Roanoke, VA Rental Property Rules: Rental Registration (2026)

Section 7-37 sets Roanoke's rental notification requirement. Any owner of a residential rental dwelling unit, defined in section 7-35 as a unit leased or rented to one or more tenants, must notify the building maintenance code official on a form the city manager prepares. The original notification deadline ran seventy-five days after the ordinance's adoption; for rental units created more than sixty days after that adoption date, the owner has thirty days from the unit's creation, or from the issuance of a certificate of occupancy for the unit under the building code, whichever happens first.

1:1 of the Code of Virginia, and to any unit council separately declares subject to the article. Willfully failing to comply with the notification requirement carries a civil penalty of fifty dollars under section 7-37(c). Notification is the trigger for the rest of the rental certificate of compliance program: once the city manager has complied with the state-law notice requirements, the city can move on to the initial inspection under section 7-38 to determine whether the unit meets the building code provisions affecting safe, decent, and sanitary living conditions for tenants.