Today, we are talking about the pros and the cons of living in Hampton, Virginia, and it starts right now. I’m Jonathan and this is my wife and partner, Rachel, and we are local real estate brokers here in Hampton and the Greater Hampton Roads area. I actually grew up in Hampton and moved with my family at age 15, but I spent the first 15 years of my life in Hampton, so kind of excited to tell you a little bit about it. I ended up coming back to this area, moving from Pennsylvania back here to the Hampton Roads and settle down. This lovely lady started a family so super pumped about this VIDEO.
If this is your first time on our channel, please don’t feel pressured to subscribe just yet. We really want to earn every subscription that we get. So if you subscribe, we know that it means you watch maybe more than one video and you’re like the content that we’re putting out. So if this is your first time. Just kick back, relax. We hope the content is valuable to you, and maybe you’ll be back and next time, subscribe if you like what you’re seeing. So for now, let’s get into it.
Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel
Con number one. So if you talk to pretty much any of the locals around here, you’re going to hear one thing that will be almost universally applicable and it’s going to turn into a bitch fest. It’s called the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel. Oh Lord, and everyone hates it. OK. It’s just a fact of life. We’re not going to sugarcoat it. The traffic there can be brutal, and I would also add that the complaining is not without merit because it’s ridiculous. The traffic is ridiculous at times, so it is what it is. I remember a couple of months ago I was driving through on a Sunday afternoon at 2:30 p.m. and I’m wondering why is there traffic like? How could there be traffic at 2:00 p.m. on a Sunday? Yeah, it’s Silly.
And then I remembered that the quality of your life is commensurate with the quality of your questions. So I ask myself, how can I enjoy this hour and a half that I’m about to get to enjoy in my car? So such is the life with the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel.
I remember a couple of months ago I was driving through on a Sunday afternoon at 2:30 p.m. and I’m wondering why is there traffic like? How could there be traffic at 2:00 p.m. on a Sunday? Yeah, it’s Silly. And then I remembered that the quality of your life is commensurate with the quality of your questions. So I ask myself, how can I enjoy this hour and a half that I’m about to get to enjoy in my car? So such is the life with the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel.
Everything is contextual right there, so we have family that lives in New York, and when we tell them about our traffic, they sort of laugh to themselves like a battle hardened veteran silently mocking the new recruit. Like, Oh, poor life for poor you. Everything’s relative. But it’s fair to say on a really bad day, you could take an hour to get through that tunnel. On average, it’s probably going to take you ten or 15 minutes, probably 30 minutes if you’re anywhere near rush hour.
So just take that into consideration if you’re driving back and forth between Hampton and Norfolk. So when you look on a map, it doesn’t actually look that far, which is why it’s a little baffling that it takes so long to get through there. Anyway, moving on, the good thing about this is that it has a ripple effect and actually creates some pros, which has to do with real estate prices, and we’ll talk about that shortly. But what’s Con number Two?
Hampton Crime
Con number two would be crime. Crime tends to be on the higher end when compared to other cities in Hampton Roads, also similar to places like Portsmouth and Norfolk. So just because you’re in one part of town might be a little bit rough. Doesn’t mean that it feels that way everywhere else in the city. So you have to do your research. The crime is higher in some places and it tends to be localized pockets. So unfortunately, that can tend to give Hampton a bad rep.
But if you’re from Hampton, you feel like it’s a bit exaggerated and even seems unwarranted to some extent. So don’t take someone’s word for it as gospel truth for every part of the city. Yeah, it’s kind of like a rumor mill thing. If people haven’t actually lived there, don’t just blindly accept their opinion of the people that live there can probably guide you a lot more. So make those phone calls.
There’s also a variety of websites you can check out with really detailed crime maps that tell you where crimes happening, where crimes are happening more frequently, and even what types of crimes are being committed. So that’s something is very valuable. Spent some time on Google looking at those maps and figuring out what you feel you’re comfortable with, but certainly don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. On Hampton, there’s a lot of great areas. When you look at the crime statistics city wide, you’ll find that crime is just marginally higher than the national average. For a city of that size and population.
Lack if Night Life
Con number three is going to be nightlife. Or should I say, the lack thereof? Not a lot of partying going down in Hampton past midnight, you know, so if you’re a night owl, you know, if you like having fun concerts, that kind of thing, just assume that you’re going to have to drive to say, Norfolk or Virginia Beach or maybe downtown Portsmouth to get those kicks in. Or if you don’t want to go through a tunnel, you could head north and go up to Williamsburg because there’s some cool stuff to do up there as well. But Hampton, by and large, has a little bit more of a relaxed feel compared to Norfolk and Virginia Beach.
School Rankings
So that takes us to number four. According to both niche.com and Greatschools.org, the schools are on the lower range of the other cities and Hampton Roads. So as a matter of fact, niche.com has a lot of the Hampton. Public Schools ranked in the lower half of the entire Hampton Roads area. So keep that in mind. If you’re going to be moving there and putting your kids into the public schools, check out the specific schools and do your research to make sure your kids are getting the mental nourishment that they deserve. Now, that was a lot of big cons, but ironically, a lot of those cons add up to one big pro. Oh, and that is that living in that was good timing.
Low Real Estate Cost
Living in Hampton affords that opportunity to sort of purchase real estate at a discount when compared to other parts of Hampton Roads. So really at the height of the value scale is Portsmouth on the south side and Hampton Roads on the peninsula side. So particularly if you want to live near the beach, you really should check out Hampton because you can save literally hundreds of thousands of dollars if you’re just wanting to be within walking distance of a nice sandy beach with the sunshine in your face. So the thing that’s tough when comparing Hampton to say other areas is that no two locations and no two houses are exactly the same. So you really need to get a feel for the area. I would take Drive through Buckroe Beach in particular, all the cool little water spots and beach spots just to see if this suits your fancy. If it does, on average, you could probably say 15 to 25% when compared to deep water access or other sort of beach spots in Norfolk and Virginia Beach. So it’s a sliding scale. There’s no set number again, because no two locations are alike.
But if you work on the south side and you want to save a little bit of money on your real estate prices, you certainly should check out Hampton and compare those two. You need to be quick to act. The market is still very competitive. It’s an aggressive market still in Hampton. Prices are reasonable by comparison to the surrounding cities, which creates a lot of demand. So we’re still seeing our listings in Hampton get multiple offers some time with wave contingencies.
We had two this week where people made offers and didn’t ask for a home inspection, so you still need to have an action bias. When you find the house that you really like, you got to make it happen. You got to come in with a strong offer. We’ve seen approximately 11% year over year appreciation. So houses continue to get more and more valuable, about 1% on average. Above list price is where we’re seeing contracts coming out, so people are still coming in high.
Well Kept Secrets
But if you have an effective broker negotiating for you, those are things that you can navigate and hopefully get the deal that is right for you and your family. So I would say Big Picture Hampton is going to continue to see appreciation. Demand is still very high. We’ve seen an appreciation for many, many consecutive months and years at this point, and because it’s insulated with really good bang for your buck, I think Hampton still a really good buy, so we’ll get to see where this goes. But that’s my bet. Another pro, depending on your personality and what you value, is that it’s a slower pace than its neighboring cities. Although I will say they’ve done an awesome job of building up the downtown area and the Coliseum area, and they’ve done it in a really brief amount of time. So there are some great restaurants and a lot of things to do in those areas.
Which brings us to another pro. Yeah, another pro is that the stuff that’s really cool about Hampton are like, really well kept secret. So again, that’s why I encourage everyone. Don’t take advice from somebody that hasn’t lived in Hampton, because what they don’t know is what they don’t know where I should. I say they don’t know what they don’t know. So the first one that would come to mind would be the Black Beard Festival, which is essentially a big, big party that they have downtown. They set up a reenactment of lifestyle in the early 1700s in Hampton. It’s been a staple of Hampton for a long time, and it’s just a really, really good time. Very cool.
You can kind of time travel and act a little youthful if you’re into that sort of thing. Another hidden gem, like we’d mentioned earlier, is Buckroe Beach. We refer to it as a hidden gem because it’s not nearly as busy as the Virginia Beach oceanfront, and it’s also essentially not commercialized at all. Very few tourists visit there or go there. So if you like sunshine, the sand and the water and you don’t mind a smaller beach, Buckroe is a great alternative. And again, prices can be amazing. We’ve actually thought about trying to purchase an Airbnb or like a sort of a second home that we could use as a rental. So it’s something that might still be in the cards, although the Outer Banks is only an hour and a half away, so I’m still not sure about which direction we’re going to go, but we’ll keep you updated.
Another best kept secret in Hampton is the Virginia Air and Space Center. It boasts literally hundreds of space exhibits, and the aircraft exhibits are a lot of fun, especially for kids like it’s a must go and must see. It also serves as the visitor center for NASA’s Langley Research Center and Langley Air Force Base, and has one of the precious few IMAX theaters in the area. I think we probably watched Pearl Harbor when it came out. That kind of dates us a little bit, but it’s huge and it’s an awesome place to go, see a really cool movie.
Another really cool thing about Hampton is just its history in general, and there’s nothing richer in history in terms of Hampton than Fort Monroe. Really, really cool place that you have to go visit. Actually, Fort Monroe isn’t just central to Hamptons. History is essential to American history, it’s a decommissioned military installation. It’s had significant placement in history in the War of 1812 in the Civil War. It actually used to be referred to as old point comfort, and for more than 400 years, it was a maritime navigational landmark and a military stronghold. Did you know it was discovered at the same time as Jamestown? in 1607.
I didn’t know that till I did research on this video, but I thought that was a cool factoid and again was a significant piece in both the war in 1812. I think it was like a staging point for the British attack in 1812 and in. As well as the Civil War, so 14 active and former presidents have visited the place. It’s a beautiful landscape, has 565 acres of land and over 70 buildings.
My personal favorite is the Chamberlain Hotel or the Chamberlain, as it’s called, now visited there all the time as a kid. It’s a 55 and over adult community now, but it used to be an active hotel and there are a ton of local folklore tales that ghosts of former slaves and the dead soldiers of the Civil War in their state of unrest roam the hotel and made noises and terrorize the guests. There’s actually been TV shows and various reports on paranormal things and activities there. I don’t really get into that stuff, but makes for a really cool storytelling and interesting local trivia.
So the locals that have been here a long time will definitely remember the Chamberlain Hotel overlooking the Chesapeake Bay, and they used to serve this killer brunch. All that stuff’s gone now, but it still makes for great sightseeing, and so I would definitely recommend you check it out. There’s also a landmark for the first African-Americans to North America right there at Fort Monroe. They came over on a ship called the White Line, and it landed in 1619. So Hampton is very rich with African-American history and not just in Fort Monroe.
Hampton University
True, Hampton has Hampton University, which is one of the oldest and most well known African-American universities in America. It was founded in 1868, and it has seen its fair share of notable graduates, which are the most prominent one would be a Booker T Washington. Langley Air Force Base and other government run facilities are noteworthy as well. Langley is one of the oldest air force bases in America. It’s also the home of NASA Langley Research Center and the headquarters for the CIA. Well, yeah, a little Mission Impossible stuff. Ethan Hunt.
For my sports boss Hampton has been stacked with tremendous high school talent Allen Iverson and Alonzo Mourning J.R. Reed. If you’re ACC fan. Chris Slade, he plays some football back in the day. JJ Redick, I think he just retired and ton of great talent has come through here. Michael Vick actually is from right up the road in Newport News, like 5-10 minutes away from Hampton and just a ridiculous amount of sports. And, you know, pro caliber talent has been raised up right here in Hampton. So true.
Hampton Coliseum
One more thing that you should know about Hampton is the Hampton Coliseum is there. It’s one of the biggest venue for events and concerts in the area. You’ll see people like Beyoncé or I can date myself. I saw Pearl Jam. There I saw Fish there. Eric Church, saw Stone Temple pilots Basically all the grunge bands from the 90’s that was back in the nineties out there. That was a show. Yes, and a lot of comedians come through there as well. So it’s definitely a place that well-known people come from other areas in Virginia and other areas of even North Carolina.
What about some food recommendations? Yeah. How about Dead Rise at Fort Monroe? Actually really cool. Seafood place delicious. The seafood burrito is exquisite. Either that or the crab cakes platter, that’s that’s a good one as well. But yeah, Dead Rise is my favorite place. Mine would be Bar Louie, so well, I mean, I really like it. We went there a couple of times and really enjoyed the atmosphere.
The people were awesome and the food was really, really good. It’s right there in that central area of the Coliseum, which there is a ton of restaurants within walking distance there also. So you’re sure to be able to find something that you’re going to love for sure.
We are Jonathan and Rachel Beasley of That Fit Team professionals in real estate and passionate about people hope to see you next week.