Selling Land or a Farm Near The Plains, VA

The Plains, Virginia

The Plains is a small rail town on Route 245 just off I-66, best known as the gateway to Great Meadow, the steeplechase and events grounds that anchors this part of Fauquier County's hunt country. Route 55 runs the old Marshall-to-Middleburg road through town, and the land on either side reflects that in-between position — Fauquier's working farm character starting to shade into the polished equestrian estates that define neighboring Middleburg just across the Loudoun line. The rail line and the old station give the town a sense of scale that hasn't changed much in a century, even as the farms around it have.

Farms here tend toward horses and hay rather than cattle, with well-kept board fencing, riding rings, and barns built for turnout rather than production. Buyers are often looking for exactly that overlap — Fauquier's comparatively lower land costs with Middleburg's equestrian infrastructure close at hand. Smaller crossroads communities like Halfway and Rectortown, tucked into the hills north and west of town, keep a quieter, more agricultural feel, with fewer show barns and more working pasture.

The land around The Plains

Parcels around The Plains run from smaller horse properties of 10 to 30 acres up to larger estate farms well past 100 acres, particularly toward Rectortown and along the Route 55 corridor. Improved farms with houses, barns, and fencing already in place make up most of what sells here rather than raw land.

This area sits well outside Northern Virginia's active data-center corridor. The interest driving prices in eastern Loudoun and along Fauquier's Vint Hill and Remington corridors has not extended here, and the terrain and easement coverage around Great Meadow make large-scale industrial development unlikely. Land values in this part of the county move with the ordinary equestrian and estate market, not with a data-center premium.

Zoning follows Fauquier's countywide RA and RC sliding-scale rules, and conservation easements are common on the larger estate parcels near Middleburg's edge. See our easement guide and division rights explainer before pricing a sale.

Buyers who shortlist this village are usually also walking ground around Marshall and pricing against land near Warrenton, which is where the county’s comparable sales tend to come from.

Division rights and easements around The Plains

The village sits in the middle of the most heavily protected ground in Fauquier, and that shows up in two ways when a parcel changes hands.

The first is division rights. Roughly ninety per cent of the county sits in RA or RC zoning, where a parcel over thirty acres may subdivide only about fifteen per cent of its area into residential lots. The remaining eighty-five per cent or so stays in agriculture, forest or open space. Those rights are fixed to the parcel as it stood in the land records on May 21, 1981, which is why two parcels of the same size can carry very different development potential.

The second is purchase of development rights. Fauquier's programme pays $60,000 for each development right retired and has protected more than 13,000 acres. Eligibility runs to parcels of fifty or more contiguous acres in RA or RC zoning that are actively agricultural and carry no existing easement.

Both facts belong in a pricing conversation before a listing, not after an offer arrives.

Selling land or a farm near The Plains

Selling an equestrian or estate farm here means presenting the improvements as much as the acreage: fencing, ring footing, barn condition, and pasture management all factor into what a horse-focused buyer will pay. If a conservation easement is already recorded, its terms will shape who can buy and what they can build, so have that paperwork ready before you list. Fauquier's land-use assessment program can also mean rollback tax exposure if a sale is tied to a change of use, so confirm your status before you price the property.

We cover The Plains as part of Fauquier County and understand this equestrian market specifically. Tell us about your property.