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Hampton Roads housing market remains competitive

Summary

  • median home price reached $375K in June, a 4.2% increase year-over-year
  • Active listings rose 24% from June 2024, giving buyers more choices
  • Properties are staying on the market longer, with a median of 18 days
  • New development expanding in Suffolk, Chesapeake, New Kent and upper James City County

It’s still a sellers’ market in the Hampton Roads region, causing residential to hit all-time highs month after month this year.

In June alone, the median sale price (MSP) for homes sold reached $375,000, according to a market summary from Real Estate Information Network, which is the multiple listing service that covers the region from Williamsburg east through and south across the North Carolina border.

That price is up from $368,900 the previous month and up 4.2% from the MSP of $360,000 in June 2024, according to REIN.

The reason? Not enough properties in the pipeline to meet demand, says Crisney Brooks, the Williamsburg Area Association of Realtors board president and a Realtor at Coldwell Banker Traditions. She advises first-time buyers that getting a sold sign on a property can take time.

“More building is going on, which is good, but even on the resale market, it just isn’t enough,” she says. “It boils down to what price people are willing to pay.”

The supply and demand imbalance will continue to cause prices to climb, but the rate may slow as more inventory hits the market than has been available in past years, says Ryan Price, Virginia Realtors’ chief economist.

Home buyers already are starting to get more choices. Active residential listings during June rose to 5,437. That’s up from 5,276 in May, and up 24% year-over-year from 4,380 in June 2024, according to REIN.

Properties are also staying on the market a bit longer. Median days on market for June was 18, compared to 16 in June 2024, according to REIN.

“It’s a more reasonable market,” says Barbara Wolcott, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices RW Towne Realty and REIN’s board president.

“You’re not getting multiple offers the day it comes on the market. That’s pretty much in the rearview mirror.”

Pending sales in June were down slightly month-over-month — 2,468 compared with 2,582 in May. Still, that was a 15% increase year-over-year from 2,145 in June 2024. Meanwhile, settled sales were up — 2,541 in June compared with 2,445 in May. The number of settled sales in June was an 8% increase year-over-year from the 2,355 reported in June 2024.

Buyers hoping for lower if the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates may be out of luck as lenders consider other factors as well, Price says.

“The reality is these 6% rates are going to be here for a while, but they could drift downward a bit towards the end of the year,” he says.

Affordable property is available, especially in Hampton and Newport News. These houses tend to be older, and many people resist buying there if a commute includes the , says Wolcott.

New houses are being built, and 260 listed with REIN sold last June compared to 224 the previous month. Developers are having to go into more rural parts of the region to find land that’s available and cheaper, but they can offer more amenities and lower price points, she says.

“What I see going on right now in the Suffolk area reminds me of what happened to Chesapeake, where it was mainly farmland,” says Wolcott. “Now development has really picked up [in Suffolk] and some of the outlying parts of Chesapeake.”

Brooks says she sees the same trend in New Kent County and upper James City County, which have some of the last land available for development between Richmond and Hampton Roads’ southern side. Both have attracted major national developers such as D.R. Horton.

“New Kent has certainly taken off,” Brooks says. “I feel like it’s going to be quite bustling over the next 10 years.”

 

Danville invests $3 million to prep Coleman site

In July, City Council members OK’d an infusion of funding for 158 acres on Gypsum Road known as the Coleman site, which is being readied for industry.

In July, council members unanimously agreed to move $3 million from the city’s gas fund to its fund to meet grant matching requirements. City officials say the funding will help attract an enterprise with high-volume energy demands that can be served by the city’s utility infrastructure.

“On occasion, the city council has transferred excess funds from utilities to help spark new investment in the city,” says Danville Mayor Alonzo Jones. “In this case, the $3 million will match over $11 million in grant funds.”

Recruiting heavy utility users to the site will increase revenue and stabilize rates for existing customers, according to Jones.

The Coleman site features “very robust” utility access, including electric, water, gas, fiber and sewer, according to Corrie Teague Bobe, the city’s director of economic development and tourism. It’s close to U.S. Route 58 and is the only rail-served site available for development in Danville.

However, the site, acquired in 2011 by the Industrial Development Authority of Danville, is not shovel-ready.

“The Coleman site was difficult to view due to trees and overgrowth to the extent it was hard to see the property’s potential,” says T. Neal Morris, chairman of the city’s industrial development authority. “Some prospects, when they were shown the property, really liked the location but would not walk due to the vegetation.”

Site preparation, which will include grading 80 acres and constructing an access road, carries a total cost of $17.43 million. The work — which will elevate the site to a Tier 5 certification, the highest level in the state’s Program — is slated for completion in the second quarter of 2026.

The graded pad will have the capacity to support a facility of more than 1 million square feet, according to Bobe.

Of the $11.33 million in grant funding going toward the Coleman site, the Virginia Business Ready Sites Program awarded $9 million, and the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission awarded $2.33 million.

The Coleman site is among more than 65,000 acres of properties available for development in Danville, Pittsylvania County and the town of Hurt. Most of the available land is co-owned and co-marketed by the three localities, according to Bobe.

Sentara College of Health Sciences moving to Virginia Wesleyan

Summary

Beginning in January 2026, the Sentara College of Health Sciences of will begin training regional health sciences professionals.

In April, Sentara Health announced it would be ending its independent Sentara College of Health Sciences’ nursing and non-nursing degree programs, although the Chesapeake-based college planned to continue its nondegree offerings. At the time, Sentara officials said that state and regional universities would pick up the degree programs, in which 385 students were enrolled in April.

VWU — which will be renamed in July 2026, after noted philanthropist Jane Batten — announced in June that it would be the college’s new home. Through summer 2026, all current students will complete their courses of study under the current SCOHS name, and there will be no changes to out-of-pocket costs, courses of study or graduation timelines. By fall 2026, programs will move from Chesapeake to the VWU campus in Virginia Beach.

Both institutions are working on required regulatory and accreditation processes as part of the transition.

“Our shared vision is to prepare the health care  of the future while honoring Sentara College’s deep community ties and proud academic legacy,” Sentara College of Health Sciences President Angela Taylor said in a statement. “We look forward to working closely with Virginia Wesleyan University to create new opportunities for students, expand access to in-demand programs and continue meeting the growing health care workforce needs of our communities.”

Meanwhile, the Hampton Roads area saw a fair amount of health care growth.

Bon Secours Harbour View Medical Center in Suffolk began serving patients in May. This new, 100,000-square-foot, three-story hospital is attached to Bon Secours Health Center at Harbour View and is forecast to serve about 75,000 patients annually. It will have four operating rooms.

In Isle of Wight County, Riverside Health is building a new hospital expected to open in early 2026. The 200,000-square-foot building will include an emergency department, diagnostic imaging services and 50 inpatient beds. A separate 20,000-square-foot medical office building with 40 exam rooms was set to open in September.

In May, Chesapeake Regional Medical Center opened its dedicated psychiatric emergency room, which helps patients in mental health crisis receive aid without being seen in the general ER. The hospital is also adding a 20-bed inpatient psychiatric unit expected to be open early next year.

Meanwhile, Macon & Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences at finished its first year as the new home of the Eastern Virginia Medical School and other health sciences degree programs. In October 2024, the State Council of in Virginia approved the formation of the Joint School of Public Health as a partnership between ODU and Norfolk State University, and will offer classes at the two campuses.

The Veterans Administration’s North Battlefield Clinic opened in Chesapeake in April, but a former local union president representing government employees said at a congressional hearing in July that the facility opened with only 27% of staff because of fewer than usual applications.

Federal Democratic lawmakers, meanwhile, have raised alarms that cuts to Medicaid in President Donald Trump’s budget reconciliation bill passed by Congress earlier this year could cause six rural hospitals in Virginia to close, including Bon Secours Rappahannock General Hospital in Kilmarnock and Bon Secours Southampton Medical Center in Franklin. Republican officials, though, say that there will be fixes available to save the hospitals.

Data centers stir debate in Frederick

In June, the Board of Supervisors voted by consensus against moving forward with applications to build two large . Most supervisors felt that too many unanswered questions surrounded the project’s potential effects. They also saw firsthand the passion that these projects can arouse, as more than 100 people attended the meeting, most to voice their fears over the possibility of data centers ruining the county’s rural landscape.

That meeting may have ended the proposed 644-acre Meadow Brook Technology Park and 105-acre Winchester Gateway 2 data centers, but not the broader debate. In an August session, the supervisors voted 5-2 to green-light a planning commission proposal to produce a fact sheet about data centers.

Working with the county’s authority (EDA), planners will explore issues like site selection, size, water and power needs, noise, job creation, open-space impacts and tax revenues. Frederick Water and the Shenandoah Valley and Rappahannock electrical cooperatives will also be consulted.

Putting together such a fact sheet “won’t require reinventing the wheel,” says Planning Commission Chairman Tim Stowe. Although Frederick currently has just one data center, located near Middletown, it can look to its neighbors for guidance. Loudoun County is home to 199 data centers, with 117 more in the pipeline, while Prince William County reports 44 data centers operating and 15 under development.

Blaine P. Dunn was the lone supervisor in June to vote in favor of further study of the two data center applications. The revenue that data centers can generate could build schools and lower the tax rate, he says, “but that discussion was not discussed.”

As for preserving the county’s rural character, Dunn points to thousands of housing lots entitled to be built, and to Frederick’s burgeoning population being now a shade under 100,000, but almost double what it was in 2000, with 30,000 to 40,000 more residents expected to be added in the next 20 years.

Like Dunn, county EDA Executive Director Patrick Barker recognizes the potential value of having data centers in Frederick. They are one of the most physically productive uses of land, he says, generating long-term and substantial revenue, while requiring minimal public services. However, he says, “the public discussion has been incomplete,” with conflicting information.

“Fact-finding,” Barker says, “will ensure that future conversations are informed.”

 

Don’t import 996: Why America should reject overwork culture

China’s 996 model — 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week — was sold as a path to speed, discipline, and dominance. In reality, it became a case study in how overwork corrodes the very foundation of business success.

People can push themselves for a while, but there’s a ceiling. Past a certain point, more hours don’t mean more output — they mean more fatigue, more mistakes and more medical leave. The research is consistent: Long hours shorten careers and lives. The toll isn’t metaphorical. It’s physical, measurable and permanent.

On paper, 72-hour weeks look like commitment. In practice, they deliver shallow engagement and sloppy execution. Companies eventually discovered that an army of burned-out employees doesn’t innovate, doesn’t solve problems creatively, and doesn’t stay long enough to compound skills. The “hustle” turned out to be theater — activity mistaken for achievement.

Younger workers in have already begun rejecting this model, treating it as outdated and exploitative. In the U.S., where talent mobility is even higher and employee voice carries weight, a 996-style culture would repel the very people companies most need. Burnout doesn’t just hurt performance — it erodes employer brands, drives attrition and makes recruitment more expensive.

China’s own tech giants are backing away. Midea shuts down offices early. DJI enforces lights-out rules. Not because they grew soft, but because the numbers didn’t add up. Overwork drained productivity, wrecked culture and bled talent. If the birthplace of 996 is walking it back, adopting it in the U.S. would be more than misguided — it would be self-sabotage.

High performance doesn’t come from pushing people to the breaking point. It comes from clarity, focus and systems that let people perform at their best without sacrificing their health. Companies that understand this build cultures where people want to stay — and where innovation compounds.

996 isn’t just a bad idea for China. It’s a warning shot for the U.S.: Overwork isn’t competitive advantage. It’s competitive decline disguised as discipline.

Jaime Raul Zepeda is EVP, Principal Consultant for and COLOR Magazine, part of BridgeTower Media. Want managers who maximize effectiveness with clarity, not fear? Let’s talk: [email protected]

Wondering whether your organization is on the right path to win? Talk to us at Best Companies Group so we can analyze your organization’s health, your team dynamics, and your leadership’s effectiveness. We’ve helped over 10,000 companies understand and improve their workplace using data-driven strategies. Send me a note at [email protected].

ODU internship boost preps students for future

Summary

  • ODU aims for every student to complete an internship by 2027
  • Monarch Office has connected with 700+ employers
  • funds 750 humanities student placements

As a creative writing major at , Kayla Boney says she knows jobs in her field after graduation may be “one in a million.”

However, an internship with Teens with a Purpose, a Norfolk-based youth creative arts nonprofit, showed Boney, a 20-year-old rising junior, that her pursuits in the humanities, while challenging, can result in meaningful — and paid — work.

Boney, a Norfolk native and an aspiring screenwriter, volunteered with the organization while attending high school. But it was through an on-campus encounter with representatives from ODU’s , part of the university’s Monarch Internships and Co-Op Office founded in 2023, that she learned she could be paid and also earn academic credits to intern there.

President Brian Hemphill, who has led ODU since 2021, says the idea to launch an office solely dedicated to connecting students to internships or other work-based learning opportunities came from conversations with business leaders in the community during his first year on the job.

“I would come back to campus and have that realization … [that] we don’t have the infrastructure right now as it stands,” he says. “We didn’t have the infrastructure to spin up quickly and address some of those concerns and needs that they have, and that’s why we launched this particular operation and made the investment.”

Boney is one of about 2,500 students that ODU has tracked through its Monarch Internships and Co-op Office. Launched in 2023, the office is building on an ODU goal to have each of its approximate 24,000 students, including more than 17,000 undergraduates, complete one internship, work-based learning program or co-op experience by 2027.

“Employers, students, faculty, they realize that when you host an intern during their degree program, then you’ve got first shot at great talent,” says Barbara Blake, who has led ODU’s internships office since its inception.

Hemphill says ODU’s internships office is the first of its kind in the state, and the university has convened two meetings with business and industry leaders and faculty stakeholders, including one that drew Gov. Glenn Youngkin as a speaker, as it looks to address gaps in industries including health care, engineering, data sciences and more.

Meanwhile, the president has been busy integrating the formerly independent Eastern Virginia Medical School under the university’s new Macon and Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences umbrella.

Following the 2024 merger, the Brock hub includes five schools and colleges, comprising more than 50 academic majors, to form the largest health sciences program in the state.

In April, ODU broke ground on a $184 million biological sciences building, which includes labs, a 120-seat lecture hall, an orchid conservatory, classrooms and other facilities and represents the university’s largest capital construction project to date. It’s expected to be completed in spring 2028.

Positioned for success

Since launching the internships office, Blake has led a team of faculty to build a central database launched this fall to track internships university-wide.

While the goal of the office is to help students land an internship or experience that can lead to valuable full-time employment after graduation, it is also emerging as an important tool for , a region that is already working hard to attract and retain top talent. Blake says her office has worked with at least 700 businesses — from Fortune 500 corporations to mom-and-pop operations — to build a “one-stop shop” to link interns with employers, including helping some employers that don’t have money to pay an intern to find grants to do so.

In the old days, interns often worked for free, and that served as a gatekeeper for less affluent students who needed summer and after-school jobs to make ends meet. To help students get experience in their fields, no matter their financial background, ODU and many other universities have applied for and won funding to subsidize paid internships with participating workplaces.

In 2024, The Mellon Foundation announced a $5 million grant for ODU to develop the Monarch Humanities Internship Academy, which will place 750 humanities students in internships over five years, including providing stipends for interns.

The office also has also partnered with the Council to build an apprenticeship pipeline around maritime logistics and supply chain, cybersecurity and K-12 education.

The State Council of for Virginia also awarded ODU a two-year $100,000 grant to pilot the Federal Work-Study Internship Program, which started last fall.

Paid internships in Hampton Roads range from about $14 to $24 an hour, with some interns with engineering backgrounds making up to $28 an hour, Blake says, and some employers may have simultaneous needs, including for interns with engineering, accounting and technical writing backgrounds.

“How do I have those needs met?” Blake asks. “They can come to us. We write up the prospectus. We draw in the faculty. We work on the student placement end, and that has been the most exciting work, because the employers absolutely love it.”

HEARD AROUND VIRGINIA

McLean identity verification tech company ID.me has raised $340 million via Series E financing and its recent credit facility, according to a Sept. 3 announcement. The funding raises the company’s valuation to more than $2 billion. Ribbit Capital led the round, with participation from existing investors Ares Management credit funds and Moonshots Capital and new investors like Positive Sum. ID.me has 152 million users and works with 20 federal agencies and 45 state agencies, among other organizations. The company creates “digital identity wallets” allowing users to verify their identities with ID.me and then sign in across websites without verifying their identities again. (News release)

Shift5 landed $75 million in new funding to fuel research and development and marketing for products that monitor and protect defense and systems, the Arlington cybersecurity startup announced Sept. 3. The funding brings Shift5’s total outside investment to $185 million since its founding in 2018. Hedosophia — a London-based venture capital firm that was an early backer of Uber Technologies, Spotify Technology and Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group — led the Series C funding round. The venture arm of McLean-based Booz Allen Hamilton, Baltimore’s Squadra Ventures and New York investment firm Insight Partners participated as repeat investors. (DC Inno)

McLean investment firm Veteran Ventures Capital raised $60 million, according to a mid-August news release. It will use the funding to deploy equity investments into about 15 defense and civilian technology startup companies in the next few years, backing Series A startups generating at least $1 million in annual revenue by offering investments between $1 million and $6 million on average. Founder and Managing Partner Derren Burrell said it took VVC about a year to raise the fund, a fraction of the time it took to raise its inaugural $20 million fund. (DC Inno)

A new initiative between Virginia Innovation Partnership Corp. and Virginia’s six Research 1 (R1) universities aims to double the number of startups coming from the universities each year. The Lab-to-Launch initiative intends to help technology breakthroughs quickly enter the marketplace, according to an August news release from the governor’s office. The initiative’s components will be launching throughout the school year. Lab-to-Launch has two core pillars, said VIPC President and CEO Joe Benevento: The first is creating a standardized fast-track license agreement to commercialize university research. The other is expanding private sector collaboration with Virginia university commercialization. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

PEOPLE

Richmond tech accelerator Activation Capital appointed Michael Steele as president and CEO, it announced Aug. 26. He succeeds Robert Ward, who had served as interim CEO since July 2024. Ward took on the role following the departure of Chandra Briggman, who left to pursue other opportunities. Activation Capital is an accelerator arm of the Virginia Biotechnology Research Partnership Authority, a subdivision of the state government. The accelerator aims to commercialize local biohealth research and build a biohealth entrepreneurship hub in Central Virginia. Steele has held senior leadership positions at Biocartis, Chembio Diagnostics, SeraCare Life Sciences and Serologicals. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

McLean-based health care tech startup Zephyr AI announced in late August it had appointed Allen Chao as its new CEO and acquired Tampa, Florida-based oncology data company Aster Insights, which is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Zephyr. Chao, who has over 40 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, succeeds Jeff Sherman, Zephyr’s co-founder and chief technology officer, who served as CEO in an interim capacity for more than a year. Chao founded Watson Pharmaceuticals in 1984 and served as its CEO and chairman until 2008. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Top Five: October 2025

The most-read daily news stories on VirginiaBusiness.com from Aug. 9 through Sept. 9 included news of a new medical school launching at the University of Mary Washington.

1 | Virginia Chamber CEO resigns after 4 months
After serving as the of Commerce’s president and CEO since April 1, Cathie Vick left to pursue other opportunities. (Aug. 12)

2 | Mary Washington Healthcare, UMW plan to launch medical school
and the University of Mary Washington plan to launch a new medical school, a move designed to address a shortage of physicians in the Fredericksburg region. (Aug. 20)

3 | U.S. government halts nearly complete offshore wind farm. Is Virginia’s next?
After the ordered a halt to work on a $4 billion farm off the coast of Rhode Island and Connecticut, Virginians wondered if ‘s $10.9 billion Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind could face similar peril. (Aug. 25)

4 | Ex-Virginia House Speaker Gilbert resigns as U.S. attorney after 1 month
Todd Gilbert, the former Republican speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, resigned Aug. 20 as U.S attorney for the Western District of Virginia. (Aug. 21)

5 | Trump administration withdraws $39.27 million for Norfolk offshore wind project
The Trump administration withdrew $39.27 million in federal funding that had previously been awarded for an offshore wind logistics port in Norfolk and attempted to terminate $20 million in funding for a project that had already been completed in Portsmouth. (Sept. 2)

Virginia 500 October 2025 Spotlight: CHRIS KEFFER

FIRST JOB: Washing dishes at the local restaurant

INTERESTING PLACES I’VE TRAVELED: The Exumas and Abacos, super cool island chains that are part of the Bahamas

MOST VALUED POSSESSION: Babe Ruth autographed baseball given to me by my grandmother

ADVICE FOR NEW COLLEGE GRADS: Show up early to work, take on hard projects and demonstrate where you can add value. Don’t complain unless you have a solution.

WHAT PEOPLE WOULD BE SURPRISED TO LEARN ABOUT ME: I am a fairly solid cook.

WHAT I DO FOR FUN: We are a boating family and love getting out on the water. Racquet sports are also a hobby.

DID YOU KNOW? Prior to leading U.S. operations for German and manufacturer , Keffer spent 27 years at Stanley Black & Decker, where he was the company’s president of product management for the power tools group.

Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel expansion nears final stages

Summary

Officials expect the $3.9 billion Bridge-Tunnel  expansion project to be substantially complete by February 2027, after years of boring underwater tunnels and widening lanes on land.

Currently, more than 2,000 workers are toiling on the state’s largest highway project daily, “and we’re not at our peak yet,” says Ryan Banas, the project director.

In coming months, as construction of the tunnels wraps up, workers will start building 19 tunnel support buildings.

“Those structures are really important,” Banas says. “They provide room for all of our mechanical electrical equipment and house our operators who run the tunnels. That’s a really, really important job. They sit in a control room, they can respond to incidents in the tunnel on the approach bridges, shutting down lanes [when necessary], bringing in emergency services.”

When that work ramps up, likely this fall, the number of people working on the project daily will increase to about 2,400, Banas says.

In 2020, the Virginia Department of contracted with , a joint venture led by FlatironDragados, to start expanding the bridge-tunnel that connects Hampton and Norfolk. The project, which was supposed to be completed in 2025, widens four-lane segments of the 9.9-mile corridor to six lanes on land and eight underwater with twin two-lane tunnels. Connecting roads also will have additional lanes.

“In the early fall we’ll be shifting traffic onto our new eight-lane bridge,” Banas says. “Two lanes of our existing traffic will move onto that new eight-lane bridge. Crews have been working really hard on the existing shoulder of the existing roadway, widening that roadway, building mechanically stabilized earth walls, making drainage improvements, constructing overhead sign structures and guardrails — all of the safety features necessary.”

Much of the recent work on the bridge-tunnel has been conducted by Mary, the massive tunnel boring machine (TBM) constructed in Germany specifically for the HRBT’s expansion.

The $70 million piece of equipment is named after Mary Winston Jackson, a NASA scientist whose work was depicted in the 2016 film “Hidden Figures” about Jackson and two other Black female NASA scientists during the space race.

Mary the tunnel boring machine is roughly the height of a three-story building and the length of a football field. In April 2024 the machine began digging the first tunnel, and then took five months to be turned around to start digging the second tunnel, which Banas expected to be completed in September. Ultimately the second tunnel will have 1,193 interconnected high-strength concrete rings, Banas says.

This is an entirely different process than from 1952 to 2016, when would immerse tube tunnels underwater for automobile traffic.

“Simply put, they are long concrete pipes about 300 to 350 feet in length,” Banas says. “We use traditional dredging equipment, we dredge out the bay bottom, we bring in those tubes and we immerse them in place, we connect them end to end, and that’s how you construct the tunnel.”

Today, Mary excavates the bay bottom, and workers install interconnected tunnel liners, creating the tunnel as Mary continues mining. Banas notes that the tunnel liners are subjected to strict quality control to ensure they form a watertight, durable tunnel.

Banas describes the rings, which have nine segments, as “puzzle pieces. I have a 5-year-old at home. I remind him that all tunneling and all civil engineering is really building with big Legos. So, each of those nine pieces is a 20,000-pound segment that we build in a very specific order to construct a watertight tunnel.”

Once Mary’s work is completed, probably in the early fall, the machine will be dismantled and sold for parts. “Some of her electrical systems, hydraulic systems, rams, motors will be recycled,” Banas says.

“They’ll be repurposed, taken back to the manufacturer, refurbished and potentially used on additional machines. We’ll be parting ways with Mary, but her legacy will long live behind her.”