Virginia contract deadlines: the clocks a deal here actually runs on

Every state has contract deadlines. Virginia’s are worth their own guide because the state runs on two form families and a distinctive buyer-beware statute chapter, and a major form refresh landed in the middle of 2026. An agent who counts deadlines the way they learned on their last deal will be wrong often enough to matter.

The organizing idea for the whole page: some of a Virginia deal’s clocks are contract terms you negotiate, and some are statutory rights that start on events the form never schedules. The two behave differently and begin on different days, and they even count days differently. Keeping them straight is most of the job.

Two form families, one state. Across most of Virginia, the standard is the Virginia REALTORS® Residential Contract of Purchase, known as Form 600. In Northern Virginia and the DC metro, a different form family is common: the NVAR Residential Sales Contract (Form K1321), with its own blanks and its own conventions. Same state, two starting points. The governing form sets the clocks, which produces the single most useful habit on this page: read the form the deal is on, not the one you use most.

A major Form 600 revision in 2026. Form 600 went through a major revision that took effect May 5, 2026. Virginia REALTORS® condensed it into a shorter, clearer contract, updated the inspection, appraisal, and financing contingency language, and revised earnest-money timing, including an Extended Deposit Date concept. During a transition like this, more than one version circulates. Before you count a single deadline, re-check which version your deal is on.

And a buyer-beware statute book underneath both. Both form families sit on top of the same statutes, and Virginia’s are distinctive. The state is a buyer-beware jurisdiction, its HOA and condominium resale-packet rules were consolidated into a single Resale Disclosure Act in 2023, and its closing machinery is governed by a Wet Settlement Act and a settlement-agent statute. Those are the clocks the forms don’t set, and they get their own section below.

Start with the deadlines you negotiate, because they are the bulk of the schedule. Every one of these is a contract term. Its length, its trigger, and how notice works all live in the governing form, so treat the descriptions below as the shape of the clock rather than its exact setting on your deal.

Earnest money. The deposit is due per the contract blank. The May 2026 Form 600 revision clarified deposit timing and introduced an Extended Deposit Date, so the date your deal runs on depends on which version was used and which blanks were filled. Under many form contracts, timely delivery is not a clerical matter; it is a form deadline with consequences per the blank. For the mechanics of the deposit itself, see the earnest money guide.

Home inspection. On Virginia REALTORS® deals, the home inspection rides the Form 600D Home Inspection Contingency Addendum, a negotiated window measured from ratification with notice mechanics set by the addendum. NVAR deals carry their own equivalent. Under many forms, silence inside the window has consequences, and how the buyer preserves or loses the right to act is a function of the form’s language, not a general rule. The shape of this contingency is covered in the home inspection contingency guide.

Financing and appraisal. These carry their own dates, usually separate from each other: a financing-approval deadline and a date to notify the seller of an appraisal shortfall. The May 2026 Form 600 updated this contingency language, and the NVAR family words it differently again. A buyer still waiting on the lender past a financing deadline may hold a different contract than they think, which is a reason the dates in the form matter more than the lender’s informal timeline. The general version lives in financing and appraisal contingencies.

The pre-settlement walk-through. Commonly scheduled within seven days of settlement under the form, though the exact window is a contract term. It is the buyer’s last look before the money moves.

The settlement date. The target close. Whether it is a hard stop depends on the contract’s language, including any “time is of the essence” provision. What happens after settlement, when the money moves, is set by statute rather than the form, and that is the Wet Settlement Act further down.

Now the clocks you cannot negotiate away by forgetting them. Three Virginia statutes set deadlines that never appear in the negotiated blanks, and they are the ones this page exists to keep you from mis-tracking.

Virginia is a buyer-beware state. The Virginia Residential Property Disclosure Act (Va. Code § 55.1-700 et seq.) sets the regime, and it is blunt about it: § 55.1-703 is titled “Required disclosures for buyer to beware; buyer to exercise necessary due diligence.” The state’s Residential Property Disclosure Statement, published by the Real Estate Board at DPOR, mostly directs the buyer to investigate the property rather than describing its condition. On Virginia REALTORS® deals, the disclosure is commonly paired with a Summary of Rights acknowledgment (Form SUM1). The chapter is amended from time to time, and a revision takes effect January 1, 2027, so verify the current statute text before you rely on any specific provision.

The deadline hiding inside it. Under the Act as of mid-2026, if the disclosures are delivered after the contract is ratified, the buyer gets a narrow termination right, and it is the buyer’s sole remedy for the late delivery. The buyer may terminate upon or prior to the earliest of the events below.

This is the deadline Virginia agents mis-track most, and the reason is a single word: delivery. In 2023, Virginia consolidated the old Property Owners’ Association Act and Condominium Act packet provisions into one Resale Disclosure Act (Title 55.1, Chapter 23.1). Under § 55.1-2312, as of mid-2026, unless the ratified contract specifies its own period, the buyer may cancel within three days after receiving the resale certificate, or after receiving notice that it is unavailable.

Three details decide the date, and each one trips people. The Act counts calendar days, not business days. The period begins the day after delivery, not the day of delivery. And when more than one association governs the property, the clock runs from delivery of the last certificate. Cancellation is without penalty and the deposit is promptly returned.

Virginia is a “wet” settlement state. Under the Wet Settlement Act (Title 55.1, Chapter 9), the settlement agent must disburse settlement proceeds within two business days of settlement, and generally may not disburse before the deed and deed of trust are recorded, with narrow exceptions. The practical translation: sellers are commonly paid within about two business days of the table, not the same afternoon. Verify the current statute, because the Act’s mechanics can be amended.

And the buyer picks the settlement agent. Under the Real Estate Settlement Agents chapter (Title 55.1, Chapter 10), as of mid-2026, the purchaser or borrower has the statutory right to select the settlement agent, and the seller may not require a particular one as a condition of the sale. Virginia closings run through attorneys or licensed lay settlement agents (title companies), and both are common. There is no attorney-only mandate here, which surprises agents coming from states that have one. Confirm the current statute, since these chapters are amended.

Two deadlines apply in Virginia just as they apply everywhere, and these are the only ones on this page you can state without a hedge. First, for most residential mortgages, the Closing Disclosure must reach the borrower at least three business days before closing. This is the federal TRID rule. Second, for any home built before 1978, the federal lead-based paint disclosure is required. Everything else on this page carries a hedge; these two do not. The three-day rule has its own guide, the Closing Disclosure 3-day rule.

“Days” does not mean one thing across a Virginia deal. The resale statute counts calendar days beginning the day after delivery. The § 55.1-709 disclosure ladder mixes calendar-day and postmark triggers. And the form contracts define “day” in their own definitions paragraph, a definition that differs between the Virginia REALTORS® and NVAR families, and between revisions of the same form. The May 2026 Form 600 is a live example of why the way you counted it last time is not a method.

The practical rule. For a statutory clock, count the statute’s way. For a contract clock, count the governing form’s way, and find the definition in the form rather than assuming it. When two deadlines govern the same event (a contract inspection window and a statutory cancellation right, say), they can count differently and land on different days. A deadline calculator built for the counting conventions is cheap insurance against being a day off on the one that bites.

Put it together and a clean Virginia file tracks two sets of dates at once: the contract clocks from the governing form, and the statutory clocks that start on events the form never schedules, such as disclosure delivery, packet delivery, and settlement and recording. The file that misses in Virginia is usually the one that tracked ratification-plus-a-number for everything and never noticed that the resale clock or the late-disclosure clock started somewhere else. For the state-neutral version of all this, the deadlines that decide a deal covers the mechanics a Virginia file inherits.

Virginia is Ratifyly’s home state. The product was built inside a working Virginia brokerage, which is why the counting conventions on this page are the ones it was designed around. You forward the paperwork the way you’d send it to a coordinator; it reads every page, extracts the parties, the price, and the dates, along with the counting convention each one runs on, and builds the transaction and its timeline from the documents rather than from data entry. When an amendment or a late-delivered packet lands, it re-reads the file and re-flows the schedule, so the resale clock starts on the delivery date instead of the date someone assumed.

A human approves every call. Nothing about a Virginia deadline, whether a § 55.1-709 termination window or a resale cancellation right, should ship on the software’s word alone, so a compliance audit of the file surfaces the finding and a person rules on it. Every party sees one shared live timeline, and deadlines escalate before they hit. For a brokerage running Virginia deals, that is the difference between believing the statutory clocks are tracked and being able to show it. Ratifyly is in honest early access; you can follow the whole path a forwarded email takes on the how-it-works page, and see where it stands in Virginia specifically.