Reinvestment Fund Releases New Market Value Analysis for Richmond, Virginia Area

(Richmond, VA – April 14, 2026) – Reinvestment Fund, a nationally-focused Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), in partnership with PlanRVA, released its latest Market Value Analysis (MVA) for the Greater Richmond region. First conducted in 2017, the Greater Richmond MVA has been consistently commissioned and updated to provide stakeholders across the city with data on the residential real estate market to inform policy and community leaders on community revitalization efforts and helping them manage neighborhood change. View the latest Richmond MVA here.

“The strength of MVA comes from the collaboration behind it. Through extensive stakeholder engagement across all nine local governments in the Richmond region and local validation through tours and partner reviews, this tool reflects both the complex data on how housing markets are functioning and the realities of our diverse communities,” said Martha Shickle, Executive Director of PlanRVA.“We believe the MVA is a valuable resource for decision-making about where to preserve affordability, guide investment and manage growth in a way that benefits all residents. We look forward to the ongoing opportunities to link the MVA with other important work in the region, as broadly as connecting housing data to economic mobility indicators and as targeted as using this data to understand critical needs in neighborhoods like access to childcare.”

The MVA is a data-based, field-validated tool that analyzes a city or region’s residential real estate market with input and guidance by local stakeholders. This unique approach taken by Reinvestment Fund’s Policy Solutions team, using spatial and statistical analysis, creates an internally-referenced index of residential real estate markets. The MVA for Greater Richmond identifies different types of residential markets across the city and highlights places where strategic intervention can stimulate private market activity. The Greater Richmond MVA covers the entire nine-jurisdiction footprint including rural and suburban areas like Goochland, Powhatan, Hanover, New Kent and Charles City counties, allowing for a more comprehensive regional housing strategy.

The 2026 Greater Richmond MVA identified several notable findings through its analysis of the regional market:

• There is a distinct need for affordable housing options, due to a widespread lack of access for individuals at 80 percent or below median income.
• Black and Hispanic residents are more likely to live in the region’s weaker markets, which are marked by foreclosures and vacancies.
• Over the past ten years, the region has shown significant shifts, as there are now fewer “weaker” local markets showing traditional signs of distress (like high vacancy or abandonment)
• The Displacement Risk Ratio (DRR), the gap between housing prices and the income of long-term residents, is high and rising, with an urgent need for intervention to prevent residents from being priced out

“Our Market Value Analysis for Richmond and the surrounding region is crucial to understanding how best to support regional growth moving forward,” said Emily Dowdall, President of Policy Solutions at Reinvestment Fund. “This tool not only helps inform potential investors in the region, including CDFIs like Reinvestment Fund, but it serves as a resource to guide future policies on housing, development and more.”

In addition to highlighting important information about the Richmond area, the MVA provides planners, elected officials, non-profits, advocacy groups, developers, and community members with an interactive index to see the geographic spread of market-based data such as median home sales price, vacancy, homeownership rate, renovation or construction permits, and share of income-based rental housing per census tract and block group. It assesses displacement risk and housing insecurity markers, and provides a visual geography of affordability across the regional landscape.

To date, Reinvestment Fund’s Policy Solutions team has conducted more than 85 MVAs for cities, counties and states across the country, many times reissuing new data year over year. Some of their notable MVAs include ones for Philadelphia, New Orleans, Baltimore, St. Louis and Dallas. This work has been used by officials to inform policies and procedures that directly impact residents’ lives in the short-and-long-term. You can read more about Policy Solutions’ MVA program here.

• Learn more about Policy Solutions.
• Learn more about PlanRVA.
• Learn more about Reinvestment Fund and our work across lending, housing, early childhood education, healthy food and more.