Buyers touring Magnolia Green usually walk in with two numbers in their head: the list price and the HOA dues. Both are on every portal. Both are easy to plug into a mortgage calculator. Neither is the number that surprises people at closing.
The third number is a special assessment from the Lower Magnolia Green Community Development Authority. It shows up on the Chesterfield County real estate tax bill, not the HOA statement, and it changes the honest math of owning here. It also, once you understand it, explains something the median price alone never will: why a home in Magnolia Green can list competitively against neighborhoods zoned five or ten years later off the same stretch of Hull Street.
The Number That Is Not On The Portal
A shopper comparing a Ryan Homes Meridian floor plan to a similar single-family home a few miles east is looking at HOA fees around $104 per month at Meridian and quarterly master association dues of $313 at Schell Brothers sections like Barrington and Eagle Bend. Those are on the builder pages. What is not on the builder pages, unless you scroll past the amenity list, is the CDA line.
Schell Brothers discloses it directly for its Magnolia Green communities: the CDA is billed by Chesterfield County twice a year at $225.50, roughly $451 annually for that lot class. That is on top of HOA dues and on top of the standard Chesterfield real estate tax, which the Board of Supervisors set at $0.89 per $100 of assessed value for 2026.
Left off a spreadsheet, it looks like a rounding error. Left off for thirty years, it is a car.
Why The Authority Exists At All
The Lower Magnolia Green CDA was created in 2007 to help finance transportation infrastructure improvements tied to the development of the master-planned community. In 2015 it issued $28,070,000 in special assessment bonds under the Virginia Water and Waste Authorities Act, with UMB Bank as trustee. The proceeds paid for road work on and around Woolridge Road and Otterdale Road, the two arteries every resident uses to get in and out.
There is no separate CDA tax rate. Chesterfield's own explanation is that the improvements are paid for through annual special assessments levied on the property owners inside the district. The county is not on the hook for the bond debt. The homes are.
That structure matters for how you read the assessment. It is not a fee for pool maintenance or landscaping. It is debt service on infrastructure the neighborhood needed before enough houses existed to pay for it the usual way.
How The Assessment Gets Split Across Lots
The apportionment is not a flat number. Under the Rate and Method of Apportionment in the CDA's bond documents, each taxable property falls into a land use class based on the width of the lot measured from the building restriction line, which is essentially the minimum front yard setback.
| Land Use Class | Minimum lot width from setback |
|---|---|
| Class 1 | 50 ft |
| Class 2 | 75 ft |
| Class 3 | 85 ft |
| Class 4 | 100 ft |
Wider lots carry a larger share. Townhomes, cottage-style sections, and the larger estate homesites in a section like Barrington are not paying the same annual installment, and they should not be compared as if they were. When a buyer asks what "the CDA payment" is in Magnolia Green, the honest answer is another question: which section, which lot width?
The CDA's own 2019–2020 annual report calculated the Annual Installment Rate at 5.84 percent, derived from an Annual Revenue Requirement of $1,573,160.40 divided across roughly $26.955 million of outstanding principal after early redemptions and scheduled paydowns. The math is disclosed. The county publishes an updated Annual Assessment Report each year.
What This Actually Buys You
The honest read of the CDA is that it is the reason the roads exist in their current form. The less obvious read, and the one that changes how you value a Magnolia Green home, comes from a 2014 community meeting where then-County Administrator Jay Stegmaier drew the comparison out loud:
There are neighborhoods around Magnolia Green that were zoned after Magnolia Green, where the property owners are paying cash proffers, and those proffers pay for schools, fire stations, parks, libraries and roads.
Magnolia Green residents do not pay those proffers. The CDA is the substitute.
Cash proffers get baked into a builder's lot cost, which gets baked into the sticker price of the finished home. A CDA moves that same cost off the sticker and onto a separate line of the tax bill, spread over decades of ownership. Same infrastructure. Different accounting.
If two similar homes list at the same price, one in Magnolia Green and one in a nearby subdivision zoned after proffers took hold, the Magnolia Green buyer is choosing a slightly lower financed price now and a modest recurring line item later. The buyer next door has already financed their share of the roads at closing, at their mortgage rate, for the full loan term.
Neither is a gift. It is a trade.
Why This Matters More In 2026
The county is not moving away from this tool. On July 20, 2026, Richmond BizSense reported that the Chesterfield Board of Supervisors was weighing a new CDA to fund road work tied to D.R. Horton's 860-unit Sawmill Station project off Hull Street. Interim County Administrator Matt Harris described the mechanism plainly, calling it an instrument the county has used effectively before and noting that it does not use up any county debt capacity because the assessment is paid by landowners in the district. He cited nearby Magnolia Green as precedent.
For a buyer, the takeaway is that CDA-financed neighborhoods are becoming a category, not a quirk, in Chesterfield. Magnolia Green is the working example of what that model looks like ten and fifteen years in, once the bonds are seasoned and the assessment is a known quantity. That is useful comparison data whether you buy in Magnolia Green or in the next CDA neighborhood down the road.
What To Check Before You Write An Offer
The CDA is public. You can verify everything about a specific property before you sign anything.
- Ask the listing agent which land use class the lot falls into, and confirm it against the current Annual Assessment Report for the Lower Magnolia Green CDA on the county's site.
- Pull the property's tax record on Chesterfield's Real Estate Assessment Data database and look at the assessment history and current billed amounts.
- Confirm the master HOA dues for that specific section. Schell Brothers sections are currently quoted at $313 per quarter. Ryan Homes' Meridian is quoted at $104 per month. Townhomes from HHHunt at Palisades Cove run on a different schedule.
- Ask whether the current owner has ever prepaid a portion of their principal share. Prepayments happen and they change the annual installment for that parcel.
- Read the Virginia residential property disclosure carefully. Virginia is largely a buyer-beware state, and CDA obligations run with the land.
None of this is exotic due diligence. It is the same order of homework you would do on a septic system in Powhatan or a well on acreage in Cumberland. It just is not a step most buyers know to take when the neighborhood has a golf course and an aquatic center on the front page.
A Short FAQ
Does the CDA assessment end?
Yes. It is tied to the Series 2015 bonds and the schedule of principal and interest payments through the final maturity, adjusted by any prepayments. The Annual Assessment Report shows outstanding principal each year.
Can I pay it off early?
The bond documents contemplate prepayments, and the CDA's reports track redemptions that have already occurred. Ask the county and your lender about the mechanics for your specific parcel before assuming you can or should.
Does the CDA amount go up if my home's assessed value goes up?
No. It is not a percentage of assessed value the way the county real estate tax is. It is a share of the CDA's Annual Revenue Requirement, allocated by land use class.
Is this the same thing as the HOA?
No. The Magnolia Green Owners Association collects dues that fund the Aquatic Center, pools, tennis and pickleball courts, common grounds, and trash and recycling in the Schell sections. The CDA collects a debt-service assessment through the county for road infrastructure. Two separate bills, two separate purposes.
Should the CDA change whether I buy in Magnolia Green?
It should change your comparison, not your decision. If you underwrite Magnolia Green against a proffer-funded neighborhood without accounting for the CDA, you are comparing two different financing structures and calling it a price difference.
If you are trying to decide what a specific Magnolia Green home actually costs to own, or what yours would sell for against comparable inventory, the fastest way to a real number is a conversation with an agent who has read the assessment report. Mike Lonski works Powhatan, Midlothian and Chesterfield full-time and can walk you through the CDA math on any address you are considering. Start with a free home valuation and go from there.
