What a Software Developer's Salary Buys in Lynchburg, Virginia, and the Internet Gap That Comes With It

The median developer in the Lynchburg metro area earns $109,840, and the median home costs $239,700. The Census says the connection is the catch.

By Carl Riedel

The median software developer in the Lynchburg, Virginia, metro area earns $109,840 per year, and the median home in the metro area is worth $239,700. That’s 2.18 years of pay per house. Of the metros compared below, only Roanoke is lower, at 2.08. San Francisco’s ratio is 6.11.

I keep the local numbers for the region in my economy and employment guide to Lynchburg, and the developer line is the one that stands out when you set it beside the housing data. It also sits next to a number that cuts the other way. Only 64.7% of households in the metro have cable, fiber, or DSL internet.

One ratio, ten places

Take each area’s median home value and divide it by the median annual pay of its software developers. The result is the number of years of developer pay it takes to buy one median house.

Lynchburg’s developers earn a median of 81% of the national median ($109,840 against $135,980). Its homes cost 72% of the national median ($239,700 against $332,700). The house gets cheaper faster than the paycheck does.

Keep the paycheck, change the address

The more interesting case is a developer who keeps a national salary and lives somewhere cheaper. Take the U.S. median developer pay of $135,980 and hold it fixed.

In the Lynchburg metro, the median home costs 1.76 years of that pay. In the United States, it costs 2.45 years; in Austin, 3.42; and in San Francisco, 8.39. That’s an illustration: pay usually moves with the address, but it shows what remote work is worth in one number.

Remote work is less common there than in the country as a whole. In the Lynchburg metro, 12.0% of workers worked from home, against 15.1% in the U.S. and 18.3% in Virginia. Those are 2020 to 2024 averages, so they include the pandemic years.

The connection is the catch

The Census Bureau asks every surveyed household what kind of internet subscription it has. In Lynchburg, 78.1% of households have cable, fiber, or DSL, above the national average of 75.6%. Across the metro, the share falls to 64.7% because the four counties around the city range from 55.9% to 60.3%.

The cheapest homes sit where the wired connections are thinnest. Appomattox County has the lowest median home value of the four counties ($207,600) and the lowest subscription rate (55.9%). One in seven households has no internet subscription at all, 14.4% compared with 6.5% nationally. Of the eight metros in the first table, the Lynchburg metro has the lowest share of cable, fiber, or DSL. Roanoke is next at 71.6%.

Run the same developer pay through the county medians, and the houses cost 1.89 years of pay in Appomattox County, 1.93 in Campbell and Amherst, 2.09 in the city, and 2.71 in Bedford County. Those are arithmetic medians, and developer pay is the metro figure since the county tables don’t break it out.

How small the local market is

The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts 510 software developers in the Lynchburg metro, which is 5.3 for every 1,000 jobs. The national figure is 10.9 per 1,000. A developer who wants local peers finds about half as many here as the national average, and one who works remotely depends on the connection.

What the data covers

The pay figures are the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ May 2025 estimates for wage and salary workers. They don’t include the self-employed, and annual pay is the hourly figure multiplied by 2,080 hours. The metro area is Amherst, Appomattox, Bedford and Campbell counties plus the city of Lynchburg. The home values and internet shares are Census Bureau estimates pooled from 2020 to 2024, so they run a little behind the pay data.

The survey asks whether a household pays for a type of service, so it can’t tell you whether service is available at a given address. Some households choose not to subscribe. It also says nothing about speed. The pay data come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ May 2025 table for the Lynchburg area, and the housing and internet data from the Census Bureau’s 2020 to 2024 estimates, which I read through Census Reporter’s profile of the Lynchburg metro area.

Before you sign for the house

Run the house math first, then run the address. The FCC’s National Broadband Map lists providers that report service at a street address, along with the technology and speeds each offers. A 1.89-year house isn’t a bargain if the nearest cable or fiber line stops a mile short.

Carl Riedel runs Lynchburg Resources, a guide to the neighborhoods, history and services of Lynchburg, Virginia.