Augusta County

Augusta County's Department of Community Development issues ADU building permits for every parcel in the county except those inside the independent cities of Staunton and Waynesboro (each of which operates its own building department) and, for zoning matters, those inside the Town of Craigsville and the Town of Grottoes where the town has displaced the county code. All unincorporated CDPs including Fishersville, Stuarts Draft, Verona, Weyers Cave, Churchville, Mount Sidney, New Hope, Crimora, and Lyndhurst route through the county. A typical Augusta County ADU permit bundle includes: (1) a Zoning Permit from the county Zoning Division confirming district eligibility, setbacks, and any overlay triggers, (2) a Building Permit with stamped residential plans filed with the Building Inspections Division, (3) Electrical, Plumbing, and Mechanical trade permits, (4) a Virginia Department of Health onsite-sewage / well construction permit from the Central Shenandoah Health District for parcels not served by public water and sewer (the majority of county parcels), (5) a Floodplain Development Permit if any portion of the parcel is within the mapped 100-year floodplain under the county's Floodplain Overlay, and (6) any town-level review if the parcel is inside Craigsville or Grottoes.

Augusta County real estate is assessed by the Office of the Commissioner of the Revenue together with the Real Estate Division / Reassessment Office, operating on a four-year general reassessment cycle as permitted by Va. Code § 58.1-3252 (Virginia's default cadence for counties with population under 50,000; Augusta's roughly 77,000 population places it in the optional-cycle range and the county has historically used a four-year cadence). An ADU addition is captured through the real-estate-improvement / new-construction supplemental process under Va. Code § 58.1-3292: the Commissioner of the Revenue receives the building-permit record and Certificate of Occupancy from Community Development, and the ADU's assessed value is added to the parcel's land and improvement base, prorated to the completion date. The primary dwelling is NOT re-valued off-cycle as a result of the ADU addition. Separately, the Augusta County Treasurer collects real-estate tax on the combined assessment.

Assessment policy: An ADU is captured as a real-estate improvement under Va. Code Title 58.1 Subtitle III Chapter 32 (Real Property Tax). On receipt of the building permit and the Certificate of Occupancy from Community Development, the Commissioner of the Revenue's Real Estate Division prorates a 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 from a cost approach using Marshall & Swift residential cost multipliers at the current reassessment-cycle base, or a comparable sales approach where market evidence exists for similar accessory-dwelling additions) on top of the parcel's existing land and improvement value. The existing primary dwelling is NOT revalued off-cycle as a result of the ADU. There is no Augusta-County-specific ADU assessment exemption. Virginia's standard real-estate tax relief programs apply: elderly and disabled relief under Va. Code § 58.1-3210 (administered by the county under its local-option income and net-worth thresholds), disabled-veteran exemption under Va. Code § 58.1-3219.5 (100% permanent service-connected disability), and surviving-spouse-of-KIA exemption under Va. Code § 58.1-3219.9; none of these create a separate carve-out for the ADU itself, though they apply to the parcel as a whole where the homeowner qualifies and the principal residence is on the parcel.

Augusta County administers three overlay regimes that bear materially on ADU projects: (1) a Floodplain Overlay District tied to FEMA Special Flood Hazard Areas along the Middle River, South River, North River, Christians Creek, and other Shenandoah Valley drainages; (2) Scenic Corridor / Agricultural-Preservation overlays reflecting the county's Shenandoah Valley agricultural heritage and the visual character of US 11 / I-81 / the Shenandoah National Park / George Washington National Forest gateway routes; and (3) a public water-and-sewer service-area framework run by the Augusta County Service Authority (ACSA) inside the county's designated Urban Service Areas (Fishersville, Stuarts Draft, Verona, Weyers Cave, and adjoining growth areas) that sharply separates ADU feasibility inside vs. outside those service areas. Augusta County has NO coastal-commission jurisdiction (it is entirely inland, outside the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act boundary), NO CalFire-equivalent WUI regulatory overlay (Virginia has no statewide WUI program; the Virginia Department of Forestry coordinates wildfire response without a permit-constraining overlay), NO seismic-retrofit overlay (standard IRC/IBC provisions as adopted in the Virginia Uniform Statewide Building Code govern), and NO FAA Part 150 airport-noise overlay for a commercial airport (Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport / KSHD is a commercial airport partly in Augusta County but has no Part 150 noise-exposure overlay imposed on surrounding parcels).

• Augusta County Floodplain Overlay District
• Augusta County Urban Service Area / Public Water and Sewer Overlay
• Scenic Corridor / Agricultural-Preservation Context (I-81, US 11, Shenandoah National Park / George Washington National Forest gateway)