The North End - Virginia Beach Neighborhoods

If your idea of living in Virginia Beach is waking up in the morning and walking down a quiet street to a boardwalk that goes through the dunes and opens up to a deserted beach as far as the eye can see, then you want The North End. Virginia Beach is unique because it is one of the only mid-Atlantic year round beach towns. There’s nothing like it on the East Coast for hundreds of miles, north or south. You get the beach and all the benefits that come with living in the largest city in Virginia. The North End is the neighborhood at the north end of the beaches on the Atlantic Ocean right before the coastline turns west into the Chesapeake Bay. It’s about 3 miles long and two blocks wide, so matter where you are, you’re less than two blocks from the beach. It’s almost entirely residential and there are barely any tourists. But it’s not isolated. There’s a Whole Foods, Trader Joes, and Fresh Market 10 minutes away. The North End is more expensive than other neighborhoods, but there is great value here.

Home Prices in The North End

Prices range from about four hundred thousand for a small condo to several million dollars for a house on the beach. That said, most of the homes sold are from five hundred thousand to one point five million dollars, with the median around eight hundred thousand dollars. Check out the North End web page at William Layton dot com to see the homes currently on the market.

The houses on the beach block cost more than the homes on the west side of Atlantic Ave, which gets a fair amount of traffic. It’s arguably easier to walk to the beach when you’re not playing Frogger across Atlantic Ave and the prices reflect this. That said, it’s only 4 lanes at 35 miles per hour. And every block is a dead end street which keeps traffic to a minimum. One of the best things about the North End, and the worst, is the difficulty finding a parking spot on the street. Beach locals world wide are known for their disdain of tourists, and the North End is no different. It’s much easier to find a parking spot at one of the parking garages at the ocean front and the locals want to keep it that way.

Surprisingly enough, there are plenty of newer homes and duplexes even though the neighborhood has been completely built out for decades. Some of these are old beach bungalows that have been torn down and replaced with brand new three story duplexes. The kitchen and living area are usually on the second or third floor and there’s usually a garage, bedroom, and full bath on the first floor. Many have elevators, or at least a shaft plumbed for an elevator, ready for the day your knees can’t take the stairs anymore.  That said, there is no shortage of classic beach cottages. In the real estate world, classic can sometimes mean, needs work. Just giving you a heads up for when you see that price that seems too good to be true. It’s true. That price means it truly needs some work. Sometimes it needs so much work that it’s better to tear it down and build a duplex.

The Cavalier Hotel

The Cavalier Hotel is at the south end of The North End. It was completely remodeled back in twenty fifteenish and the grounds around it were developed. So you’ll find newer homes here, too. In my Beach Living Video, watch it if you haven’t. link below, I say that East Beach takes the top spot for most beautiful neighborhood. That’s only because the Cavalier is a little bit too small to be called a neighborhood. Whatever you want to call it, it’s more beautiful that East Beach. Everything about it is great. It makes me proud to have a place like this in Virginia Beach. Membership at the beach club at the Marriot across the street is included with your homeowner dues. And don’t miss the view from Orion’s Roof. We don’t have many high rise roof top restaurants in the area, so the view itself is worth it. On a clear night, you can see the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel meet the Delmarva Peninsula 30 miles away.  When you come visit, I’ll show you around.

The North End, Virginia Beach

If you are considering the North End, it’s because you want to live within walking distance of the beach. The sand is a hundred yards wide. In beach speak, that’s really wide. And the dunes are elevated and established. The North End is on high ground so flooding isn’t an issue like it can be elsewhere. It’s quiet and residential but within biking distance to restaurants and shopping. While you’ll see weekly beach renters during the summer, the beach feels much emptier than further south where tourists from the high rise hotels and day trippers squeeze in next to each other. Compared to the boardwalk area at the oceanfront, the North End makes it feel like you have stepped back in time.

When we first moved to Virginia Beach from Japan back in 2004, we rented a place in The North End for a couple months while we were house hunting. We had a seventy degree day in January and my wife and I walked on the beach barefoot. Of course it was colder the next day, but my point is, where are you going to find a year round beach town around here where you want to walk on the beach in January? This is it. The next closest place on the East Coast is 300 miles to the south. 

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