Albemarle County, VA Parking Rules: RV & Boat Parking (2026)

3(b) of the Zoning Ordinance treats major recreational equipment, defined broadly to include travel trailers, pickup campers, motorized dwellings, tent trailers, boats and boat trailers, house-boats, and the trailers or boxes used to haul them, whether the equipment is attached or not, as a regulated use rather than an incidental one. Two separate rules apply. First, none of that equipment may ever be used for living, sleeping or other occupancy while parked or stored on a lot or anywhere else not approved for that use, county-wide, in every district.

Second, a truck with a gross vehicle weight of 12,000 pounds or more, or any major recreational equipment, cannot be parked in a residential district other than the RA (rural areas) district unless it's making a pickup or delivery, and even then only in an off-street parking area shown on an approved site plan or subdivision plat. Because RA is excluded from that second rule, a homeowner on a rural-areas parcel can park a boat, RV or heavy truck on the property; the restriction bites in the county's more compact residential districts, R-1 through R-15, VR, PRD and PUD, where the zoning administrator enforces it against on-lot parking outside an approved parking area. 12, which the Community Development Department applies at site plan and zoning clearance review.