Rolling farmland and mixed hardwood west of Richmond with red clay soil and a wooded creek bottom.
New Kent County One statewide code, no local amendments

Barndominium Builders in New Kent County, VA

New Kent is the fastest-growing locality in Virginia, up 21.2 percent since 2020, and it sits on I-64 exactly halfway between Richmond and Williamsburg. It is also a county that has already answered its growth in the zoning ordinance: Ordinance O-11-22 took the A-1 agricultural minimum lot area from one and a half acres to ten, effective 1 July 2022, and the convenience chart earlier in the same chapter still prints the old figure. There is no incorporated town anywhere in the county, so the county building official and county zoning are the only local authorities involved. What actually governs a build here is not the code, which is identical statewide, but three things that are New Kent's own: the ten-acre line and the routes around it, a Chesapeake Bay ordinance that puts an entire parcel in the Resource Management Area if any single component touches it, and a water table that the county's own soil survey puts within about 27 inches of the surface across its largest soil.

New Kent County at a glance

County
New Kent County
Population
28,022
ZIP codes
23124, 23089, 23140, 23141, 23011
Site visits
Same-week site visits county-wide, from Bottoms Bridge and Quinton east through Providence Forge and Lanexa to Barhamsville
Start your project

Building conditions in New Kent 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 New Kent County , Virginia : design wind speed Not published by the county. BUILD CONDITIONS NEW KENT COUNTY…New Kent CountyONE STATEWIDE CODEDESIGN WIND SPEEDNot published by th…The 2021 Virginia Residential Code prints Table R301.2 blank, with em-dashes in every cell and theinstruction that additional criteria shall be established by the local jurisdiction. New Kent…ZONING · A-1 AGRICULTURALTen acres for a new A-1 lot (Sec. 98…Section 98-214 sets the A-1 minimum lot area at ten acres, exceptfor residential lots created under Chapter 90 legacy provisions,…PERMIT REVIEW CLOCK15 business daysPublished review target of the issuing authorityIMPACT AND PERMIT FEESProffers in three named subdivisions…New Kent charges no county-wide impact fee, but two costs catchpeople out. Building in Brickshire, Patriots Landing or Viniterra…WHO ISSUES THE PERMITNew Kent County Department of Buildi…12007 Courthouse Circle, P.O. Box 150, New Kent. Office804-966-9680, inspection line 804-966-8572. Applications are taken… Design criteria are filled in by the jurisdiction under Table R301.2 and are confirmed per parcel before any drawing is sealed.
Build conditions for New Kent 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 ten-acre line, and the chart that still says one and a half
Section 98-214 of the zoning ordinance reads that the minimum lot area for permitted buildings or structures in the A-1 district shall be ten acres, except for residential lots created under the Chapter 90 legacy provisions, Chapter 91 section 126 family subdivisions or Chapter 91 section 127 cluster subdivisions. It was adopted by Ordinance O-11-22 with effect from 1 July 2022. The General Lot, Yard and Height Requirements chart printed earlier in the same chapter still shows 65,340 square feet — one and a half acres — for A-1, and Section 98-51 settles which governs: the chart is for convenience only, and where it conflicts with the requirements set out for each zoning district, the district requirements control. Anyone reading the chart is out by a factor of 6.7.

New Kent County Code, Part II Land Development Code, Ch. 98 Zoning, secs. 98-51 and 98-214 (Ord. No. O-11-22, 7-1-2022), codified through Ord. No. O-15-25 enacted 11 Aug 2025

Lots recorded before 11 July 2022 keep their acreage
Section 98-219 says that all lots or parcels described in deeds or plats recorded in the New Kent County Circuit Court Clerk's Office prior to the close of business on 11 July 2022, which meet the zoning and subdivision requirements for yards, setbacks and access in effect on the date of the building permit application, are deemed to comply with the lot dimension and area requirements. That is why the county's own zoning FAQ can say there is no set amount of acreage needed to build a house on A-1 land — if you can meet your setbacks and have room for a well and a septic system you can build — while the ordinance requires ten acres. Both are true, of different parcels. An existing lot of record is buildable on its own dimensions; a new lot cut out of a farm is ten acres unless it comes through one of the four named routes.

New Kent County Code sec. 98-219 (Ord. No. O-11-22, 7-1-2022); New Kent County Zoning FAQ, newkent-va.us/FAQ.aspx?TID=32

A detached shop is capped against the lot, not against the house
Section 98-10(c)(3) is the provision that decides how big a shop can be. In residential districts the cumulative total of all detached accessory structures may not exceed 60 percent of the primary structure's total floor area. In the agricultural A-1 district the test is different: such structures may total up to five percent of the lot area beyond the front setback line, but may not exceed a cumulative total of 10,000 square feet, whichever is less. Five percent of an acre is 2,178 square feet, so the 10,000 square foot ceiling starts to bind at roughly 4.6 acres and below that the percentage governs — about 4,356 square feet on a two-acre lot. The figure is cumulative across every detached accessory building and includes roofed gazebos, porches and lean-tos. Buildings accessory to a genuine farm use as defined in Va. Code section 36-97 are exempt, evidenced by an active business licence, a farming registration or an Agricultural and Forestal District designation.

New Kent County Code sec. 98-10(c)(3) and (c)(3)a; Va. Code sections 36-97 and 3.2-6400

Attach the shop and it becomes the principal building
Section 98-56(c) provides that accessory buildings or structures attached to a principal building by any wall or roof construction shall be considered a part of the principal building and shall observe all yard regulations applicable to it. That single sentence is the cleanest route for a shop-and-house under one roof in New Kent: the whole structure reads as the dwelling, the Section 98-10(c)(3) accessory cap does not reach it, and it takes the 35-foot principal building height rather than the 20 feet the Section 98-51 chart gives accessory structures in A-1. Keep the two separate and Section 98-56 sets the spacing instead: an accessory building with more than 50 percent of the primary building's total floor area must stand at least 30 feet from it, and one with less than 50 percent at least ten feet. So the county expressly contemplates a shop larger than the house; it simply pushes it away.

New Kent County Code secs. 98-51, 98-55(c), 98-56(c)-(e), 98-10(c)(3)

One RMA component puts the whole parcel in the RMA
New Kent is named on the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act's statutory Tidewater list, but it is not a county-wide Resource Management Area the way Chesterfield is. Section 94-34 says expressly that it is not the intent of the article to require that all lands within the county be designated as Chesapeake Bay Preservation Areas. Section 94-36(a) then lists what counts: floodplains, nontidal wetlands contiguous to an RPA, highly erodible soils including steep slopes contiguous to an RPA, highly permeable soils contiguous to an RPA, and a 150-foot land area along any RPA where none of those are present. And Section 94-36(b) is the sting — if any RMA component is located on a lot or parcel, the entire lot or parcel is deemed to be in the RMA. The only way out is Section 94-36(c): a schematic site plan prepared by a qualified soil scientist, professional engineer, landscape architect or certified land surveyor demonstrating the absence of RMA components, and then only the demonstrated area is excluded. The county's adopted Comprehensive Plan 2045 puts about 59 percent of New Kent in a Resource Management Area and about 19 percent in a Resource Protection Area.

Va. Code sec. 62.1-44.15:68; New Kent County Code, Ch. 94 Waterways, Art. II, secs. 94-34, 94-35 and 94-36 (Ord. No. O-04-03(R1), 3-10-2003; Ord. No. O-02-18, 3-13-2018); New Kent County Comprehensive Plan 2045, Natural Resources chapter

Zero acres in the county rate Not limited for a drainfield
Queried against the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service soil survey for New Kent County, the septic tank absorption field ratings come out at 99,001 acres Very limited, 8,722 acres Somewhat limited, 6,871 acres unrated water and miscellaneous areas — and not one acre rated Not limited. That is 91.9 percent of rated ground in the hardest class. The dominant limiting feature is groundwater near the surface, across 75,732 acres, ahead of bottom-layer seepage at 74,863 and percolation at 57,843; slope reaches only 22,590 acres. Nevarc, the county's largest soil at about 21,180 acres, carries a seasonal high water table around 27 inches below the surface. Virginia sizes the system on bedrooms alone — 150 gallons per day per bedroom, with no living-area band and no row for a shop, garage or barn — so the drainfield is set by the house while the water table decides whether it fits.

USDA NRCS Soil Data Access, survey area VA127 New Kent County, component-weighted acres, queried 2 September 2026; 12VAC5-610-670 Table 5.1

Also worth knowing before you build in New Kent County

The fastest-growing locality in Virginia, and the arithmetic behind it
The Census Bureau's Vintage 2025 estimates take New Kent from 23,118 people in 2020 to 28,022 on 1 July 2025 — up 21.2 percent, the largest percentage gain of any of Virginia's 133 localities. Goochland is second at 17.4 percent and Louisa third at 13.6. The county's own Comprehensive Plan 2045 records a 31 percent rise between 2010 and 2023 and 119.7 percent between 1990 and 2020, and cites Weldon Cooper Center projections of 1.25 percent a year through 2045 for a 49.5 percent increase between 2023 and 2050 against 20.1 percent for Virginia as a whole. Density was still only 109.2 people per square mile at the 2020 count.

U.S. Census Bureau, sub-est2025_51.csv (Vintage 2025 subcounty population estimates, SUMLEV 050); New Kent County Comprehensive Plan 2045, Demographics chapter

There is no town inside New Kent County
Virginia's 38 independent cities belong to no county, and its towns stay inside one and may or may not run their own building department. New Kent has neither. Filtering the 2025 Census subcounty file on the New Kent county code returns exactly one record — the county itself — with no incorporated place of any summary level inside it, and the Census place-by-county file lists only New Kent CDP, a census designated place, which is a statistical area rather than a municipality. Providence Forge, Quinton, Lanexa, Barhamsville, Talleysville and the courthouse village of New Kent are all unincorporated. One building department, one zoning ordinance, one set of setbacks, everywhere in the county.

U.S. Census Bureau, sub-est2025_51.csv (Vintage 2025) and national_place_by_county2020.txt (2020 place-by-county file)

The county publishes no Table R301.2, and that is worth knowing before you draw
The 2021 Virginia Residential Code prints Table R301.2 blank, with em-dashes in every cell and a note that additional criteria shall be established by the local jurisdiction. New Kent has not filled it in. Its site index returns nothing at all for R301.2, one unrelated 2023 meeting packet for climatic, two items for seismic and five for termite, and none of the 486 pages listed in its sitemap is a design criteria sheet. What it does publish is a footing rule, on both the Single Family Dwelling and the Garage, Shed, Carport and Polebarn inspection sheets: a minimum depth of 18 inches to the bottom of the footing, placed in undisturbed soil, with an engineering report for soil required where fill dirt or sand has been used. The same sheets call for foundation projection of at least two inches beyond the footing edge, 24 inches of R10 perimeter insulation at a slab, waterlines at least 24 inches deep, and a duct seal statement and blower door test before final.

New Kent County Building Development, Single Family Dwelling Inspection Requirements (rev. 28 Mar 2024) and Garage/Shed/Carport/Polebarn Inspection Requirements; 2021 Virginia Residential Code Table R301.2

One buffer window, and it closed in 1989
In a Chesapeake Bay Preservation Area a new dwelling is barred from the Resource Protection Area, and the way back in is a recorded-lot encroachment. New Kent's Section 94-40(a)(4) allows an administrative encroachment only where the buffer would destroy the buildable area of a lot or parcel recorded prior to 1 October 1989, and even then the encroachment must be the minimum necessary and may not extend into the seaward 50 feet of the buffer without a board exception. There is no second window in New Kent's ordinance — no 1989-to-2002 route, and nothing resembling Hanover's 31 December 2003 date. A New Kent lot recorded in the 1990s with a perennial stream through it and no buildable area outside the buffer has no administrative route at all, only an exception from the county's Chesapeake Bay Preservation Board under Section 94-45(b) after a public hearing.

New Kent County Code secs. 94-40(a)(4) and 94-45 (Ord. No. O-04-03(R1), 3-10-2003; Ord. No. O-02-18, 3-13-2018); 9VAC25-830-140

New Kent adds 20 feet to the 100-foot buffer
Section 94-35(a)(4) puts a 100-foot vegetated buffer landward of tidal wetlands, connected nontidal wetlands and tidal shores, and along both sides of any water body with perennial flow. The county then adds its own strip on top. Its Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act guidance explains the RPA Building Setback that appears on New Kent plats: to ensure a useable backyard and allow for accessory structures without needing to encroach, all primary and attached structures must be set back at least 20 feet from the edge of all RPA buffer areas, and the setback can only be reduced or removed where an encroachment is allowed under Section 94-45. So the working no-build distance from a perennial stream here is 120 feet on each bank, a 240-foot corridor across the parcel, and Section 94-38 requires that any lot have sufficient area outside the RPA to accommodate the intended development.

New Kent County Code secs. 94-35(a)(4) and 94-38; New Kent County Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act FAQ, newkent-va.us/FAQ.aspx?TID=43

The permit is priced on market value, and the schedule is in the code
The Building Development fees page says only that fees for single family dwellings and all other structures are calculated when the application is processed, and posts a commercial sheet. The residential schedule is published, in Appendix A to the County Code: residential building permits at $2.25 per $1,000 of estimated market value or fraction of it, with a $65.00 minimum; miscellaneous structures at $2.00 per $1,000 of fair market value; a $40.00 zoning verification fee collected with the application; a non-refundable administrative fee of $30.00 or 25 percent of the permit fee, whichever is greater; $50.00 to generate the certificate of occupancy; $75.00 for a re-inspection and $125.00 for every inspection after the second. Permit fees are doubled for any work performed before the permit is obtained.

New Kent County Code, Appendix A - Fees, Building Development Permit Fees; New Kent County Building Development, Fees page

Expansive clay is not a New Kent problem
Virginia Energy names the Coastal Plain among the areas most likely to carry expansive or frost-heave-susceptible soils, while cautioning that the exact distribution can only be approximated from current soil maps and that field visits are necessary to determine the actual extent. Measured against New Kent's own soil survey, the caution matters: exactly one soil component in the county reaches a linear extensibility of 6 percent or more. It is Bohicket, at 7.5 percent, a very poorly drained tidal marsh soil covering about 3,520 acres, and nobody puts a foundation on it. Every other soil in the county tops out at 4.5 percent, including Nevarc, Emporia, Caroline, Craven, Dogue, Slagle and Wahee. Virginia Energy also notes that standard homeowner's insurance does not cover damage from expansive or compressive soils or frost heave — a warning that lands harder in Chesterfield and Culpeper than it does here.

USDA NRCS Soil Data Access, survey area VA127, horizon linear extensibility by component, queried 2 September 2026; Virginia Energy, Division of Geology and Mineral Resources, Expansive Soils

Drainage, not clay, is what a New Kent parcel has to survive
Of the 141,380 acres in the New Kent soil survey, component-weighted drainage classes come out at 46,982 acres well drained, 35,437 moderately well drained, 18,382 very poorly drained, 4,269 poorly drained, 1,917 somewhat poorly drained and 735 somewhat excessively drained. That puts better than one acre in five of classified ground somewhere between somewhat poorly and very poorly drained. Seasonal high water tables run to the surface in Lanexa, Johnston, Mattan, Bohicket and Nawney; sit around six inches in Roanoke and Tomotley; 24 inches in Altavista; and about 27 inches in Nevarc, Slagle and Dogue. Remlik, the second largest soil in the county, is the friendly one at 60 inches. The zoning ordinance recognises the problem in its own way: Section 98-52(b) excludes any area within the floodplain, or subject to periodic or occasional inundation, from the calculation of minimum lot area.

USDA NRCS Soil Data Access, survey area VA127, drainage class and monthly soil moisture status by component, queried 2 September 2026; New Kent County Code sec. 98-52(b)

Four ways to a lot smaller than ten acres
Section 98-214 names them and the ordinances set the terms. A large-lot division under Section 90-1 needs lots of 15 acres or more, with access from a paved public street for anything under 25 acres and a shared driveway for each two lots fronting a state-maintained highway, while lots of 25 acres or more may take an unimproved 50-foot deeded right-of-way. A parent tract subdivision under Section 90-2 is open only to parcels of record in their exact current form on 20 November 1985 and yields up to four lots of at least two acres each. A family subdivision under Section 91-126 allows lots down to one and a half acres on a sliding table — two lots at six acres, three at 7.5, four at nine, rising to nine lots at 16.5 acres and above — with a recorded affidavit and a maximum of eight new lots. A cluster subdivision under Section 91-127 needs a 50-acre parcel, permits one lot per ten acres with no minimum lot size but a two-acre maximum, and requires at least 80 percent of the tract to go under a permanent conservation easement.

New Kent County Code secs. 98-214, 90-1, 90-2 (Ord. No. O-03-05(R), 3-14-2005; Ord. No. O-12-12, 9-10-2012), 91-126 and 91-127

You cannot live in the shop, and the alternatives are narrow
Section 98-10(a) states plainly that no accessory building on a farm or otherwise is to be used for dwelling purposes unless specifically allowed elsewhere in the chapter, and Section 98-9 permits only one principal building or use per lot — though agricultural or forestal buildings may be built on a lot that already has a single-family dwelling. The two allowances are tight. An accessory single-family residential unit under Section 98-10(c)(14) is limited to one per dwelling, all occupants must be related by blood, marriage or adoption, it cannot exceed 25 percent of the dwelling's total floor area or 450 square feet whichever is greater without Board of Zoning Appeals approval, it needs prior health department certification that the well and septic are adequate, and it must not be visible or apparent from the street. A guesthouse, a permitted use in A-1, is defined as living quarters with an attached accessory building on the same premises as the main dwelling, for guests, and not rented or otherwise used as a separate dwelling.

New Kent County Code secs. 98-2 (definitions), 98-9, 98-10(a), 98-10(c)(13)-(14), 98-212(10)

Land disturbance, tree removal and the Environmental Division
The county requires a land disturbance permit for all new home construction, and separately wherever disturbance exceeds 2,500 square feet — a threshold the ordinance says includes construction of the house, the septic tank and the drainfield, plus access, material storage, driveways and graded areas. Inside a Chesapeake Bay Preservation Area the same 2,500 square feet triggers a plan of development review. New Kent is its own Virginia Stormwater Management Program authority. Within an RPA the triggers are far lower: removing any tree of more than three inches in diameter, dead or living, needs a review, as do new paved or gravel surfaces, sheds and pergolas, decks, pools and any tear-down and rebuild. An RPA Buffer Modification permit is $95.00 and runs 12 months; a ChesBay Exception is $250.00 administratively or $625.00 where it goes to the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Board, which covers advertising, the staff report and site inspections.

New Kent County Code secs. 94-39(4) and 94-39(6), Appendix A - Fees (Land Development / Environmental); New Kent County Environmental and Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act FAQs

The septic permit gates the certificate of occupancy
New Kent sits in the Chickahominy Health District, and the New Kent Health Department on 804-966-9640 issues the onsite sewage permits. The county's own inspection sheet sets the sequence and it is worth building the schedule around: a Virginia Department of Health Sewage Disposal System Operation Permit must be issued by the health department before a final building inspection can even be requested, and the sheet asks for five working days after all required inspections and paperwork for that permit to issue. VDH has 15 working days on a single-lot permit under Va. Code section 32.1-163.5 before it is deemed approved. Note also that the five-year septic pump-out required in a Chesapeake Bay Preservation Area is enforced here by the county, not by VDH — the twelve counties where VDH took that over in 2023 are on the Northern Neck, Middle Peninsula and Eastern Shore, and New Kent is not among them.

New Kent County Building Development, Single Family Dwelling Inspection Requirements; Virginia Department of Health, Chickahominy Health District; New Kent County Code sec. 94-39(7); 9VAC25-830-130(7)(a)(3); Va. Code sec. 32.1-163.5

The rules are being rewritten right now
The Comprehensive Plan 2045 was adopted in the summer of 2025, and the county has since begun a complete rewrite of both the Zoning and the Subdivision Ordinances to implement it, working with the Berkley Group. The plan itself signals where the pressure goes: its Future Land Use Map largely designates areas near interstate interchanges, and areas served by public utilities, as the places for growth, while preserving the county's rural and agricultural land across nine land use categories from Conservation and Agricultural/Forestal through Rural Lands and Hamlet to Village. A draft Technology Overlay District for data centres went out for public meetings in 2026. Two voluntary programmes run alongside: a Purchase of Development Rights programme adopted in 2006 under the Open-Space Land Act, and Agricultural and Forestal Districts under Va. Code section 15.2-4300. Anything read off the current ordinance should be confirmed against the version in force on the day the application goes in.

New Kent County Planning, Zoning and Subdivision Ordinance Update page; New Kent County Comprehensive Plan 2045, Future Land Use chapter; New Kent County Code Ch. 84 (Ord. No. O-04-06, 5-22-2006) and Ch. 62 Art. II

The land that is actually out there
USDA's 2022 Census of Agriculture puts 21,533 acres of New Kent in farms — 16 percent of the county — across 112 farms, at an average of 192 acres and a median of 36, with 6,885 acres of woodland held inside those farms and 70 farms under 50 acres. The county's own plan is more optimistic about the raw supply: it counts about 46,000 acres of prime agricultural land, roughly a third of the county's land mass, concentrated along the Pamunkey and York Rivers, and about 4,039 vacant parcels on which homes can presently be constructed. It also notes that vacant land is still a relative bargain here compared with land values in neighbouring jurisdictions. The county is 210 square miles, bounded by the Pamunkey and York to the north and east and the Chickahominy to the south and west, with I-64 running its length between Richmond and Williamsburg.

USDA NASS 2022 Census of Agriculture, county file; New Kent County Comprehensive Plan 2045, Natural Resources and Demographics chapters; U.S. Census Bureau 2025 Gazetteer county file

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 New Kent County

All nine services are available in New Kent 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 New Kent 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 New Kent County. Tell us what you want to build and we will draw it to them.

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Where we build around New Kent County

New Kent 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 New Kent 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 New Kent 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.

Hanover County

Hanover County
Richmond

Richmond
Petersburg

Petersburg

Building in New Kent County: common questions

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

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How many acres do I need to build a house in New Kent County?
It depends entirely on when your lot was recorded, and this is the thing most people get wrong here. For a new lot cut out of A-1 agricultural land, Section 98-214 of the zoning ordinance requires ten acres. That figure took effect on 1 July 2022 under Ordinance O-11-22 and replaced a minimum of one and a half acres — and the convenience chart printed earlier in the same chapter still shows the old 65,340 square feet, which is why you will see both numbers quoted. Section 98-51 settles it: the chart is for convenience only and the district requirements control. But Section 98-219 grandfathers every lot recorded before close of business on 11 July 2022, deeming it compliant with the lot dimension and area requirements as long as it meets the yards, setbacks and access rules in force when you apply. So if you are buying an existing parcel of two or three acres that was recorded before that date, you can build on it. If you are buying a farm and hoping to split it, the answer is ten acres per lot unless you go through the legacy, family or cluster subdivision routes.
How big can the shop be, and can it be bigger than the house?
It can be bigger than the house, and New Kent measures it against the lot rather than against the dwelling. Section 98-10(c)(3) allows detached accessory structures in the A-1 district to total up to five percent of the lot area beyond the front setback line, capped at a cumulative 10,000 square feet, whichever is less. Five percent of an acre is 2,178 square feet, so the 10,000 square foot ceiling only starts to bind from about 4.6 acres upward; below that the percentage governs, which works out around 4,356 square feet on a two-acre lot. It is cumulative, so the shop, the barn, the detached garage and any roofed lean-tos are added together. Section 98-56 then handles spacing: an accessory building holding more than 50 percent of the primary building's floor area must stand at least 30 feet from it, and one under 50 percent at least ten feet. If the building is genuinely accessory to a farm use as defined in Va. Code section 36-97, Section 98-10(c)(3)a exempts it from the cap altogether, evidenced by an active business licence, a farming registration or an Agricultural and Forestal District designation.
Can I live in the shop, or put the living quarters in a detached building?
Not as a detached accessory building. Section 98-10(a) says directly that no accessory building on a farm or otherwise is to be used for dwelling purposes unless specifically allowed elsewhere in the chapter, and Section 98-9 permits only one principal building or use per lot. The practical answer for a barndominium is to build it as one structure. Section 98-56(c) provides that an accessory building attached to a principal building by any wall or roof construction is considered part of the principal building — so a dwelling with an attached shop is simply the house, the accessory size cap does not reach it, and it takes the 35-foot principal height rather than the 20 feet the chart gives detached accessory structures in A-1. If you want separate living space, Section 98-10(c)(14) allows one accessory residential unit, either inside the dwelling or in an existing detached accessory structure, limited to 25 percent of the dwelling's floor area or 450 square feet whichever is greater, with all occupants related by blood, marriage or adoption, prior health department sign-off on the well and septic, and no external sign of it from the street.
Is my land in the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Area, and what does that change?
Probably some of it, and possibly all of it. New Kent is on the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act's statutory Tidewater list, and its ordinance splits the county into Resource Protection Areas and Resource Management Areas. The RPA is a 100-foot vegetated buffer landward of tidal wetlands, tidal shores and connected nontidal wetlands, and along both sides of any water body with perennial flow — and the county adds a further 20-foot RPA Building Setback, shown on plats, that all primary and attached structures must observe. That makes the working no-build distance from a perennial stream 120 feet on each bank. The RMA is where it catches people: Section 94-36(b) says that if any RMA component is on a lot or parcel, the entire lot or parcel is deemed to be in the RMA, and the only escape is a schematic site plan by a qualified soil scientist, engineer, landscape architect or surveyor demonstrating that the components are absent. The county's own Comprehensive Plan 2045 puts about 59 percent of New Kent in an RMA and about 19 percent in an RPA. Practical effects: land disturbance over 2,500 square feet goes through a plan of development review, a five-year septic pump-out applies, and you should plan the parcel for a full reserve drainfield that stays permanently clear of structures.
My lot has a stream through it and no room outside the buffer. What are my options?
Check the recordation date first, because New Kent has only one administrative window and it is narrow. Section 94-40(a)(4) allows an encroachment into the buffer through an administrative process only where applying the buffer would destroy the buildable area of a lot or parcel recorded prior to 1 October 1989. Even then the encroachment must be the minimum necessary for a reasonable buildable area, an equal area of vegetation has to be established elsewhere on the parcel where practicable, and it cannot reach into the seaward 50 feet of the buffer without a separate board exception. Unlike some neighbouring counties, New Kent's ordinance carries no second window for lots recorded after 1989. If your lot falls outside that date, the only route is an exception from the New Kent County Chesapeake Bay Preservation Board under Section 94-45(b), which requires a water quality impact assessment, public notice under Va. Code section 15.2-2204 and a hearing, and turns on five findings including that the request is the minimum necessary and is not based on conditions that are self-created. Section 94-38 also requires that a lot have sufficient area outside the RPA for the intended development, so this is a question to settle before you buy, not after.
What design figures should my engineer use? What is the wind speed and frost depth in New Kent?
New Kent has not published them, and that is worth knowing rather than working around. Virginia has one building code statewide that no locality may amend, but the 2021 Virginia Residential Code prints Table R301.2 blank with the instruction that additional criteria shall be established by the local jurisdiction — so wind speed, ground snow load, frost line depth and seismic design category are each locality's own fill-in. New Kent's site index has no design criteria sheet, and no neighbouring county's numbers may be substituted. What the county does publish is a footing rule that appears on both its dwelling and its garage, shed, carport and polebarn inspection sheets: a minimum depth of 18 inches to the bottom of the footing, in undisturbed soil, with an engineering soil report required where fill dirt or sand has been used. Those sheets also require foundation projection of at least two inches beyond the footing edge, 24 inches of R10 perimeter insulation at a slab, waterlines buried at least 24 inches, and a duct seal statement plus a blower door test before final. Get the governing Table R301.2 figures in writing from Building Development at 804-966-9680 before anything is drawn.
Is the soil going to be a problem here?
Not in the way people expect. The usual Virginia worry is shrink-swell clay, and measured against New Kent's own USDA soil survey that worry does not apply: exactly one soil component in the entire county reaches a linear extensibility of 6 percent or more, and it is Bohicket, a very poorly drained tidal marsh soil across about 3,520 acres that nobody builds on. Everything else tops out at 4.5 percent. What does matter is water. Not one acre in the county rates Not limited for a septic absorption field; 99,001 acres rate Very limited and 8,722 Somewhat limited, and the dominant limiting feature across 75,732 acres is groundwater near the surface, ahead of seepage and percolation. Nevarc, the county's single largest soil, holds a seasonal high water table around 27 inches down. That is why the county's inspection sheet has separate waterproofing and drain tile steps, why Section 98-52(b) excludes land subject to periodic or occasional inundation from the minimum lot area calculation, and why the drainfield location tends to decide where the building sits rather than the other way round.
How does the permit work, what does it cost, and how long does it take?
The Department of Building Development at 12007 Courthouse Circle handles it, and there is no town anywhere in New Kent that runs its own department, so this is the only building authority in the county. Applications are taken in person or by mail only, between 8:00 a.m. and 3:45 p.m., with two complete plan sets, a site plan, a copy of the Health Department permit and a copy of the recorded deed; the county asks for 10 to 15 business days to process. Fees are priced on value rather than floor area: Appendix A to the County Code sets residential building permits at $2.25 per $1,000 of estimated market value or fraction, with a $65.00 minimum, plus a $40.00 zoning verification fee and a non-refundable administrative fee of $30.00 or 25 percent of the permit fee, whichever is greater. Add the land disturbance permit, which the county requires for all new home construction, at $250.00 plus $20.00 per acre, and erosion and sediment control review at $85.00 plus $10.00 per acre for a single family lot of an acre or less. Permits run six months and each inspection extends them another six. Fees double for work started before the permit issues.
Are the rules about to change again?
Yes, and it is worth building that into your timeline. New Kent adopted its Comprehensive Plan 2045 in the summer of 2025 and has since started a complete rewrite of both the Zoning and the Subdivision Ordinances to implement it, working with the Berkley Group. The plan's Future Land Use Map directs growth toward the I-64 interchanges and the areas already served by public water and sewer while preserving rural and agricultural land, so the pressure in the rewrite sits on the agricultural district rather than on the corridors. The county has already shown it will tighten: the ten-acre A-1 minimum arrived by ordinance in 2022. A draft Technology Overlay District for data centres has also gone through public meetings. None of that changes the Uniform Statewide Building Code, which is the same everywhere in Virginia and which no locality may amend, but it can change lot size, setbacks and what is permitted by right. Confirm the zoning position against the ordinance in force on the day the application goes in, not against a version read months earlier.

Building in New Kent County?

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