Norfolk One statewide code, no local amendments

Barndominium Builders in Norfolk & Portsmouth, VA

Norfolk and Portsmouth face each other across the Elizabeth River, and they are two entirely separate independent cities: two building departments, two zoning ordinances, two fee schedules, and no county above either of them. Between them they hold 327,790 people on 86.6 square miles, and the 2022 Census of Agriculture reports neither as a farm county - Norfolk's own Chesapeake Bay Act program supplement calls the city essentially built out and put vacant land at 1.5 percent. So this page says so plainly, and then points west to Suffolk, Isle of Wight and Southampton, and north across the water to Gloucester, where the acreage actually is.

Norfolk & Portsmouth at a glance

Independent city: Norfolk

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Building conditions in Norfolk & Portsmouth

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 Norfolk & Portsmouth, drawn from the sourced facts on this page. Every figure above is cited in the quick-facts panel below, with its source and vintage.

Two cities, two permit offices, no county above either

Norfolk (231,013) and Portsmouth (96,777) are two separate independent cities, each a county equivalent belonging to no county. Norfolk issues building permits through its Development Services Center at 810 Union Street; Portsmouth issues them at the Department of Permits and Inspections counter on the fourth floor of City Hall, 801 Crawford Parkway. Nothing a county building department does reaches into either city, and Norfolk County was abolished decades ago - its territory is now the city of Chesapeake.

City of Norfolk Development Services Center Digital Plan Submittal Checklist and Building Permit Application; City of Portsmouth Department of Permits and Inspections, Where To Apply; Census Bureau Vintage 2025 place file; USDA NASS county reference file (historical Virginia entities)

Design wind speed: neither city publishes one

The Virginia Residential Code leaves Table R301.2 as a local fill-in, and neither Norfolk nor Portsmouth has filled it in. Norfolk's residential plan submittal checklist lists no wind speed, snow load, frost depth or seismic category, and Portsmouth's plan submittal memo instead asks the applicant to state the code design criteria. Neighbouring cities do publish: Chesapeake 117 to 123 mph ultimate, Virginia Beach 120 mph, Newport News 118 mph. Those are those cities' numbers and cannot be transferred. Chesapeake's checklist, the highest published wind speed found anywhere in the Commonwealth, answers NO in its windborne-debris column - which contradicts the 130 to 145 mph Hampton Roads figures that marketing pages quote.

City of Norfolk Residential Plan Submittal Checklist; City of Portsmouth Plan Submittal and Review memo, Department of Permits and Inspections; City of Chesapeake Residential Plan Review Checklist - 2021 Code; City of Virginia Beach Table R301.2(1); City of Newport News Design Criteria

There is essentially no buildable land inside either city

The 2022 Census of Agriculture reports 98 Virginia county units, and the only independent cities among them are Chesapeake, Suffolk and Virginia Beach. Norfolk and Portsmouth are not reported at all. Norfolk's own Chesapeake Bay Preservation Area Program Supplement puts it plainly, describing Norfolk as an essentially built out City where the entire City is served by a public sewer system, and recording vacant land falling from 8.6 percent of city land use in 1991 to 1.5 percent in 1999 in relatively small, isolated parcels. Norfolk is 53.3 square miles at 4,336 people per square mile; Portsmouth is 33.3 square miles at 2,906.

City of Norfolk Chesapeake Bay Preservation Area Program Supplement, Physical Constraints to Development; USDA NASS 2022 Census of Agriculture county file; Census Bureau Vintage 2025 place file

Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act: both cities are on the statutory list

Va. Code section 62.1-44.15:68 names 29 counties and 17 cities as Tidewater Virginia, and both Norfolk and Portsmouth are on that list. Portsmouth carries it in its own ordinance, City Code Chapter 9.1: the Resource Protection Area is tidal wetlands, connected non-tidal wetlands, tidal shores and a 100-foot vegetated buffer on both sides of any water body with perennial flow; a permitted encroachment may not exceed into the seaward 50 feet; new construction needs a reserve sewage disposal site equal in capacity to the primary, with building and impervious surface prohibited on it; and on-site systems are pumped out every five years under the city's own section 38-312 rather than by the state. Norfolk works from published guidance instead: its Department of City Planning tells applicants that a detached garage, shed, shop or pool in a Resource Protection Area must sit outside the 100-foot buffer entirely, and that every tree and shrub inside that buffer needs a permit before removal.

Va. Code section 62.1-44.15:68; City of Portsmouth Code of Ordinances ch. 9.1, sections 9.1-4, 9.1-7 and 9.1-10 (Ord. No. 2004-02, amended Ord. No. 2025-100, 25 Nov 2025); City of Norfolk CBPA Guidance Document for Additions and Accessory Structures, Department of City Planning

Three feet of freeboard in both cities - by two different instruments

Portsmouth sets it in ordinance. City Code section 14.1-11 requires new residential construction in Zones A1-30, AE, AH and A with detailed base flood elevations to place the lowest floor, including HVAC, ductwork and basement, at the base flood elevation plus 3.0 feet, with no floodproofing permitted below that line for a dwelling; Coastal A and VE zones go to V-zone standards at the same three feet. It also bars any fully enclosed area below the flood protection elevation from human habitation, allowing only vehicle parking, building access and limited storage of maintenance equipment. Norfolk arrives at a comparable three feet through zoning rather than a flood chapter, in the Coastal Resilience Overlay of its 2018 ordinance, and its permit checklist requires an elevation certificate for any structure in a flood zone other than X and X-shaded plus a floodplain development application. Same number, different instruments, and each has to be read off the right city.

City of Portsmouth Code of Ordinances section 14.1-11, Flood Protection; NOAA Digital Coast case study, Zoning Ordinance Overhauled to Increase Community Resilience to Flooding (City of Norfolk); City of Norfolk Development Services Center Digital Plan Submittal Checklist

Where the acreage actually is

Portsmouth's western boundary is the Suffolk city line, and Suffolk is the largest Virginia city by land area at 399 square miles and 262 people per square mile, with 70,920 acres in farms, a median farm of 41 acres and 129 operations under 50 acres. Isle of Wight County, a little further west, is the land county of Hampton Roads: 80,316 acres in farms, 39.8 percent of the county, median farm 88 acres, growing 6.7 percent since 2020. Southampton County, roughly an hour west and the one option here that is not a Bay Act locality, holds 155,013 farm acres across only 278 operations, so the parcels are big - median farm 174 acres. Gloucester County, across the water on the Middle Peninsula, is the smaller-parcel option at 24,983 farm acres and a median farm of 26 acres, and is one of twelve localities where the Health Department rather than the county enforces the five-year septic pump-out.

USDA NASS 2022 Census of Agriculture county file; Census Bureau Vintage 2025 place and county files; Census county adjacency file county_adjacency2025; Va. Code section 62.1-44.15:68; 9VAC25-830-130(7)(a)(3)

Also worth knowing before you build in Norfolk & Portsmouth

Permit fees: two schedules, two different shapes: Norfolk charges a flat rate. Its Building Code Schedule of Fees, effective 1 July 2021, sets residential new construction at $0.15 per square foot, plan review at $35 for 0 to 2,500 square feet, a $15 processing fee on every permit, a $50 minimum building permit fee and the 2 percent state surcharge levied under Va. Code section 36-137. Portsmouth uses tiered blocks written into the Code of Ordinances at Appendix A: for a single-family dwelling, $8.00 per 100 square feet up to 1,999 square feet; $160 for the first 2,000 square feet plus $7.00 per 100 thereafter; $370 for the first 5,000 plus $6.00 per 100 without limit. Portsmouth plan review is $50 under 2,000 square feet and $80 over, and its administrative fee for work begun without a permit is $150 - the same figure Norfolk charges for the same offence.
How you hand the plans in is completely different: Norfolk runs a digital intake. Its Development Services Center publishes a Digital Plan Submittal Checklist, takes residential drawings by email to its plan reviewers, and its own guidance puts residential plan review at approximately 10 business days for new construction, with additions and renovations reviewable at the counter. Portsmouth does the opposite: its Plan Submittal and Review memo requires two full-sized hard copies of the construction documents delivered over the counter or by mail, states that digital submittals are accepted only as backup, and says plans sent to staff by email are not acceptable. Portsmouth also wants two copies of the site plan or plat, takes only cheques and cards at the counter, and requires a certificate of appropriateness in its Olde Towne, Downtown, Park View, Port Norfolk, Cradock and Truxtun design review districts.
The Hampton Roads regional special-inspection bloc, and why a house is usually outside it: Norfolk and Portsmouth are both named participants in the Hampton Roads Regional Special Inspection Guidelines and Procedures, 2021 USBC Edition, revised 18 January 2024 - a joint document of roughly twenty Hampton Roads localities that standardises how they administer the special-inspection provisions of the Virginia Construction Code, with a Statement of Special Inspections prepared by a registered design professional as a condition of permit issuance where it applies. It usually will not apply to a barndominium. The document exempts Group R-3, R-4 and R-5 occupancies and Group U structures accessory to a residential occupancy, one-storey buildings under 20 feet and 5,000 square feet, and portions built to the cold-formed steel light-frame provisions of VCC 2211.1.2 or the conventional light-frame provisions of VCC 2308. The building official may still require inspections, and the guidelines say so.
Both cities are in Climate Zone 3A: The energy code's own Virginia table puts most of the Commonwealth in Zone 4A and names nineteen localities as 3A. Norfolk and Portsmouth are both on that 3A list, together with Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News, Suffolk, Virginia Beach, Isle of Wight, Southampton, Surry and Sussex. This is one of the very few design inputs that is genuinely identical for the two cities on this page - and only because it comes from a state table that names each of them, not from anything either city published.
The Wind Zone II trap: The Uniform Statewide Building Code does name Norfolk and Portsmouth in a wind provision, and it is easy to misread. Section 429.3 places the Cities of Chesapeake, Norfolk, Portsmouth and Virginia Beach in Wind Zone II - but Section 429 is the manufactured-home article, sitting alongside the Group R-5 classification in 429.2 and the requirement in Va. Code section 36-99.8 to skirt a manufactured home within 60 days of occupancy. It is an anchoring rule for manufactured homes, not a design wind speed, and it says nothing about a site-built or modular barndominium, whose wind design comes from the locality's own Table R301.2 figure. Neither city publishes one.
Coastal Plain soils, and what the state actually says: Virginia Energy's expansive soils page names the Coastal Plain, the Shenandoah Valley, and the Mesozoic basins around Culpeper, Farmville, Danville, and Richmond as the areas most likely to have expansive or frost-heave-susceptible soils - which surprises readers who associate shrink-swell only with the Piedmont. The same page adds that the exact distribution can only be approximated from current soil maps, and field visits to specific areas are necessary, so this is a reason to test a particular parcel rather than a claim about a particular city; the state does not single out Norfolk or Portsmouth. It also warns that standard homeowner's insurance does not cover damage from expansive or compressive soils or frost heave, and describes the failure mode as differential heave, where heavy loads resist uplift and lighter ones do not - which is the shape of a wide, slab-heavy building.
Two zoning ordinances, two dates, two resilience regimes: Norfolk's zoning ordinance is Ordinance No. 47,116, adopted by Norfolk City Council on 23 January 2018 with an effective date of 1 March 2018, repealing the former Appendix A of the City Code. It was the city's first comprehensive rewrite since 1992, and it carries a resilience quotient that requires every new development to earn points across flood resilience, stormwater management and energy resilience, plus Coastal Resilience and Upland Resilience overlay districts. Portsmouth's is a separate instrument on a separate timetable: Ordinance No. 2020-128, adopted 8 December 2020, effective 1 February 2021, printed as City Code Chapter 40.2. Portsmouth's resilience test sits in its Bay Act chapter instead, where Ordinance No. 2025-100 of 25 November 2025 added a resiliency assessment alongside the water quality impact assessment.
Portsmouth's Bay Act lot rule, stated in one line: Portsmouth Code section 9.1-6 makes the land constraint explicit: lot size follows the underlying zoning district, provided that any lot shall have sufficient area outside the RPA to accommodate an intended development. Portsmouth also fixes its Resource Management Area at the 100-year floodplain shown on the FEMA rate map dated 3 August 2015, or 530 feet landward of the Resource Protection Area where those features do not extend that far, and triggers a plan-of-development review at 2,500 square feet of land disturbance rather than the 10,000 square feet that applies outside Bay Act localities.
Septic sizing for the land you buy, not for the city you live in: Neither Norfolk nor Portsmouth is a septic market - Norfolk's own Bay Act supplement says the entire city is on public sewer - but the counties this page routes to are. Virginia sizes a drainfield at 150 gallons per day per bedroom under 12VAC5-610-670 Table 5.1 and its first footnote, with no living-area band and no row for a shop, garage or barn anywhere in the table, so a four-bedroom barndominium is a 600 gpd design whether the shop bay is 1,200 square feet or 4,000. The soil does the rest: 12VAC5-610-490 assigns clay to Texture Group IV at 91 minutes per inch or slower, past the 45 min/inch trigger for a mandatory reserve area. And in a Chesapeake Bay Preservation Area the reserve is 100 percent of the primary, unconditional for new construction, and cannot be built on - so an Isle of Wight, Suffolk or Gloucester parcel has to fit the house, the shop, the well, the primary drainfield and a second drainfield of equal size that stays permanently clear.

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 Norfolk & Portsmouth

All nine services are available in Norfolk & Portsmouth. 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 Norfolk & Portsmouth project passes through, from a raw parcel to a finished home. Site work first, because that is where the budget is decided.

Stage one

The parcel

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

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.

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 Norfolk & Portsmouth. Tell us what you want to build and we will draw it to them.

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Where we build around Norfolk & Portsmouth

Norfolk 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 Norfolk & Portsmouth 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 Norfolk & Portsmouth allows.

Barndominium Cost Guide

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

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Is It Legal in Virginia?

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

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How Long Does It Take?

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

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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.

Building in Norfolk & Portsmouth: common questions

8 questions we get asked most often about building in Norfolk & Portsmouth. If yours is not on the list, ask it directly.

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Can I actually build a barndominium in Norfolk or Portsmouth?

Legally, yes - the Uniform Statewide Building Code applies in both cities and neither may amend it. Practically, the land is the problem, and it is worth being blunt about it. The 2022 Census of Agriculture reports 98 Virginia county units and neither Norfolk nor Portsmouth is one of them; the only three independent cities that qualify are Chesapeake, Suffolk and Virginia Beach. Norfolk's own Chesapeake Bay Act program supplement describes the city as essentially built out, on public sewer throughout, with vacant land down to 1.5 percent of city land use by 1999 and what remained in small isolated parcels. Norfolk is 53.3 square miles at 4,336 people per square mile and Portsmouth 33.3 square miles at 2,906. If you already own a lot in either city, a barndominium-style build is a real project subject to that city's ordinances. If you are still looking for acreage, look west.

Which authority issues my permit - and does a county have anything to do with it?

No county does. Norfolk and Portsmouth are two of Virginia's 38 independent cities, which are county equivalents belonging to no county at all, so there is no county building department above either and no county zoning reaching in. Norfolk issues through its Development Services Center at 810 Union Street, first floor; Portsmouth through the Department of Permits and Inspections counter on the fourth floor of City Hall at 801 Crawford Parkway. This matters more here than almost anywhere in the Commonwealth, because Norfolk County existed once and does not now - it was absorbed decades ago and its territory is today the city of Chesapeake. Searching for a Norfolk County building department will find you history, not a permit.

What design wind speed do I use in Norfolk or Portsmouth?

Whatever your engineer justifies, because neither city has published one. The 2021 Virginia Residential Code prints Table R301.2 blank and says the additional criteria shall be established by the local jurisdiction, and Norfolk and Portsmouth have both left it unfilled: Norfolk's residential plan submittal checklist carries no climatic table at all, and Portsmouth's plan submittal memo turns the question around and requires the applicant to state the code design criteria on the drawings. Do not borrow a neighbour's number. Chesapeake publishes 117 to 123 mph ultimate, Virginia Beach 120, Newport News 118 - each of those belongs to that city. And treat the marketing claim of 130 to 145 mph for Hampton Roads as wrong: Chesapeake's figure is the highest published anywhere in Virginia, and the same Chesapeake document answers NO in its windborne-debris column.

My lot backs onto water. What does the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act do to it?

Both cities are on the statutory Tidewater Virginia list at Va. Code section 62.1-44.15:68, so the Act applies in both - but read the rules off the right city, because the two carry them in different documents. Portsmouth has its own City Code Chapter 9.1: a 100-foot vegetated buffer landward of tidal wetlands, tidal shores and any perennial water body, on both sides; a permitted encroachment that may not exceed into the seaward 50 feet; a reserve sewage disposal site for new construction equal in capacity to the primary, with building and impervious surface prohibited on it; and a five-year pump-out enforced by the city under its own section 38-312. Norfolk publishes guidance from its Department of City Planning instead, and for a barndominium the key line is that a detached garage, shed, shop or pool counts as an accessory structure and in a Resource Protection Area must sit outside the whole 100-foot buffer. In both cities, trees and shrubs inside the buffer need a permit before removal.

Can I put the shop on the ground floor and live above it?

In a Portsmouth flood zone, no. City Code section 14.1-11 says that in Zones A, AE, AH, AO and A1-A30 a fully enclosed area below the regulatory flood protection elevation may not be designed or used for human habitation, and may serve only for parking, building access, or limited storage of maintenance equipment - and the dwelling's lowest floor, including HVAC and ductwork, has to sit at the base flood elevation plus three feet, with no floodproofing allowed below that line. That rules out the classic shop-below, living-above arrangement on flood-zone land. Norfolk gets to a comparable three feet through the Coastal Resilience Overlay in its 2018 zoning ordinance, and requires an elevation certificate for any structure in a flood zone other than X and X-shaded. Outside the mapped zones in either city the constraint eases, so the first question on any site is which zone the parcel is in.

Where near Norfolk and Portsmouth can I actually buy acreage?

Four honest answers, in rough order of distance. Suffolk is the closest and the strongest: it shares a boundary with Portsmouth, covers 399 square miles at 262 people per square mile - the largest land area of any Virginia city - and holds 70,920 acres in farms with a median farm of 41 acres and 129 operations under 50 acres. Isle of Wight County, a little further west around Smithfield, is Hampton Roads' land county at 80,316 farm acres, 39.8 percent of the county, growing 6.7 percent since 2020. Southampton County, about an hour west toward Courtland, is thinner on small parcels - 155,013 farm acres across only 278 operations, median farm 174 acres - but it is the one option here that is not a Bay Act locality, so the 100-foot buffer and the 100 percent reserve drainfield do not follow you there. Gloucester County, across the water on the Middle Peninsula, is the small-parcel option at 24,983 farm acres and a median farm of 26 acres, and is one of twelve localities where the Virginia Department of Health, not the county, enforces the five-year septic pump-out.

Does the Hampton Roads special-inspection programme apply to my build?

Norfolk and Portsmouth are both participants in the Hampton Roads Regional Special Inspection Guidelines and Procedures, 2021 USBC Edition, revised 18 January 2024, which about twenty localities in the region use to administer the Virginia Construction Code's special-inspection provisions in a consistent way. For most barndominiums it will not bite. The guidelines exempt Group R-3, R-4 and R-5 occupancies and Group U structures accessory to a residential occupancy, one-storey buildings under 20 feet in height that do not exceed 5,000 square feet, and portions built to the cold-formed steel light-frame provisions of VCC 2211.1.2 or the conventional light-frame provisions of VCC 2308. Where it does apply, a registered design professional prepares a Statement of Special Inspections as a condition of permit issuance. The building official retains the power to require inspections anyway, and to waive them, so the answer is a question for the city you are building in.

What about the soil? I thought shrink-swell was a Piedmont problem.

Virginia Energy names the Coastal Plain first in its own list of the areas most likely to have expansive or frost-heave-susceptible soils, ahead of the Shenandoah Valley and the Mesozoic basins around Culpeper, Farmville, Danville and Richmond. That surprises most readers. Two caveats matter, though. The state adds that the exact distribution can only be approximated from current soil maps, and that field visits to specific areas are necessary - so it is an argument for testing your parcel, not a verdict on any city, and the state does not single out Norfolk or Portsmouth. And on the land this page routes you to, the same clay works twice: 12VAC5-610-490 assigns clay soils to Texture Group IV at 91 minutes per inch or slower, past the 45 min/inch threshold that makes a reserve drainfield mandatory. Virginia Energy also notes that standard homeowner's insurance does not cover damage from expansive or compressive soils or frost heave.

Building in Norfolk & Portsmouth?

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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