Henry County rated fourth most affordable place to live in Virginia

Martinsville Bulletin

On Thursday, Kiplinger, a publisher of personal finance advice and business forecasts, listed the 10 cheapest places in the commonwealth to live using 2025 data presented by the Tax Foundation and sourced from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The rural areas of the state emerged as the top performers, comprising nine counties and one city.

The cheapest place to live was determined to be Buchanan County, with a median home price of $91,400 and a median property tax bill of $404. Buchanan County is also one of the most rural areas listed, bordering West Virginia to the North and Kentucky to the West.

Dickinson County was listed second, also bordering Kentucky, and Lee County, Virginia’s westernmost county, was third.

Kiplinger described Henry County as a “quaint” historic town that features a NASCAR track and the Virginia Museum of Natural History, and is noted for being one of the last places where the Civil War was fought. The median home price in Henry County was listed at $120,300, and the median property tax bill was $604.

The only city on the list, Covington, was rated fifth, followed by Lunenburg, Russell, Wise, Tazewell, and Brunswick counties.

Kiplinger determined that, overall, property taxes in Virginia are below the national average.

If you’re looking for the most affordable places to live and are not confined by the borders of the Old Dominion State, Heidelberg, Texas, comes in first according to a report published in the March 24 edition of Forbes Magazine, followed by Pear River, Mississippi, and Chattahoochee, Florida.

No locality in Virginia makes the Forbes top 10 list. The other places, in order, are: Muniz, Texas; Banner Hill, Tennessee; Tornillo, Texas; El Cenizo, Texas; Ozona, Texas; Mila Doce, Texas; and Pine Ridge, South Dakota.