Rolling Northern Virginia horse-country pasture with black board fencing, specimen oaks and a fieldstone wall.
Arlington County One statewide code, no local amendments

Barndominium Builders in Arlington County, VA

Arlington is 243,931 people on 26 square miles with no incorporated place anywhere inside it, which makes the county itself the building official and explains why Arlington never appears on a list of Virginia cities over 100,000. It is also the least agricultural county unit in Virginia: three farms on three acres in the 2022 Census of Agriculture, 98th out of 98. Nobody is putting a barndominium here, and the zoning ordinance does not even contain an agricultural district to try it in. What this page is for is the land 40 to 80 miles west, and the four things about Arlington that follow you out there.

Arlington County at a glance

County
Arlington County
Population
243,931
ZIP codes
22201, 22202, 22203, 22204, 22205, 22206, 22207, 22209, 22213
Site visits
Site visits west of the Beltway, where the land is
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Building conditions in Arlington County

The building code itself is the same in every Virginia locality, and no county, city or town may amend it. What changes from one to the next is who issues the permit and inspects the work, what that office charges, how the parcel is zoned, and the Table R301.2 design criteria the locality publishes — the 2021 Virginia Residential Code prints that table blank, with the instruction that additional criteria shall be established by the local jurisdiction. Those local numbers are what your drawings have to satisfy.

Build conditions for Arlington County , Virginia : design wind speed 115 mph. BUILD CONDITIONS ARLINGTON COUNTY…Arlington CountyONE STATEWIDE CODEDESIGN WIND SPEED115 mphThe 2021 Virginia Residential Code prints Table R301.2 blank, with em-dashes and the instructionthat additional criteria shall be established by the local jurisdiction, so every figure here is…ZONING · R-20, R-10, R-10T, R-8, R-6, R-520,000 sq ft in R-20, the largest re…The Arlington County Zoning Ordinance effective 14 March 2026establishes exactly five groups of district at section 1.7.1:…PERMIT SURCHARGES, STACKED ON TOP OF THE BASE…12 percentArlington's FY27 Inspection Services Division schedule, effective 1July 2026, adds to every permit under the ordinance a 2 percent fee…WHO ISSUES THE PERMITArlington County CPHD Inspection Ser…For the ground in front of the house it is a different county officeagain. Arlington maintains its own roads, so a driveway apron or…
Build conditions for Arlington County, drawn from the sourced facts on this page. Every figure above is cited in the quick-facts panel below, with its source and vintage.
The county is the building official, because there is nobody else
Arlington County contains no incorporated place at all: no city, no town, 243,931 people and not one municipal government. So the county itself permits and inspects, through the Inspection Services Division of the Department of Community Planning, Housing and Development at 2100 Clarendon Blvd. It is also why Arlington is missing from every list of Virginia cities over 100,000: the Census records the settlement as Arlington CDP, a census designated place, which never appears in the place file.

Arlington County CPHD Inspection Services Division FY27 Fee Schedule, effective 1 July 2026 (arlingtonva.us, fy27-isd-fee-schedule.pdf); Census Vintage 2025 and the 2024 Gazetteer county file at www2.census.gov

Three farms. Three acres. Last of ninety-eight.
The 2022 Census of Agriculture ranks all 98 Virginia county units by land in farms. Arlington is 98th, with three farms on three acres. Fairfax, 97th, has 3,616 acres. Nothing else in the state is close, and no reading of that number supports building a barndominium inside the county line.

2022 Census of Agriculture (USDA NASS), county table, AGG_LEVEL_DESC=COUNTY, DOMAIN_DESC=TOTAL, series FARM OPERATIONS - ACRES OPERATED

The zoning ordinance has no agricultural district in it
Arlington's zoning ordinance establishes five groups of district and only five: Public, Residential, Residential Apartment, Commercial/Mixed Use and Industrial. There is no agricultural or rural district to build in. Its largest one-family district, R-20, takes a 20,000 square foot minimum lot, 100 feet of average width and a 35 foot height cap, and 20,000 square feet is 0.46 of an acre. R-5, at the other end, takes 5,000.

Arlington County Zoning Ordinance effective 14 March 2026, sections 1.7.1 and 5.2 through 5.7

The whole county is a Chesapeake Bay Preservation Area
People assume the Bay Act is coastal. It reaches a statutory list at Va. Code section 62.1-44.15:68 which names Arlington among its 29 counties, a hundred river miles from the Bay. Arlington then went further than the statute required: its own ordinance says the resource management area includes all areas within the county not designated as a resource protection area. Every acre is inside the programme, which means the 2,500 square foot land disturbance trigger and the plan of development review reach every parcel.

Va. Code section 62.1-44.15:68; Arlington County Code Chapter 61, Chesapeake Bay Preservation Ordinance, section 61-5.B.2 (Ord. No. 03-1, 8 February 2003); 9VAC25-830-130

Arlington publishes 115 mph, 25 psf and a 24 inch frost line
The residential code prints Table R301.2 blank and tells each locality to fill it in, so these are Arlington's own figures rather than the state's. Its January 2024 sheet gives 115 mph with topographic effects no, ground snow 25 psf, seismic design category B, weathering severe, frost line depth 24 inches, winter design temperature 17F, ice barrier underlayment required, flood on the 2013 FIRM, air freezing index 250 and mean annual temperature 50F. Read the rows and not the columns, though: the sheet's values sit one cell out of line, so the SEVERE printed under windborne debris is really the weathering class.

Arlington County Climatic and Geographic Design Criteria, January 2024 (arlingtonva.us, climatic-and-geographic-design-criteria-jan-2024.pdf)

One dollar seventy a square foot, plus twelve percent, half of it up front
Arlington may not amend the statewide building code, so what it sets is the bill. New construction of a one or two family detached dwelling is $1.70 per gross square foot of total floor area, with a $202 minimum permit and application fee. Every permit then carries a 2 percent levy authorised by the code for Code Academy activities and a 10 percent automation enhancement surcharge. A filing fee of half the total is due when you apply and is not refunded if no permit issues.

Arlington County CPHD Inspection Services Division Fee Schedule, effective 1 July 2026

Also worth knowing before you build in Arlington County

The buffer that grows uphill
Inside the Preservation Area the resource protection area is a 100 foot buffer running along both sides of any water body with perennial flow, so a stream crossing a parcel carries a 200 foot corridor. Arlington then expands it to take in contiguous slopes of 25 percent or more at the landward edge, lets the County Board designate contiguous 15 percent slopes as well, and counts channelised streams shown on the most recent storm sewer layer of the county GIS. A new dwelling is not permitted in a protection area; the administrative ways in turn on whether the lot was recorded before 1 October 1989 or between then and 1 March 2002, and neither reaches into the seaward 50 feet of the buffer.

Arlington County Code sections 61-5, 61-7 and 61-8; 9VAC25-830-80 and 9VAC25-830-140

Arlington is not allowed to require radon-resistant construction
Virginia Residential Code R331.1 lets a locality enforce Appendix AF only after official action taken under the zoning article of Title 15.2, and only in areas of high radon potential as indicated by Zone 1 on the EPA Map of Radon Zones. Arlington is EPA Zone 2, so it is not eligible to adopt the provisions at all, whatever it might prefer. Fairfax is the only Zone 1 locality in Northern Virginia; Loudoun, Prince William, Fauquier and Culpeper are Zone 2 alongside Arlington. Virginia's own measured results for 2016 to 2024 put Arlington at an average 2.4 pCi/L across 1,322 tests.

VRC 2021 section R331.1 via 13VAC5-63-210; EPA Map of Radon Zones county table, radon_zones-spreadsheet.xls; Virginia Department of Health radon testing results, updated 23 September 2025

Arlington maintains its own roads
VDOT's own districts page states that Arlington and Henrico counties maintain their own roads, as do cities and many towns. Arlington is one of only two Virginia counties whose secondary roads are not state maintained, and that changes who you deal with for the ground in front of the house: a driveway apron or curb cut is an Arlington County Transportation Right-of-Way permit from DES Permitting and Inspections, in the excavation category alongside sidewalks, curbs and gutters and utility service connections. Anywhere else in rural Virginia the same work is a VDOT land use permit.

Virginia Department of Transportation, districts page at vdot.virginia.gov/about/districts; Arlington County Transportation Right-of-Way permit page

The accessory building rule is what stops the shop
Even on the rare Arlington lot with room, the ordinance is explicit: no accessory building of two or more storeys, or taller than 25 feet, may occupy any part of a required rear yard, and such a building must stand at least 10 feet from any lot line and 15 feet from any wall of the main building. The easier by-right placement path is available only under 25 feet or one and a half storeys, and only under a 560 square foot footprint in R-5 and R-6 or 650 square feet in any other district. A working shop bay passes 650 square feet before the doors are hung.

Arlington County Zoning Ordinance section 3.1.6, effective 14 March 2026

Where the land actually is, and how far
Roughly 40 to 50 miles west: Loudoun's western half around Purcellville, Round Hill and Lovettsville, which holds 981 farms under 50 acres, the most in Virginia, at a median farm size of 21 acres, the smallest in the state, so parcels genuinely change hands; and Fauquier around Warrenton, Marshall and The Plains, 188,562 acres in farms and 45.5 percent of the county, fourth in Virginia by absolute farm acreage. Around 65 miles: Rappahannock at 39.2 percent in farms with the tightest rural zoning of the five, and Culpeper at 47.7 percent and growing 9.3 percent. Around 80 miles: Madison at 48.5 percent, the highest share of the five, against the national park boundary.

2022 Census of Agriculture (USDA NASS) county table: acres in farms, percent of land in farms, median farm size and farms under 50 acres

The Bay Act stops at a county line, not at the water
None of Loudoun, Fauquier, Culpeper, Rappahannock or Madison appears on the statutory Tidewater Virginia list, so none of them carries the Bay Act's unconditional 100 percent reserve drainfield that may not be built on. Prince William, immediately south-west of Arlington, is on the list, as are Fairfax, Stafford, Spotsylvania and Caroline. Inside the programme a new build has to physically fit the house, the shop, the well and its radius, the primary drainfield and a second drainfield of equal size kept permanently clear of structures. Crossing the right county line changes how much usable acreage the same house needs.

Va. Code section 62.1-44.15:68; 9VAC25-830-130, general performance criteria, subdivisions 3, 5 and 7

An excavator grading a compacted building pad on a cleared lot, with survey stakes and a drainage swale visible.
Below the slab

The expensive surprises are in the ground, not the building

What moves a Virginia budget is usually below grade, and it is soil rather than rock. Five localities already treat a soil answer as a condition of the permit rather than a recommendation — Fauquier, Chesterfield, Isle of Wight, Madison and Culpeper each require a soil report, an engineered foundation design, or both before the footings are approved. Chesterfield asks for one on every new house with no opt-out, on its own published reasoning that small amounts of shrink-swell soil may turn up anywhere in the county. Virginia Energy puts the same point bluntly: standard homeowner's insurance does not cover damage from expansive or compressive soils. Along the Interstate 81 corridor the question changes shape entirely — Virginia Energy counts twenty-seven Virginia counties in the karst zone that follows that road, where what matters is what is under the slab rather than what the slab sits in, and karst does not stay west of the Blue Ridge: Loudoun County publishes karst terrain of its own, on the other side of it. The same ground then sizes the septic system, because 12VAC5-610 works from bedrooms and soil texture — 150 gallons a day per bedroom, with no row in the table for a shop, a garage or a barn at all, and clay assigned to the slowest texture group at 91 minutes per inch or worse, past the 45 minutes per inch that makes a reserve drainfield mandatory. The soil that needs a foundation engineer multiplies the drainfield. So the site work, the foundation and the drainfield get resolved together rather than one at a time. We price the dirt before we price the building.

What we build in Arlington County

All nine services are available in Arlington County. What a build costs depends far more on the parcel than on square footage, so we price against your land rather than publishing a rate card.

Custom Plans

Barndominium floor plans drawn to your parcel and to the design criteria your own Virginia locality publishes, not to a generic national spec.

Barndominium Kits

Engineered barndominium shell packages delivered to your Virginia land, drawn to the criteria your own building department fills in.

Turnkey Builds

Start to finish barndominium construction: permits, site work, shell and full interior finish, under one contract and one schedule.

See all nine services

What a build looks like

Three stages every Arlington County project passes through, from a raw parcel to a finished home. Site work first, because that is where the budget is decided.

Aerial view of an undeveloped rural lot with cleared grass, a oak and hickory treeline with a few loblolly pines, and a pale gravel access track.
Stage one

The parcel

Zoning, setbacks, flood zone and utility access get checked before anything is drawn.

An excavator grading a compacted building pad on a cleared lot, with survey stakes and a drainage swale visible.
Stage two

Pad and permit

Clearing, grading and a compacted pad, while the submittal works through whichever office issues the permit where you are building.

A finished barndominium at dusk with warm interior lighting glowing through its large windows.
Stage three

Frame to finish

Shell erected and dried in, then systems, insulation and interior finish through to CO.

Those are the rules where you are building in Arlington County. Tell us what you want to build and we will draw it to them.

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Where we build around Arlington County

Arlington County and the rural land around it. The buildable acreage for a project this size usually sits outside the city limits, which is frequently what changes who issues your permit.

The Arlington County service area, including the rural acreage outside the built-up edge, which is where the parcels big enough for a build like this usually sit. The map marks the territory we build in. It is not a branch location, and there is no office at this pin.

Keep reading

The questions that usually come next once you know what Arlington County allows.

Barndominium Cost Guide

Sourced per-square-foot ranges by tier and by size, with a calculator built on the same figures.

Read it

Is It Legal in Virginia?

Classification, zoning, the HOA gate, and why "nonresidential farm building" does not cover a home.

Read it

How Long Does It Take?

Census build-duration data, and what actually sets the permit clock where you are building.

Read it

Nearby areas we build in

Others we cover nearby. One may be a county, another an independent city that belongs to no county at all, and another a town inside a county — so the office that issues the permit, the fees it charges, the zoning and the design criteria each locality publishes can all differ from one card to the next.

Alexandria

Alexandria
Prince William County

Prince William County
Fauquier County

Fauquier County

Building in Arlington County: common questions

7 questions we get asked most often about building in Arlington County. If yours is not on the list, ask it directly.

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Can I build a barndominium in Arlington County?
Realistically no, and it is better to say so plainly than to sell you a page. Arlington reported three farms on three acres in the 2022 Census of Agriculture, last of Virginia's 98 county units. The zoning ordinance establishes Public, Residential, Residential Apartment, Commercial/Mixed Use and Industrial districts and contains no agricultural or rural district at all. The largest residential minimum lot is 20,000 square feet, under half an acre, with a 35 foot height cap in every one-family district. And the accessory building rule bars anything of two or more storeys or over 25 feet from any part of a required rear yard, with the easier placement path stopping at a 650 square foot footprint. If you own something unusual here we will look at it, but for almost every reader the building goes 40 to 80 miles west.
Then where do I actually buy land, and how far out is it?
Five places, in the order most people find they work. Loudoun's western half around Purcellville, Round Hill and Lovettsville is 40 to 50 miles out and has 981 farms under 50 acres, the most in Virginia, at a median farm size of 21 acres, the smallest in the state, so parcels genuinely change hands there, though you pay for the address. Fauquier, around Warrenton, Marshall and The Plains, is the same distance and is the Northern Virginia land answer: 188,562 acres in farms, 45.5 percent of the county, fourth in the state by absolute farm acreage, median farm 50 acres. Rappahannock, around Washington and Sperryville, is about 65 miles and the quietest, with the tightest rural zoning of the five. Culpeper is 65 to 70 miles, 47.7 percent in farms and growing fastest. Madison is around 80 miles at 48.5 percent, up against Shenandoah National Park. None of the five is on the Bay Act list, and you are.
Why is Arlington in a Chesapeake Bay programme when it is nowhere near the Bay?
Because Tidewater Virginia is a statutory list, not a piece of geography. Va. Code section 62.1-44.15:68 names 29 counties and 17 cities, and Arlington is on it, as are Fairfax, Prince William, Stafford, Spotsylvania, Henrico and Richmond city. Every one of them must have a zoning ordinance carrying Bay Act protections. Arlington then went further than the statute required and put every acre inside the programme: its ordinance says the resource management area includes all areas within the county not designated as a resource protection area. In practice that means the 100 foot buffer along both sides of any perennial water body, expanded uphill to take in contiguous 25 percent slopes, and a plan of development review for any disturbance over 2,500 square feet, which the regulation says expressly includes the house, the tank and the drainfield.
What design numbers does Arlington actually publish?
The 2021 Virginia Residential Code prints Table R301.2 blank, with em-dashes and the instruction that additional criteria shall be established by the local jurisdiction. So the numbers are Arlington's own, and taking them off a national map or borrowing them from a neighbouring locality is exactly the mistake the blank table exists to prevent. Arlington's January 2024 sheet gives 115 mph with topographic effects no, ground snow load 25 psf, seismic design category B, weathering severe, frost line depth 24 inches, winter design temperature 17F, ice barrier underlayment required, flood on the 2013 FIRM, air freezing index 250 and mean annual temperature 50F, with a full Manual J block alongside. Two cautions. The sheet's value row is one cell out of line against its headings, so the SEVERE printed under windborne debris zone is really the weathering class, and the Moderate to Severe under termite is a decay category rather than one of the code's four termite classes. And no part of Virginia is a wind-borne debris region on published figures anyway: 115 mph is well under the threshold.
Does Arlington require radon-resistant construction?
It cannot, and this is the thing people here get wrong most often. Virginia Residential Code R331.1 lets a locality enforce Appendix AF only after official action taken under the zoning article of Title 15.2, and only where the EPA Map of Radon Zones shows Zone 1. Arlington is Zone 2, so it is not eligible to adopt the provisions at all. Fairfax is the only Zone 1 locality in Northern Virginia, and Loudoun, Prince William, Fauquier and Culpeper sit in Zone 2 alongside Arlington. Virginia's own measured results for 2016 to 2024 put Arlington at an average 2.4 pCi/L across 1,322 tests, though submission is voluntary so that is a sample rather than a census. Radon control is worth building into a slab if you want it, and a crawl space ventilated to the exterior is exempt from the appendix anyway, even in a locality that has adopted it. Here the decision is yours, not the county's.
Who permits the driveway, the county or VDOT?
The county, and that is unusual. VDOT's own districts page states that Arlington and Henrico counties maintain their own roads, as do cities and many towns. Arlington is one of only two Virginia counties whose secondary road network is not state maintained. So a curb cut or driveway apron here is an Arlington County Transportation Right-of-Way permit issued by DES Permitting and Inspections, in the excavation category alongside sidewalks, curbs and gutters and utility service connections. Move out to Fauquier, Culpeper or Rappahannock and the same entrance becomes a VDOT land use permit with a different application, a different reviewer and different sight distance requirements. It is worth knowing which regime you are in before you site the driveway.
Is there anything about building here that follows me out to the country?
Two things. First, soil. Arlington sits east of the Fall Line on the Coastal Plain, and Virginia Energy names the Coastal Plain first among the areas most likely to have expansive or frost-heave-susceptible soils, alongside the Shenandoah Valley and the Mesozoic basins around Culpeper, Farmville, Danville and Richmond. The state also notes that standard homeowner's insurance does not cover damage from expansive soils or frost heave. Going west does not remove the problem so much as change it: Culpeper sits over one of the basins the state names and puts a mandatory shrink-swell form in its residential permit packet, four of whose five options require an engineer. Second, the code. It is one statewide building code that no locality may amend, at climate zone 4A with R-15 or R-13 plus 1 walls and a 5.0 ACH50 blower door result. What changes across a county line is the Table R301.2 numbers, the zoning, the fees and the septic, not the code.

Building in Arlington County?

Start with the plan. Tell us what you want to build and we will draw it, then confirm which office issues the permit for your parcel, what it will let you put there, and what wind load it has to meet. That conversation costs nothing.

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