Community land trust expands footprint into Chesterfield: Unoccupied homes will be renovated and sold

CHESTERFIELD — The Maggie Walker Community Land Trust recently closed on its first home in Chesterfield County.

The land trust will repair and rehabilitate a vacant home at 5616 S. Melbeck Road and sell it to a new homeowner later this year. Funding will come from a federal Community Development Block Grant. The funding will also allow the land trust to purchase, repair and sell additional unoccupied homes this year. Melbeck Road is located west of Route 10 and south of Route 150.

Under the community land trust model, each home remains permanently affordable through the program’s long-term ground lease and equity-sharing agreement. When a land trust home is purchased, the trust retains ownership of the land, thus reducing mortgage and down-payment costs.

When a homeowner decides to sell, the land trust and homeowner share the increase in value, ensuring that the home will remain affordable for all future home buyers.

Nationwide, hundreds of community land trusts have successfully expanded home ownership opportunities, especially in neighborhoods where rising real estate prices make it difficult for some families to purchase their own homes. The land trust is the second community land trust in Virginia and the first in the Richmond region.

Since 2017, the Maggie Walker Community Land Trust has developed homes in the fast-changing Richmond neighborhoods of Church Hill, Barton Heights and Randolph, selling to households earning between 50 percent and 115 percent of area’s median income.

Under the current program, land trust homes in Chesterfield will be sold to households earning 80 percent of the area’s median income and below.

“Chesterfield County is committed to increasing home ownership opportunity and we see great potential for the land trust’s model of perpetual affordability to help with this goal,” said Dan Cohen, director of the county’s Community Enhancement Department.