6455.

Loan Limits. With full entitlement, VA sets no ceiling on the loan; we still have to approve the amount, and the appraisal has to support the price. The county figure matters if you have used part of your entitlement, such as on an earlier VA loan. FHFA’s 2026 one-unit limit, the number VA uses for counties, is $832,750 in all three cities, the national baseline; as independent cities, each is listed under its own name.

Flood and Sea Level. Virginia’s seller disclosure statement makes no representation about flood zones and tells buyers to get a flood determination and review the maps themselves. Virginia Beach’s online flood layer shows zones effective January 16, 2015, and the city notes extra fill restrictions in the southern part of its special flood hazard area. Chesapeake says most of the city is susceptible to some flooding and requires new homes’ finished floors to sit 1.5 feet above base flood elevation. NOAA’s long-running tide gauge at Sewells Point, where Naval Station Norfolk sits, logs relative sea level climbing roughly 1.9 inches a decade between 1927 and 2025. Find the property’s flood zone and ask for an insurance quote before submitting an offer; your real estate agent can handle the address-level checks.

HOAs. Buying into a community with an HOA? Get the monthly dues, the covenants and any pending special assessments in writing before closing.

Start with the Navy’s housing counselors. Military members reporting to Hampton Roads must visit the Navy Housing Service Center, at 7924 14th Street in Norfolk, before signing a lease or other non-government housing agreement. Buying here? Call us before you book a house-hunting trip, and we will request your Certificate of Eligibility and prepare a pre-approval so your real estate agent can write offers with confidence.

Plan for visitors. A guest who has neither a Common Access Card (CAC) nor a military dependent ID must show a REAL ID-compliant license, state ID or passport before entering a Navy installation without an escort, and Little Creek-Fort Story asks visitors 17 and older to send SECNAV Form 5512/1 in advance. For school paperwork, Chesapeake Public Schools lets families finish enrollment online before or after they arrive.

The Navy’s family housing in Hampton Roads is privatized through Liberty Military Housing. Liberty lists more than 1,600 homes in ten communities at Naval Station Norfolk and NSA Hampton Roads, five communities with 985 homes serving Oceana and six other nearby bases, and six communities at Little Creek, with the off-base ones within a mile of the base. Liberty says it runs no credit checks and charges no deposits to active-duty service members. Ask the Housing Service Center and Liberty what is open now, because availability changes.

Off base, we can help you buy with a VA loan, and your real estate agent can check the noise zones, flood zones and school zones for the exact address. The profiles above show how each neighborhood compares with the gates.