Accomack County

ADU Pass helps homeowners in Accomack County, Virginia navigate the permit paperwork for building an accessory dwelling unit. We cover 28 cities and 42 ZIP codes in this county.

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County ADU details

County ADU ordinance

Accomack County does NOT maintain a standalone accessory-dwelling-unit ordinance with codified definitional and dimensional standards specific to ADUs. ADU-style use cases in Accomack County are governed indirectly through the Zoning Ordinance's treatment of 'accessory use,' 'accessory structure,' 'family dwelling' (the ordinance's term for a limited second-dwelling allowance tied to family-member or farm-labor occupancy), and 'tourist home' / 'short-term rental' provisions in combination with the per-district use schedules. In the Agricultural (A) district that covers most county acreage, a 'farm-labor housing unit' or 'family-member dwelling' is typically permitted subject to minimum lot area, demonstrated bona fide agricultural use, and Zoning Administrator approval; a fully independent second dwelling for general (non-family, non-farm-labor) occupancy typically requires a Special Use Permit from the Board of Supervisors after Planning Commission recommendation. In the Rural Village (RV) and Residential (R) districts, the ordinance allows accessory structures (including detached garages with above-garage living quarters, traditional 'guest cottages' without independent kitchen facilities, etc.) by-right subject to setback, height, and lot-coverage standards; an independent second dwelling on the same parcel in those districts generally requires an SUP. The Town of Chincoteague administers a separately-adopted town ordinance with its own ADU / short-term-rental provisions, and several other small incorporated towns within Accomack County administer their own independent zoning. Applicants must confirm jurisdiction (county vs. town) as the first step in any ADU pro forma — the county's ordinance does not reach into incorporated-town limits, and Chincoteague in particular operates a materially different regulatory regime tied to the island's vacation-rental economy.

County permitting (unincorporated parcels)

Accomack County's Department of Planning & Community Development and Department of Building Inspections jointly handle permitting for unincorporated parcels — that is, parcels outside the limits of any of the eleven-plus incorporated towns within the county. Inside town limits (Chincoteague, Onancock, Parksley, Onley, Bloxom, Hallwood, Keller, Melfa, Painter, Saxis, Tangier, Wachapreague — and the county seat Town of Accomac), permitting follows the town's own process; the county is not the issuing authority within those limits. A typical ADU-like permit bundle for an unincorporated Accomack County parcel includes: (1) a Special Use Permit from the Board of Supervisors with Planning Commission recommendation, unless the project qualifies for an Agricultural-district family-member or farm-labor housing allowance, (2) a Zoning Permit confirming use eligibility and setback compliance, (3) a Building Permit with stamped residential plans, (4) Electrical, Plumbing, and Mechanical trade permits, (5) a Virginia Department of Health (VDH) - Eastern Shore Health District construction permit for well and/or septic on parcels not served by public water or sewer (which is the great majority of parcels — public water and sewer in Accomack County are concentrated in Chincoteague, Onancock, Onley, and parts of the Wallops-area service district), (6) a Floodplain Development Permit if any portion of the parcel is within the mapped Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA), which intersects a substantial majority of parcels because the entire county is a low-elevation peninsula with extensive tidal-creek and marsh systems, (7) a Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act review (Accomack County is a Tidewater locality subject to the CBPA, with Resource Protection Area and Resource Management Area rules applying across nearly the entire county), (8) a Virginia Marine Resources Commission (VMRC) joint-permit for any work in tidal wetlands, subaqueous bottom, or sand dunes (the Atlantic barrier-island lagoons, the Chincoteague Bay system, and the Chesapeake Bay frontage all trigger VMRC review frequently), (9) coordination with NASA Wallops / Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport for parcels within the FAA Part 77 imaginary-surface envelope of the Wallops Research Park Airport (a uniquely Accomack-specific constraint not present in any other Virginia county), and (10) Historic District review where applicable (the Town of Accomac Historic District, the Onancock Historic District, the Pungoteague rural historic district, and numerous NRHP-listed properties).

County assessor

Accomack County real estate is assessed through the Office of the Commissioner of the Revenue together with the Real Estate Assessment Office. Accomack County operates on a periodic general-reassessment cycle under Va. Code § 58.1-3252; the county has historically contracted reassessments to an outside firm on a multi-year cadence. An ADU or second-dwelling addition is captured by the supplemental real-estate-improvement process under Va. Code § 58.1-3292: the Commissioner of the Revenue receives the building permit and Certificate of Occupancy from the Department of Building Inspections, and the Real Estate Assessment Office adds the ADU's assessed value to the parcel's improvement base, prorated to the completion date. The existing primary dwelling is NOT re-valued off-cycle as a result of the ADU. Federal land at NASA Wallops Flight Facility, Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, and the Virginia portion of Assateague Island National Seashore is not on the local real-estate tax rolls. Parcels inside incorporated-town limits (Chincoteague, Onancock, etc.) are assessed by the county but pay both county and town real-estate taxes; STR-active properties on Chincoteague Island carry additional town-side transient occupancy reporting obligations.

NameAccomack County Office of the Commissioner of the Revenue and Real Estate Assessment Office

Address23296 Courthouse Avenue, Accomac, VA 23301

Parcel lookupOnline lookup

Assessment policy: An ADU is captured as a real-estate improvement under Va. Code Title 58.1 Subtitle III Chapter 32. On receipt of the building permit and (later) the Certificate of Occupancy, the Accomack County Real Estate Assessment Office prorates the supplemental assessment from the completion date through the end of the tax year under Va. Code § 58.1-3292. The ADU is added at its assessed fair-market value (typically derived using a cost-approach methodology calibrated to the current reassessment-cycle base) on top of the parcel's existing land and improvement value; the existing primary dwelling is NOT revalued off-cycle. Accomack County does NOT operate a county-specific ADU assessment exemption. Standard Virginia real-estate tax relief programs apply where the homeowner qualifies — elderly and disabled relief under Va. Code § 58.1-3210 as locally adopted, disabled-veteran exemption under Va. Code § 58.1-3219.5, and the surviving-spouse-of-killed-in-action-servicemember exemption under Va. Code § 58.1-3219.9 — but these programs apply to the homeowner's principal residence and do not create a separate carve-out for the ADU itself. Land Use Assessment under Va. Code § 58.1-3229 et seq. (agricultural, horticultural, forest, and open-space use-value taxation) is locally adopted in Accomack County and is materially consequential here given the county's substantial active-agriculture footprint (poultry, grains, vegetables, and a long-standing aquaculture sector along the seaside lagoons); adding a non-farm second dwelling on a Land Use parcel can trigger partial roll-back of the use-value valuation for the dwelling's curtilage acreage.

County overlays (7)

Accomack County administers several overlay regimes that bear materially on ADU projects. The dominant constraints, in approximate order of how often they bind on a typical project, are: (1) a Floodplain Overlay District tied to FEMA Special Flood Hazard Areas, covering a very large share of county parcels because the entire county is a low-elevation peninsula (maximum elevation roughly 50 feet, median parcel elevation in the 15-30 foot range) with the Chesapeake Bay on the west, the Atlantic barrier-island chain and Chincoteague Bay on the east, and a dense network of internal tidal creeks; (2) Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act jurisdiction county-wide (Accomack is a Tidewater locality designated under Va. Code § 62.1-44.15:67 et seq.) with Resource Protection Area buffers of 100 feet from perennial water bodies and tidal wetlands and Resource Management Area coverage on essentially all remaining landward extent; (3) Virginia Marine Resources Commission (VMRC) tidal-wetlands, subaqueous-bottom, and coastal-primary-sand-dunes jurisdiction reaching any project touching tidal waters, wetlands, dunes, or beaches; (4) the Wallops Research Park Overlay and the associated FAA Part 77 imaginary-surface envelope of NASA Wallops Flight Facility / Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) launch pads — a uniquely Accomack-County constraint not present in any other Virginia county, imposing height limits and launch-corridor coordination obligations on parcels within the overlay; (5) Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge and the Virginia portion of Assateague Island National Seashore (federal land outside county jurisdiction; only relevant insofar as boundary surveys and federal-nexus reviews touch adjacent fee-simple parcels); (6) Airport Approach Overlay around the Accomack County Airport at Melfa and around the Tangier Island Airport; (7) Town-administered historic and zoning overlays inside the incorporated towns — the Town of Accomac Historic District, the Onancock Historic District, the Chincoteague Historic District, and several smaller town overlays — administered by those towns rather than by the county. Like Northampton County, Accomack has NO California-style coastal commission (Virginia has no coastal-commission analog), NO CalFire-equivalent WUI overlay (Virginia has no statewide WUI overlay), and NO seismic-retrofit overlay. The combination of pervasive floodplain, pervasive CBPA, frequent VMRC review, and the launch-corridor overlay makes Accomack arguably the single most overlay-distinct county in the Commonwealth.

Known county issues (9)

other — ADU pro formas that would pencil as by-right or ministerial projects in jurisdictions with codified ADU ordinances require a discretionary SUP cycle in unincorporated Accomack County. This adds roughly 90-150 days of wall-clock, a separate SUP application fee in the $500-$2,500 range, neighbor-notification and public-hearing burdens, and case-by-case conditions imposed by the Board of Supervisors. Applicants should budget accordingly and should confirm whether an Agricultural-district family-member or farm-labor allowance or a no-kitchen accessory-structure path can satisfy the use case without an SUP.
other — The first step in any Accomack County ADU pro forma is confirming jurisdiction. A project address that appears to be 'in Accomack County' may actually be inside Chincoteague town limits and therefore governed by a materially different ordinance (with separate STR rules, separate fees, separate review timelines, and separate ARB review for historic-district parcels). Pre-application calls to BOTH the relevant town office and the Accomack County Department of Planning & Community Development are advisable for any parcel near a town boundary. Chincoteague-island projects in particular should NOT use this county-level file as the primary regulatory source.
other — Floodplain Development Permits, elevation certificates (billed $400-$1,200 each by a private licensed surveyor, typically before AND after construction), and piling-foundation construction in VE zones ($20,000-$60,000 incremental over slab-on-grade) are recurring line items on Accomack ADU projects. Substantial Improvement review — the NFIP 50% cumulative-cost threshold — can force full NFIP compliance on an existing primary dwelling if ADU construction tips the threshold. This has disqualified renovations of historic cottages elsewhere on the Eastern Shore where the primary dwelling predates the floodplain mapping. Applicants should pull the FEMA FIRM panel and an elevation certificate BEFORE pricing a project, not after.
other — An ADU proposed on a parcel with any RPA overlap must avoid the 100-foot buffer or pursue a Water Quality Impact Assessment exception (rarely granted for new residential structures). Combined with the Floodplain Overlay, the CBPA RPA is consistently the binding siting constraint on waterfront and near-waterfront parcels — more binding than the zoning ordinance's use rules or the floodplain overlay alone. Typical CBPA delineation and review adds 30-60 days to the permit timeline and $500-$2,500 in professional-services soft cost.
other — Low to moderate for most residential ADU projects on parcels within the overlay — height envelopes are typically well above two-story residential heights, and launch-corridor exclusion areas are operational rather than structural. Genuinely consequential cases involve parcels immediately adjacent to launch infrastructure, where NASA / VCSFA coordination is required during plan review. Confirm overlay sub-zone location with the Zoning Administrator before committing to a site plan for any parcel near Wallops Island, Wallops Mainland, or the Wallops Research Park. This constraint does not exist anywhere else in Virginia.
other — VMRC joint-permit review adds 60-120 days to the timeline and $300-$2,000+ in state permit fees plus professional engineering. Wachapreague-area, Saxis-area, and Chincoteague Bay-frontage projects are particularly likely to invoke VMRC review. Living-shoreline projects, which have become the default preferred shoreline-stabilization approach over hardened bulkheads in the Chesapeake Bay region, invoke VMRC review automatically. Missing a Wetlands Board hearing cycle adds 30 days.
other — VDH well-and-septic evaluation is a separate timeline from county permit review and has experienced periodic backlogs. Applicants should initiate VDH application in parallel with — not after — the county pre-application inquiry. Parcels with marginal soils or shallow/brackish groundwater may need Alternative Onsite Sewage System (AOSS) design, which adds $15,000-$40,000 of capital cost over conventional septic plus a longer engineering and permit timeline. Waterfront parcels face both shallow-groundwater and brackish-intrusion constraints simultaneously. Springtime Chincoteague-driven backlog is the most visible seasonality.
other — Long-term ADU investment pro formas on Accomack County waterfront parcels should explicitly model sea-level-rise-driven insurance repricing, BFE remapping (which FEMA periodically revises upward, forcing Substantial-Improvement re-evaluation on properties not at currently-mapped BFE), and shoreline-retreat geometry. Tangier Island is the canonical extreme case — the island has lost most of its historical land area to erosion and subsidence and its long-term residential viability is in active question — but the same physics applies to a lesser degree across the entire county. Near-term construction permits are not blocked, but 10-20-year payback scenarios should treat FEMA-map-update and private-insurance escalation as base-case inputs, not tail risks.
policy-review — Applicants should confirm the current ordinance text with the Zoning Administrator (Department of Planning & Community Development, 757-787-5726) rather than relying on prior summaries, and should be alert to General Assembly session outcomes in any year when an ADU preemption bill is introduced. A pre-application zoning inquiry is strongly recommended before architectural or engineering investment — the Zoning Administrator's interpretation is frequently the difference between a by-right accessory-structure path and a full Special Use Permit cycle.

Virginia state — ADU law and programs

State ADU law

Virginia has NOT enacted a statewide ADU preemption law. Virginia is a Dillon Rule state — localities possess only those powers expressly granted by the General Assembly — and the statutes granting zoning authority (Va. Code § 15.2-2280 et seq.) leave ADU regulation to local ordinances. ADU permission, setbacks, parking, size, and owner-occupancy rules therefore vary by county, independent city, and town. Virginia is unique in that it has 38 independent cities that function as counties (neither in nor subordinate to the surrounding county), meaning 'the county' for any given Virginia property may be an independent city rather than a true county. Several ADU preemption bills have been introduced in recent General Assembly sessions (2022 through 2025) without enactment; none have advanced past committee as of the Assembly's 2026 regular session adjournment.

State financing programs

Virginia does not operate an ADU-specific statewide loan, grant, or forgivable-loan program. Virginia Housing (formerly the Virginia Housing Development Authority, VHDA — rebranded 2020) administers general first-time-homebuyer, down-payment-assistance (DPA), mortgage-credit-certificate, and rehabilitation products that can be applied to ADU-adjacent purchases or improvements when eligibility criteria are met, but none target ADU construction as a distinct product. The Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) administers federal HOME and CDBG pass-through funds that local jurisdictions can direct toward ADU-adjacent rehab, but there is no state-level ADU-dedicated line item. Federally available products (FHA 203(k), Fannie Mae HomeReady and HomeStyle Renovation, Freddie Mac CHOICERenovation) remain the primary ADU financing path for Virginia homeowners.

State housing programs

Virginia does not run a state-level pre-approved-ADU-plan catalog, statewide impact-fee-waiver statute for ADUs, or streamlined-review mandate. State-level programs that touch ADU-adjacent policy are coordinated primarily through the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) and Virginia Housing, and act by funding or assisting local jurisdictions rather than by preemption. Local ADU activity — Arlington County's Accessory Dwellings program (detached ADUs permitted since 2008, liberalized 2020), Alexandria's accessory-dwelling ordinance, Fairfax County's accessory-living-unit program, and Charlottesville's 2021 zoning-code changes — is authorized under the localities' Va. Code § 15.2-2280 zoning authority, not by state mandate.

DHCD Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Program — Federal CDBG funds administered by DHCD to eligible non-entitlement Virginia localities for community-revitalization, housing-rehab, and infrastructure projects. Not ADU-specific. Participating localities can direct CDBG funds toward housing-rehab projects where local policy supports ADUs.
DHCD HOME Investment Partnerships Program — Federal HOME funds administered by DHCD to Virginia participating jurisdictions and non-profits for affordable-housing acquisition, rehab, and new construction. Not ADU-specific; can be directed to ADU-adjacent rehab at local discretion.
Virginia Housing Commission — Permanent advisory commission of the General Assembly that studies housing-policy questions and recommends legislation. Has periodically studied ADU preemption and missing-middle housing without recommending statewide enactment as of 2026-04-21.
Local ADU ordinances under Va. Code § 15.2-2280 authority — Not a state program — listed here because Virginia ADU policy is executed entirely at the locality level under the § 15.2-2280 zoning grant. A homeowner seeking to build an ADU consults the zoning ordinance of the specific county, city, or town where the parcel is located.

Federal (United States) — ADU-relevant rules and programs

Federal ADU law

The United States has no federal statute that directly regulates accessory dwelling unit entitlement or design. Land-use authority over ADUs resides with states and local governments under the traditional police power. Federal engagement is limited to financing (Fannie/Freddie/FHA/VA/USDA), flood insurance (FEMA/NFIP), and discretionary housing programs (HUD), which are recorded in sibling sections of this file.

Federal financing programs

Federal housing-finance agencies and GSEs set nationwide underwriting rules that govern whether an ADU can be financed, appraised, and counted toward mortgage qualifying income. The relevant actors are Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA (HUD), VA, and USDA Rural Development.

Federal tax credits

There is no ADU-specific federal tax credit. ADUs may incidentally qualify for existing federal energy-efficiency and clean-energy tax credits when the ADU construction includes qualifying measures.

Federal housing programs

HUD administers several discretionary programs that can fund ADU-related activity at the grantee's election, but none is an ADU-specific program.