Reston is a planned community of roughly 63,000 people in western Fairfax County, Virginia, about 15 minutes from Washington Dulles International Airport and around 40 minutes from downtown Washington on Metro’s Silver Line. Five lakes, 55 miles of paved pathways and a mandatory community association shape daily life here, and that last item catches more buyers off guard than anything else on the list. We sell homes in Reston and Herndon every week, and the same questions come up at the same points in the process. This page answers them in one place, with links to the longer posts where we have written them.
What Reston is, and who runs it
Robert E. Simon bought 6,750 acres of Fairfax County farmland and woods in 1961, using proceeds from the sale of Carnegie Hall. The first phase, 227 townhouses around Lake Anne Village Center, was finished by the fall of 1964 when the first residents moved in. Simon named the place after his own initials. R.E.S. plus “ton.” He built it around seven goals, and Encyclopedia Virginia records that they ranged from the practical, meaning the fullest possible range of housing styles and prices, to the aspirational. One of them committed Reston to racial integration several years before federal fair housing law required it. Others produced the features people notice on a first visit: pathways routed away from roads, and a cluster of shops, a pool and a plaza inside each neighborhood rather than out on a highway. Reston is not a city or a town. It is a census-designated place, which means it has no mayor, no town council and no municipal tax of its own. Fairfax County runs the police, fire, schools, libraries and public roads. Reston sits in the county’s Hunter Mill District, and Supervisor Walter Alcorn represents it on the Board of Supervisors. Zoning decisions, road projects and school boundaries all run through the county. Two private bodies govern the rest. Reston Association owns and maintains the recreational land and enforces the design standards. Properties inside Reston Town Center answer instead to the Reston Town Center Association. Herndon, three miles west, works differently: it is an incorporated town with its own mayor, council and police department, and no Reston Association membership at all. That single difference moves the annual cost of ownership by several hundred dollars in either direction.
Where Reston sits, and how people get out of it
Metro’s Silver Line runs through Reston with two stations. Wiehle-Reston East opened in 2014 at the eastern edge. Reston Town Center station opened on November 15, 2022 with Phase 2, which is the extension that finally connected Metro to Dulles. Herndon station sits one stop west of Reston Town Center, close enough that some North Reston and Herndon-address buyers use it. Drivers use the Dulles Toll Road, which is Route 267, running east toward Tysons and the Beltway and west toward the airport and Loudoun County. The Fairfax County Parkway crosses north to south. Dulles is close enough that a 5:30 a.m. flight does not require leaving the house at 4. Walkability to a Metro platform varies enormously across Reston, and that is a real difference between neighborhoods rather than a marketing line. A condominium at Reston Station or a townhouse near the Town Center can put someone on a train in ten minutes on foot. A house on the far side of South Lakes cannot. Anyone buying here for the commute should walk the route once, at the hour they would actually walk it, before writing an offer. The Washington and Old Dominion Trail crosses the north end of Reston on the old rail bed, and it carries as many commuting cyclists as recreational ones.
The parts of Reston, and what to call them
Three ZIP codes cover Reston. 20190 holds Lake Anne and Reston Town Center. 20191 covers South Reston, including Hunters Woods and South Lakes. 20194 is North Reston, which includes the North Point area. We organize our own market work by North, Central and South Reston, because the housing stock and the price bands differ more between those three than between adjacent ZIP boundaries. The original plan called for five village centers, each anchoring a section of town. Four still operate: Lake Anne, Hunters Woods, North Point and South Lakes. Tall Oaks, the fifth, came down in 2018 and townhouses and condominiums went up in its place. Two mixed-use districts sit on top of that older framework, and they belong to different developers. Reston Town Center is BXP’s, centered on Market Street and Fountain Square, served by the Reston Town Center station. Reston Station is Comstock’s, at Wiehle Avenue and the Wiehle-Reston East station, and it holds BLVD, the Reston Row District and the Midline parcels.
What homes cost
Reston is not one market. In July 2026, Bright MLS recorded a median detached sale price of $1,106,625, a median townhouse price of $709,000, and a median condominium price of $391,000. The town-wide median landed at $630,000, which describes almost no actual house in Reston. The segments were also moving in different directions. Detached homes went under contract in an average of 9 days and sold for 102.3% of their original asking price. Condominiums averaged 26 days, and Reston finished July with 108 active condo listings against a five-year July average of 59. A buyer shopping a two-bedroom condominium in the $300,000s had real choice and real negotiating room. A buyer shopping a four-bedroom detached house did not. Census figures give the longer view. The Bureau’s most recent estimates for Reston put owner occupancy at 60.6% and median household income at $148,710 in 2024 dollars. You can browse what is currently listed by type: single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums, and Reston’s mid-century modern houses, which trade as their own small market.
What you pay every year besides the mortgage
Three separate levies land on a Reston property tax bill, and a fourth bill arrives from Reston Association. Fairfax County charges a base real estate tax of $1.12 per $100 of assessed value for tax year 2026. Reston property owners also pay $0.047 per $100 into Small District 5, which funds the Reston Community Center and gives district residents discounted rates and priority registration for its programs. The countywide stormwater district adds $0.0325. Together that comes to $1.1995 per $100 of assessed value. Parcels in county refuse collection areas pay a separate $630 service charge, and much of Reston uses private haulers arranged through the cluster instead. Reston Association’s 2026 annual assessment is $890 per lot, which the board adopted in November 2025, up from $848 the year before. Members who qualify for the Fairfax County Tax Relief Program pay a reduced rate. Run those numbers against July’s median prices and the annual carrying cost, before any mortgage payment, comes to roughly $14,164 on a detached house, $9,394 on a townhouse and $5,580 on a condominium.
Two things that chart does not include. A cluster association fee, if the property sits in a cluster, and a condominium fee, if it is a condominium. Both stack on top of the Reston Association assessment rather than replacing it, and both vary widely enough by community that no average is worth quoting. The resale packet gives the exact figures, and reading it carefully is the single most useful hour a Reston buyer spends. One more piece of local fine print. Not every address inside Reston’s boundaries belongs to Reston Association. FFXnow reported in 2023 that more than 3,000 approved housing units in Reston’s transit station areas carried no RA membership commitment, with Comstock, EYA and Apeture declining to join while Sekas, Pulte and Toll Brothers signed on. Ask about membership for the specific address rather than assuming, because it changes both the annual cost and the pool access.
What the assessment buys
Reston Association serves more than 60,000 people across upwards of 22,000 residential units, and it maintains a list most municipalities would not attempt: 15 pools, 54 tennis courts, 55 miles of paved pathways, more than 1,300 acres of open space, four lakes, three ponds, and a 72-acre nature education center at Walker Nature Center. Ballfields, playgrounds, multipurpose courts, picnic areas and garden plots round it out. About 96 full-time employees and nearly 350 seasonal staff run all of it through the summer. Reston has five lakes. Reston Association owns four of them, Anne, Audubon, Thoreau and Newport, which is why the association’s own materials cite four. The fifth is Lake Fairfax, inside Fairfax County’s Lake Fairfax Park at the north end of town, where the county runs a marina, a campground, a carousel and the Water Mine spray park. Some of the houses backing the association lakes carry private docks, which is part of why lakefront listings in Reston hold a premium that has nothing to do with square footage. Pool access comes with membership rather than a separate fee, which is worth pricing out against a private club membership when comparing Reston to a neighboring town with lower association costs.
Clusters, and the design review that comes with them
Most Reston townhouses and many of its detached houses sit in a cluster, which is Reston’s word for a sub-association covering a defined group of homes. The cluster owns the shared parking, the shared open space and often the private roads, it has its own board and budget, and it charges its own fee. Clusters also carry cluster standards, which govern exterior changes. Paint colors, doors, windows, fences, sheds, decks and landscaping usually require approval, either from the cluster board or from Reston Association’s Design Review Board, and often from both. The system is why Reston’s original neighborhoods still look coherent 60 years on, and it is also why a buyer who plans to paint the front door bright orange should read the standards before closing rather than after. We walk clients through the association documents on every Reston purchase, and the disclosure packet rewards a careful read: reserve funding, pending special assessments, litigation, and the two most recent years of board minutes.
Schools
Fairfax County Public Schools serves all of Reston, and the system assigns students by home address rather than by ZIP code or mailing city. Boundaries cut through neighborhoods and occasionally through individual streets. South Lakes High School takes most of Reston. Herndon High School takes the Town of Herndon and parts of the surrounding area. Oakton High School picks up the Fox Mill and Crossfield area, and Skyview High School, which opened in Herndon in fall 2026, shifted assignments for some families west of Reston. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology admits eighth graders countywide through a separate application. We wrote two guides on this because address-level questions come up constantly: which high school your Reston or Herndon address actually sends you to, and what Reston and Herndon families should know about applying to TJ. Verify any address with the FCPS locator before making a school assignment part of a buying decision.
Working in Reston
Reston holds two major corporate headquarters. Leidos runs its corporate headquarters here, and Bechtel moved its headquarters to Reston from San Francisco. Beyond those two, the distinction that matters is between a headquarters and a large office. Google, Microsoft and Oracle all keep significant Reston presences without basing their companies here, and the corridor along the Dulles Toll Road carries a dense concentration of defense, space and technology employers alongside them. Carfax is moving into Reston Station, and Anduril has permits in hand for a build-out at One Freedom Square in Reston Town Center. That employment base is the reason Reston’s housing market behaves the way it does. Demand comes from people relocating for jobs inside a five-mile radius, and it holds up through cycles that soften markets built around a single commute into the District.
What people do here
The lakes and the pathway network carry most of it. People walk to Lake Anne Plaza for the Saturday farmers market, kayak on Lake Audubon, run the loop around Lake Thoreau, and use the 55 miles of paved paths to get to a village center without touching a road. Reston Town Center handles the restaurants, the ice rink in winter and the summer concert series. The Walker Nature Center runs programs year round on its 72 acres. Reston Community Center, funded by that Small District 5 tax, runs a theater, an aquatics center and a full program calendar, and district residents get the discounted rate.
Where Reston works, and where it does not
Reston fits people who will use what they are already paying for. Someone who swims, plays tennis, runs the trails or takes a kayak out is getting real value from the $890. Someone who wants a large private yard, full control over their own exterior and no association at all will find Reston expensive for what it delivers, and Herndon, Oak Hill or Great Falls may serve them better. The housing stock is another consideration. Much of Reston went up between 1964 and the mid-1980s, which means mature trees, real neighborhood character, and roofs, windows and HVAC systems that have either been replaced already or are about to be. A Reston home inspection deserves more attention than the same inspection on a house built in 2015. The condominium market is where the current numbers ask for the most care. Supply has climbed every month since December, and a buyer has leverage there that did not exist two years ago. A seller in the same segment needs a correct list price on day one.
More Reston questions, answered
We are working through the questions people ask most often before moving here. Published so far:
- Which high school will your Reston or Herndon address actually send you to?
- Applying to Thomas Jefferson from Reston or Herndon
- How did Reston get its name?
- What is the cost of living in Reston, Virginia?
- Five pros and cons of living in Reston
- Lake Anne Plaza, the heart of Reston
- Reston Town Center: restaurants, events and shopping
Coming next: what the Reston Association assessment covers in detail, how the assessment stacks with cluster and condominium fees, the best neighborhoods in Reston, Reston compared with Herndon, and what property taxes run on a Reston home. We live and work here, and we answer address-level questions about assessments, cluster rules, school assignment and pricing every week. If you are weighing a move to Reston or thinking about selling here, reach out and we will give you the specifics for your street rather than the averages.
