Pull up three real estate sites for King George, Virginia in the same afternoon and you will get three different numbers. One puts the typical home near $482,000. Another lands closer to $472,000. A third, quoting what sellers are asking rather than what buyers are paying, shows something closer to $550,000. None of these sites made a mistake. They are each answering a different question, and if you are comparing King George to another town while planning a move, that difference matters more than any single figure on the page.
Four numbers, four different questions
Here is what a same-day search actually turns up, with the fine print that usually gets left out:
| Source | What it measures | Figure | Period |
|---|---|---|---|
| Redfin | Median sold price | $482,000, down 7.7% year over year | January 2026 |
| Zillow | Home Value Index (an estimate, not a closed sale) | $472,297, up 2.4% year over year | Updated April 2026 |
| Movoto | Median list price (asking, not sold) | $550,000, flat year over year | June 2026 |
| Fredericksburg Area Association of Realtors | Median sold price | Roughly $480,000 to $482,000 | January 2026 |
Notice that the two sources tracking actual closed sales, Redfin and the Fredericksburg Area Association of Realtors, land within a few hundred dollars of each other. The outlier is the list-price figure, which will always run higher because it reflects what a seller hopes to get before negotiation, not what a buyer actually paid at the closing table. If you are budgeting against a headline number, the sold-price figures are the ones that describe your future mortgage. The asking-price figure describes someone else's optimism.
The market is too small to hold still
Even the sold-price numbers move more than you would expect from month to month, and the reason is volume, not confusion. FAAR's own tracking shows pending sales in King George County fell to 20 in March 2026, down 31 percent from the 29 recorded in March 2025, while the county's year-to-date sales through March sat at 68, nearly flat against 69 a year earlier. In the same report, median days on market jumped from 22 in February 2026 to 35 in March, a 59 percent swing in a single month, even as new listings rose 22 percent year over year to 66.
Compare that to the state as a whole. Virginia Realtors' June 2026 home sales report found nearly 11,600 sales closed statewide that month, a sample large enough to average out a slow week here or a rush of closings there. King George doesn't have that cushion. When your entire county closes 20 to 30 homes in a typical month, one estate sale, one new-construction batch, or one slow stretch for showings can move the median by tens of thousands of dollars. That is not a data quality problem. It is what a thin market looks like when you zoom in close enough to see the individual transactions.
Where the demand floor actually comes from
If sales counts are this small, why does King George keep selling at all, even in a slow month? The answer sits inside Naval Support Facility Dahlgren, the base that anchors the county's economy and a meaningful share of its buyer pool.
On-base housing at NSF Dahlgren consists of 78 single-family homes and 125 townhome units, a total of 203 units serving a base whose mission, per NAVSEA, sits inside a command employing tens of thousands of civilian, military, and contractor personnel across all of its warfare centers. Dahlgren itself is about 55 miles south of Washington, D.C. and roughly 26 miles east of Fredericksburg, according to the base's own relocation guidance. Whatever portion of that workforce wants a yard, a garage, or simply more space than a townhome allows has to look off base, because on-base inventory was never sized to house the whole installation.
That structural mismatch is the demand floor underneath King George's numbers. It is also why a county with only 20 closed sales in a given month isn't necessarily a cooling market. It may just be a market where most of the willing buyers are still waiting on housing applications, PCS orders, or a specific listing that fits a specific commute.
The tax bill that moved the opposite direction of home values
Here is a friction point that catches relocating buyers off guard almost every reassessment cycle. Virginia law requires King George County to reassess property values every four years, and 2026 was that year. Total reassessed real estate value across the county came in at $5,106,719,328, not counting $60,836,300 in new construction completed since 2025.
Under state code, a county cannot simply let rising assessments translate into an automatic revenue windfall. It has to calculate an equalized rate first. That equalized figure brought King George's real estate tax rate down from $0.68 per $100 of assessed value in 2025 to $0.56 per $100 for 2026, a rate that on its own would have generated about $28,970,532 in revenue, close to what the county collected the year before. The Board of Supervisors then voted on May 5, 2026 to set the actual FY2026 rate to raise roughly $30,005,193, a modest increase over the pure equalized figure rather than one that tracks the full jump in assessed values.
For a buyer running a five-year cost comparison between King George and a neighboring county that isn't in a reassessment year, this matters. A rising "assessed value" on a listing sheet does not automatically mean a rising tax bill here. The rate moved to offset it. Anyone building a monthly payment estimate off last year's tax rate, rather than this year's equalized one, will overstate what a King George home actually costs to hold.
The streets that come with a schedule
One more friction point rarely shows up on a listing sheet: recurring range testing at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division. Advisories warning of "very loud noise" in communities surrounding the base have gone out repeatedly in 2026, including testing on March 4, March 26, and March 30, again on June 24, and on consecutive days, July 7 and July 8. These advisories often come paired with temporary restrictions on the Potomac River's Middle Danger Zone, marked by buoy lines that shift depending on the day's test.
None of this makes a home unlivable. It does mean that a parcel near the Main Range or Terminal Range, or a waterfront lot within the danger zone footprint, comes with a different day-to-day experience than a home a few miles inland. Anyone evaluating a specific address, especially near the river or close to the base boundary, can call the NSWC Dahlgren Range and Weapons Testing hotline directly before writing an offer, rather than finding out after closing.
What actually belongs in your budget
Put together, the real numbers a relocating or military buyer needs aren't the median price at all. They are:
- The current equalized tax rate for this reassessment cycle, not last year's rate
- Whether on-base housing at NSF Dahlgren is realistically available on your timeline, or whether you should plan to buy off base from the start
- Whether a specific address sits inside a recurring noise or river-restriction footprint
Get those three right and the sold-price figures from FAAR and Redfin become useful reference points instead of a source of confusion. Get them wrong and even a perfectly accurate median price will leave you budgeting against the wrong number.
FAQ
Does a higher assessed value in 2026 mean my King George tax bill goes up by the same percentage? Not automatically. Because 2026 was a mandated reassessment year, the county was required to calculate an equalized rate first, which is why the rate dropped from $0.68 to $0.56 per $100 of assessed value even as total assessed values rose.
How do I find out if on-base housing is realistic for my timeline? Contact the Housing Service Center at NSF Dahlgren directly. With only 203 total units on base, availability depends heavily on when you apply relative to your report date.
How can I tell if a specific home is inside a range noise or river restriction zone? Call the NSWC Dahlgren Range and Weapons Testing hotline before you write an offer. Advisories and danger zone boundaries change frequently enough that a listing agent's general answer isn't a substitute for checking the specific address.
If you are weighing King George against another Southern Maryland or Northern Virginia town, or trying to figure out what a specific budget actually buys once the tax rate and base housing math are factored in, Prestige Home Team works with relocating and military families through exactly this kind of decision every week. Get Your Instant Home Valuation and let's talk through what your number should actually be.
