Stafford County, VA Soliciting & Door-to-Door: No-Knock Registry (2026)

Section 18-6 of the Stafford County Code lists three prohibited acts for every vendor covered by Chapter 18's door-to-door permit rules. First, a vendor may not enter or come onto residential premises under false pretenses for any purpose. Second, a vendor may not enter a residential property at all once the owner or occupant has posted a 'No Soliciting' or 'No Trespassing' sign anywhere on the premises; the sign itself, not a county registry, is what puts the property off limits. Third, once an owner or occupant tells a vendor to leave, the vendor must go and cannot remain on or return to the property.

These prohibitions apply on top of, not instead of, the permit and application requirements in Sections 18-3 through 18-5, so a validly permitted vendor can still commit a separate violation by ignoring a posted sign or a resident's request to leave. The county built the sign-based rule around whatever the resident chooses to post: there is no separate 'do not knock' list to sign up for at the sheriff's office, and the ordinance does not set fixed hours for door-to-door activity. Chapter 18 exempts certain canvassers from the whole chapter, including nonprofit charitable or religious solicitors, political campaign canvassers doing opinion polling, children under 18 not acting for an adult, and newspaper sellers, so those categories are not bound by Section 18-6 either.