Ask around Virginia Beach real estate circles what Kempsville costs and you'll hear the same line, almost word for word: it's the value play, the place where military families and first-time buyers land when the coast prices them out. That description was accurate for a long time. It is no longer fully true.
A Redfin snapshot from June 2026 puts Kempsville's median sale price at $414,706, up 6.7 percent year over year. Zillow's citywide average home value for Virginia Beach, measured at the end of July 2026, sat at $417,187. Do the subtraction and Kempsville is running less than one percent behind the city as a whole. Against Redfin's rolling three-month citywide median of $430,000 through July 2026, the gap is a little wider, about 3.6 percent, but that is a modest discount for a neighborhood still marketed as the budget corner of Virginia Beach.
The prices caught up quietly. What hasn't caught up is the literal center of the neighborhood, where a fourth corner of Kempsville's founding crossroads has sat mostly empty for more than a decade while everything around it got rebuilt.
The Intersection That Explains The Neighborhood
Kempsville isn't a subdivision with a marketing name. It's a place with an actual history at an actual crossroads, the intersection of South Witchduck, Kempsville, and Princess Anne roads. The settlement started as Kemp's Landing at the head of the Eastern Branch of the Elizabeth River and served as the county seat of Princess Anne County from 1778 until roughly 1823, before that county consolidated into the City of Virginia Beach in 1963, according to a Virginia Department of Historic Resources marker at the site.
That intersection has four corners. According to WHRO News, three of them changed dramatically over the past several years. The old high school building on one corner became part of an apartment complex. A shopping center went up on another. Kempes Landing Park occupies a third. The fourth, the northeast quadrant, is still largely vacant, and it has been the subject of an on-again, off-again redevelopment effort that stretches back well over a decade.
The timeline on that last corner matters more than the summary:
- 2015: The city first sought proposals to redevelop the northeast quadrant but didn't control enough of the land to make a deal work.
- 2017: A developer pitched a larger commercial vision for that same corner, extending from Princess Anne and Witchduck all the way to Bonney Road, with walking paths, canopy trees, and a park. The project stalled because assembling enough parcels proved difficult.
- In the years since: The city kept acquiring pieces of the quadrant on its own, eventually assembling more than 10 acres.
- July 2026: With most of the land now under city control, Virginia Beach City Council directed staff to issue a fresh request for proposals for what's left.
Two small parcels there, an auto sales lot and a small office, remain in private hands, held by a trust the city has not been able to reach. Everything else is finally in play.
The shopping center on the neighboring corner has its own, separate origin story. A three-acre parcel just across the intersection sold in a deal announced in January 2023 for $1.4 million, aimed at a restaurant, retail space, and a medical or dental office, on land the city had originally bought years earlier for a road realignment. That deal targeted completion by spring 2023, and the shopping center now standing at the intersection appears to be the result. It shows that once land assembly wasn't the obstacle, redevelopment at this crossroads moved fairly quickly. The northeast quadrant simply never cleared that hurdle until now.
In the meantime, the empty quadrant got a placeholder instead of a plan. A public art piece called Harbor of Stories, shaped like a sail with glass panels reflecting the community's history, was installed there earlier this year. It stands alone on land that has outlasted three prior attempts to build something permanent on it.
What The City Actually Wants There
This isn't a blank redevelopment slate. According to reporting from WHRO News, the city's Historic Kempsville Citizens Advisory Committee, which met with the city's acting director of economic development this spring, has expressed support for mixed-use development that leans toward attainably priced housing, specifically at or below 80 percent of the area median income. City staff have translated that into a rough number: about $1,900 a month in rent or mortgage payment for a two-person household.
That detail is worth sitting with if you're comparing neighborhoods rather than shopping a single listing. It signals that whatever gets built on that corner is being planned with price ceilings in mind, not a luxury play. It also signals that the city sees unfinished civic identity, not underlying housing demand, as the actual obstacle in Kempsville. The committee chair overseeing the effort has said publicly that she hopes for a development that blends business and residential space into something with a real sense of community, rather than another isolated retail pad.
Kempsville By The Numbers, Next To The City
| Measure | Kempsville | Virginia Beach citywide |
|---|---|---|
| Median sale price | $414,706 (Redfin, June 2026) | $430,000 (Redfin, trailing 3 months through July 2026) |
| Year-over-year change | +6.7% | +7.4% |
| Redfin Compete Score | 83 of 100 | 81 of 100 |
| Typical days on market | 21 days | 23 days |
The two figures worth reading side by side are the growth rates. Kempsville's median climbed 6.7 percent over the year ending June 2026, nearly matching the city's 7.4 percent median growth over roughly the same window. A neighborhood that used to trail the city on price is now tracking it on momentum too. Measured a different way, against Zillow's citywide average home value of $417,187 as of July 31, 2026, Kempsville's median is close enough to call it even. Other market summaries published earlier this year cited a lower Kempsville figure, closer to $395,000, reflecting a different slice of sales and a narrower price band. The spread between those numbers is itself a useful data point: it shows how much a value narrative can lag the transactions actually closing underneath it.
What This Means If You're Comparing Neighborhoods
If you're weighing Kempsville against Great Neck, the Oceanfront corridor, or another Virginia Beach submarket, the old shorthand, that Kempsville buys you more house for meaningfully less money, deserves a second look. The price gap that made that shorthand true has narrowed to single digits, and in some measurements has all but closed. What you're actually buying at a Kempsville price point right now is a central location, a shorter commute to bases across the region, and a neighborhood whose civic center is mid-transition rather than finished.
That last part cuts both ways. A buyer who wants a settled, fully built-out neighborhood identity might find Kempsville's unfinished quadrant unsatisfying, a historic crossroads still missing one of its four corners. A buyer thinking several years out might see it differently: a City Council vote to issue an RFP is not the same as a shovel in the ground, but it is the first forward motion on that corner in years, and it comes at a moment when the neighborhood's housing prices already reflect a city-average location rather than a discount one.
Days on market tell a similar story. Kempsville homes have been moving in about 21 days on average, close to the citywide pace of roughly 23 days over the three months ending July 2026. This is not a neighborhood where buyers get extra time to think. It is, at today's prices, priced like the rest of Virginia Beach and moving at close to the same speed.
A Few Quick Questions
Is Kempsville still the affordable option in Virginia Beach? It depends on your benchmark. Against the city's average home value, Kempsville is now essentially at parity. Against the citywide median sale price, it runs a few percent behind. Either way, the discount is smaller than it used to be and smaller than most casual comparisons suggest.
What's actually being built on the empty corner at Kempsville's main intersection? Nothing yet. In July 2026, City Council directed staff to issue a fresh request for proposals for the largely vacant northeast quadrant of the Princess Anne, South Witchduck, and Kempsville roads intersection, with the advisory committee supporting mixed-use development that includes attainably priced housing at or below 80 percent of area median income.
Should I wait for that project to break ground before buying nearby? An RFP is an early step, not a construction timeline, and this particular corner has outlasted more than one prior attempt. Buyers weighing Kempsville today are pricing a neighborhood that already trades close to the city median, with a redevelopment story still unfolding rather than finished.
If you're comparing Kempsville against other pockets of Virginia Beach, or trying to figure out what a specific address near that intersection is actually worth this fall, that's exactly the kind of question local data can only partially answer. Darlene "Hollywood" Gaines works this market street by street. Schedule Your Red Carpet Consultation and get a straight answer before you make an offer.
