Owner housing units Chesapeake Virginia Map Owner housing units Chesapeake Virginia Map Owner housing units Hampton Virginia Map Owner housing units Hampton Virginia Map Owner housing units Newport News Virginia Map

The Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), popularly known as the Tidewater region, is the 30th largest metropolitan area in the United States and is one of the few metropolitan areas that are not dominated by a large central city. The geography of the area has traditionally promoted a pattern of decentralized growth along the region’s multiple rivers and the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, which have promoted multiple nodes of commerce and shipping. The tidewaters of the Atlantic Ocean have shaped the regional development pattern into a multi-nucleated complex serviced by a spaghetti bowl of federal and state highways.  
 
Community Housing Partners Corporation contracted the Virginia Tech Center for Housing Research (VCHR) to perform a homebuyer market analysis for the Tidewater Region, concentrating on firsttime homebuyers in the affordable housing market. In addition to analyzing this market for the MSA, the analysis focuses on the six major jurisdictions within the MSA: the cities of Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake, Hampton and Newport News.1  
 
This report summarizes the findings of that analysis. The primary focus of the analysis is on projections of first-time owner demand in targeted income ranges from 2000 to 2010, as well as the supply of housing affordable to these buyers.