Understand your community’s housing needs.
Sourcebook is HousingForward Virginia’s online compendium of housing data. It collects, summarizes, and presents dozens of different data points to help users understand housing trends in their communities to advocate for and implement better housing solutions.
Housing and housing-related data is spread across multiple sources and can be time-consuming to clean up, analyze, and visualize. Sourcebook brings together the most important data points in one place to make that work simpler for you.
Sourcebook is an evolving and user-focused resource. We encourage you to contact us if there are particular features you would like to see, or data points that would be most helpful to your work.
Help us help you.
Maintaining Sourcebook takes time and effort. If you want to support this work and help us prioritize it, please consider donating to HousingForward Virginia.
How to Use Sourcebook
Sourcebook is presented through multiple Tableau data dashboards.
Geographic levels
Most dashboards show data at three geographic levels: state, core-based statistical areas, and locality. Click the corresponding tabs at the top of each dashboard to cycle through geographic levels and use the geographic filters to choose the specific geographic area of interest to you.
Filters
In many cases, dashboards have additional filters for you to explore data that are most relevant to you. For example, you can explore data for the specific tenure (renters or homeowners) you are interested in learning more about. In some instances, clicking on a locality on a map will automatically filter data for you.
Tooltips
Dashboards are interactive. Clicking on or mousing over a specific data point will bring up additional information that may not be automatically visible on the data visualization.
Downloading
Visualizations can be downloaded as an image, PDF, or PowerPoint presentation to be used by you any way you see fit, as long as you credit HousingForward and do not use them for commercial purposes. In addition, the Tableau Workbook in which the visualization was created can be downloaded to see our methodology.
Most recent update: January 2025. Next scheduled update: 2025 Q2.
Demographics
From racial diversity to household size, changing populations in Virginia are driving demand for housing of all types.
Economics
Income and employment trends are key in determining housing affordability and supporting economic growth.
Inventory
From what’s on the ground to what’s yet to be built, inventory is important to understand future concerns and needs.
Homeownership
Homeownership is a key pathway to wealth creation, but rising prices are keeping homeownership out of reach for many Virginians.
Rental
Rental housing—both on the private market and with public subsidy—is a valuable part of the housing spectrum.
Affordability
Everyone needs an affordable place to live, but many Virginians—especially low-income households—continue to struggle.
Instability
Without a stable place to call home, loss of employment or a major health episode can leave individuals and families in an even worse situation.
Economic Impact Calculators
The Virginia Center for Housing Research developed these calculators to estimate the economic impact of housing activity on local economies.
More to Come Soon
We are working on a refresh of Sourcebook for early 2024. This refresh will include updated dashboards with data available by quarter, along with a large collection of new resources:
- Housing affordability calculator
- Enter a custom income to see if you can afford the typical for-sale home or apartment by Virginia locality.
- Starter homes in Virginia
- Number and share of homes sold by quarter that are affordable to households making 80 percent AMI or less.
- Housing Choice Vouchers
- Distribution of Housing Choice Voucher utilization by census tract with totals by locality.
- Immigration
- Trends among the foreign-born population in Virginia by locality.
- Mortgage delinquency
- Home loan delinquency rates across time for the state and select regions.
- Renter income / Home purchase gap
- Difference between average renter income and income needed to afford the median home sales price by locality.
- Paycheck-to-Paycheck
- Compare wages for different occupations with the income necessary to afford the median apartment or home.
Methodology
Sourcebook is an open-source resource developed by HousingForward Virginia. We use R scripts to collect and organize data, and Tableau to create visualizations. To see how Sourcebook was developed, please visit our public GitHub repository using the link below.
Looking for old Sourcebook tools?
Looking for a Sourcebook tool you’ve used in the past but don’t see here? We’ve archived all legacy Sourcebook content so it remains accessible. However, these pages are NOT actively maintained or updated as of April 2022.
