Relocation

The 2000s saw what can only be described as explosive growth in the Williamsburg area. Population nearly doubled; so did the median price of home sales.

Several factors contributed—suburban development in the Lower Peninsula started sprawling north as available land ran out. But the major factor was a boom in relocations from the northeast—retirees and second-home/early-retiree buyers who cashed out of expensive homes there. They were lured by more-affordable prices and planned communities featuring resort-like amenities (and weather that allows golf 10 or 11 months a year).

The result wasn’t quite a bubble—but it was close. In 1999, the median price of a home in the Williamsburg area was a mere $156,000; by the peak of the market in 2005, it was $321,500. Like elsewhere, the market plateaued, then dropped, though not as severely as other places. Home sales dropped from a high of more than 2,000 a year in the middle years of the decade to just 1,400 in 2009, but prices modulated only slightly. By 2009, the median was still at nearly $300,000.

A side note: Any discussion of growth in the area will use “Williamsburg” as shorthand—but very little of the growth actually has occurred in the city itself. Williamsburg is small, landlocked and largely developed. So its population growth has been limited, from 11,600 in 1990 to an estimated 12,500 in 2008. The real growth as occurred in the two suburban counties that ring the city, especially James City County, which arcs around Williamsburg from the south to the northeast. James City County’s population has essentially tripled from 1980 to today, from 22,000 to 62,400 today.

To the east, growth is somewhat constrained by the large government land holdings—the Naval Weapons Station, and the CIA (oops! Sorry! The Defense Department—really!) base at Camp Peary. Still, significant growth also occurred on the available land near those installations. That area is colloquially known as upper York County to differentiate it from the rest of York on the other side of the government installations.

While the recession slowed the pace of growth, it hasn’t stopped. The building of the 1990s and early 2000s filled most of the available land immediately west of Williamsburg, along the Route 199 beltway. Now the growth is spreading northwest, toward Lightfoot and Toano. (The luxury Stonehouse community, near Croaker, is actually closer to downtown Richmond than it is to Hampton.)

The new building in those suburban areas has been dominated by single-family subdivisions. They cover the range of the market—starter homes jammed together, middle-market family communities on quarter-acre lots, and estate homes in master-planned country club communities like Kingsmill, Governor’s Land at Two Rivers, and Ford’s Colony.

If you’re thinking of relocating to the area, there are plenty of resources to consult. The real-estate ads in the Saturday edition of the Virginia Gazette were long considered the best way to keep track of new listings—but nowadays, nearly all the brokerages have excellent Internet databases that contain all the homes in the local multiple listings service. The Williamsburg Area Association of Realtors is a good place to start, at www.waarealtor.com.

Don’t want a detached single-family home? Plenty of other options are available. Most of the new mixed-used developments (like New Town, or the High Street project off Richmond Road near downtown) have rental apartments, condominiums, or both. Condo listings are available from Realtors. Apartment listings can be a bit tougher—there’s no single great resource for them. A variety of free-distribution magazines contain listings, as do the Gazette and the Daily Press. Internet services like Apartments.com and Craigslist are useful, too.