Data Sources & Methodology
Last updated: July 3, 2026
Every number on VaHome.com has a named source, and this page lists all of them. Where a value is missing from the source, we hide the field — we never fake, interpolate, or guess a number to fill a layout.
REIN MLS (Real Estate Information Network, Inc.)
Listings, prices, statuses, photos, open houses, and sold records for Hampton Roads. Displayed under REIN broker-member rules with attribution on every listing.
Update cadence: VaHome.com re-syncs the REIN feed every 5 minutes, around the clock. (REIN describes its own database as updating daily; our 5-minute cadence is how often we pull those updates.)
City assessor records (Hampton Roads regional parcel data)
Assessed values with land/improvement breakdown, parcel IDs, and links to each city assessor for full history.
Update cadence: Refreshed periodically from public records; each listing shows when its assessor data was fetched.
FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer
Official flood-zone designations and Base Flood Elevations (BFE) shown on listing pages — the same zones lenders and insurers use.
Update cadence: Cached per address; flood-zone geometry changes only when FEMA revises a map panel.
USGS elevation data
Ground elevation for listing locations, shown alongside flood facts where available.
Update cadence: Fetched once per address — elevation does not change.
GreatSchools.org
School ratings shown on school pages and listing pages, always with the rating date.
Update cadence: Refreshed periodically; every rating is displayed with its as-of date.
Defense Travel Management Office (DTMO)
2026 BAH rates for both Hampton Roads MHAs — VA297 Hampton/Newport News and VA298 Norfolk/Portsmouth — reproduced verbatim for all 24 paygrades.
Update cadence: Updated annually when DTMO publishes new rates (effective January 1).
U.S. Census Bureau geocoder
Address verification for search — confirming an address exists even when it is not listed for sale.
Update cadence: Queried live during search.
Why we don’t show an automated value estimate
Instead of a black-box number, listing pages show a price context: the range of the most similar nearby homes (same city, similar size, within about 2.5 miles, sold homes preferred), with the comparables themselves linked so you can judge the comparison. It is context from real transactions — not an appraisal and not an estimate of any specific home’s value. When you need a number you can act on, that comes from a market analysis of the actual property.
AI-generated text policy
Some property descriptions include AI-assisted prose. That text is restricted to durable facts about the property and its location — never prices, market status, or anything that changes over time. All time-sensitive values on a page come directly from the data sources above and update with them.
Brokerage & licensure
VaHome.com is operated by the VaHome Team — Tom & Dariya Milan, REALTORS® licensed in the Commonwealth of Virginia with LPT Realty — serving Hampton Roads since 2019. Listing data is displayed as authorized broker-member content of REIN, Inc. See the full REIN disclaimer in the site footer, our Fair Housing commitment, and our promise on how inquiries are handled.