A Dunlora listing says "Charlottesville, VA 22901." The real estate tax bill on that home comes from Albemarle County. So do the voter precinct and the market statistics that describe how much leverage a buyer has there. Buyers who size up Dunlora with the city's numbers are reading another market's report, and this fall the two markets moved in opposite directions.
In August 2026, Albemarle County had 4.4 months of housing supply. The City of Charlottesville had 3.0. A year earlier the order was reversed. If you're comparing close-in neighborhoods off Rio Road East, that flip matters more than any median price on the portals.
The precinct map settles where Dunlora sits
The mailing address is a postal convenience. The jurisdiction is a separate question, and Albemarle County answers it directly. On the county's Where to Vote page, Dunlora is Precinct 105 in the Rio District, and it votes at the Charlottesville-Albemarle Technical Education Center at 1000 East Rio Road. The county's development records are filed the same way. Albemarle's planning files list Dunlora Park Phase II at 915 Dunlora Drive as an approved project.
That's why the right comparison for Dunlora is the Albemarle County line in the regional data, not the Charlottesville line.
A year ago, the city was the tighter market for buyers. Now the county is looser.
The Charlottesville Area Association of REALTORS publishes monthly figures for each locality. The most recent monthly report CAAR had posted by mid-October covers August 2026. Here is how the two jurisdictions compared that month against August 2025, from the CAAR August 2026 Market Indicators Report:
| August, year over year | Albemarle County | City of Charlottesville |
|---|---|---|
| New listings | 168 → 232, up 38.1% | 53 → 54, up 1.9% |
| Closed sales | 136 → 114, down 16.2% | 26 → 26, unchanged |
| Median sales price | $544,678 → $582,770, up 7.0% | $492,750 → $485,000, down 1.6% |
| Active listings | 400 → 559, up 39.8% | 118 → 113, down 4.2% |
| Months of supply | 2.9 → 4.4 | 3.8 → 3.0 |
Read the bottom row first. In August 2025, a Dunlora buyer was shopping in a county market with under three months of supply, while the city had more slack. By August 2026, sellers in the county were listing far faster than buyers were closing. New listings jumped by more than a third, closings fell, and unsold inventory piled up to 559 active listings. The city went the other way, with slightly fewer homes for sale and less supply than a year earlier.
A buyer who reads a city headline about tightening inventory and then writes a Dunlora offer as if every listing will draw a crowd is pricing in competition the county numbers don't show. Months of supply measures how long the current inventory would last at the current pace of sales. At 4.4 months, the county had far more homes waiting than it did a year earlier, and that's where negotiating room comes from.
This also shows up in WVIR's coverage. 29News reported on CAAR's second-quarter figures that buyers had more choices and more time to consider homes, while affordability remained a hurdle. In that same Q2 report, Albemarle's active listings stood at 539, up from 370 a year earlier, a 45.7% increase. So the August build-up continued a trend that had been running since spring.
Why the county median rose while sales fell
Albemarle's median sales price climbed 7.0% to $582,770 in August 2026 even as supply rose and sales fell, and the explanation is in which homes sold. A median describes the homes that sold that month, and that mix shifts. It doesn't track what any one house is worth. Across CAAR's six-locality footprint, detached homes accounted for 287 August sales at a $500,000 median, up 7.5% from a year earlier. Townhomes and condos went the other direction. Only 26 sold, at a $260,000 median that was down 14.8%. Active townhome and condo listings rose 55.3% to 118, which works out to 5.0 months of supply.
Twenty-six sales is a small sample, and one month of townhome data can swing on a handful of closings. The direction still fits everything else. When a month's sales lean toward larger detached homes and the attached segment thins out, the median rises even if no individual house got more expensive. If you're touring Dunlora's attached homes and detached homes on the same weekend, the regional numbers suggest those two segments are behaving differently right now. One headline median hides that.
Regional pending sales add one more signal. Across the CAAR footprint, August closings fell 12.6% to 313, yet pending sales rose 6.3% to 337. Pending contracts are deals that haven't closed yet, so more of them in August point to more closings landing this fall. Buyers are still signing contracts. They just have more to choose from.
The tax line moves in Dunlora's favor too
The same jurisdiction question shows up on the annual bill. Albemarle's Board of Supervisors adopted a calendar year 2026 real property tax rate of $0.894 per $100 of assessed value. Charlottesville City Council's FY2027 budget raised the city rate from $0.98 to $0.99 per $100, according to Cville Right Now.
As a simple illustration using August 2026's Albemarle median of $582,770 as the assessed value, the county rate works out to about $5,210 a year and the city rate to about $5,769. That's a gap of roughly $560 on the same number. Both rates are set per $100 of assessed value, so a real bill follows the assessment rather than this illustration.
Assessments are moving at different speeds as well. Albemarle's average 2026 reassessment rose 6.17%, Information Charlottesville reported. In the city, the overall 2026 increase was 3.72%, with residential assessments up 4.2%, according to the same outlet. So the county's lower rate is being applied to values that rose faster this year. This is general information about published rates, not tax advice. Please confirm your own figures with the county or a tax professional.
What could add supply along Rio Road East
The county-wide inventory surge is a resale story for now. New construction across the CAAR region slowed, with 52 new-construction sales in August 2026, down 32.5% from a year earlier. Closer to Dunlora, a few named projects show what the next layer of supply could look like:
- Dunlora Park Phase II, 915 Dunlora Drive. Albemarle's records show the major site plan approved with a final date of April 18, 2023. An August 2024 Albemarle County Service Authority board packet describes water and sewer extensions to serve nine single-family attached homes.
- Lochlyn Commons, 470 and 480 East Rio Road. The Housing Lab's rezoning request now proposes 70 units, 56 three-bedroom homes and 14 studios, down from an original 75. In December 2025, county staff wrote that the proposed density was double what the Comprehensive Plan and Places29 Master Plan recommend. The deferral expires December 16, 2026, Information Charlottesville reported in August.
- 535 Rio Road East. An April 2025 site plan filing proposed 17 attached single-family homes as a by-right project near the city border, per Information Charlottesville.
Every project on that list is small, still in review, or approved without a public sales timeline. None of them is large enough to account for this year's jump in county listings. And because those projects are mostly attached homes, any that move forward would add to the segment that already had 5.0 months of regional supply in August.
A few questions we hear often
Does a 22901 address mean a home is in the city? No. Dunlora uses a Charlottesville mailing address, but Albemarle County lists it as Precinct 105 in its Rio District. The county's precinct list and your property's tax record are the reliable places to check.
Are there Dunlora-only market statistics? CAAR reports by locality, not by subdivision, so the Albemarle County figures are the closest published benchmark. Recent comparable sales inside the neighborhood fill in the rest, and we pull those for every pricing conversation.
Will September's numbers change this picture? CAAR's September and third-quarter reports hadn't been posted as of mid-October. When they come out, the two rows to watch are Albemarle's months of supply and its active listings, since those drove the August shift.
If you're weighing Dunlora against a neighborhood inside the city line, we'll put the Albemarle and Charlottesville numbers side by side for the homes you're actually considering, along with the tax math for each address. Better Homes & Gardens Pathways can also tell you what your current home would bring in today's county market. Request your free home valuation.
