Buying a Home in the San Francisco-Oakland Area: San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Fremont, the Tri-Valley, San Mateo County and Marin

Two miles of the Great Highway, from Sloat Boulevard north to Lincoln Way, have had no cars on them since March 2025. The pavement is now Sunset Dunes, a 50-acre park along Ocean Beach that drew more than 1.7 million visitors in its first year (SF Recreation and Parks; KQED). San Francisco voters made it a park by approving Proposition K with 54% of the vote in 2024, and on November 3, 2026 they vote on it again. Proposition G would reopen the road to cars (CBS Bay Area; GrowSF voter guide).

The San Francisco-Oakland metro covers five of the nine Bay Area counties: San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Marin. San Jose, Palo Alto, Vallejo and Santa Rosa are in the Bay Area but outside this metro, so a home in one of them belongs to a different guide. People here say "the Bay Area" for all nine counties, and this page stays inside the five. I'm Jeff Moran, NMLS #483943, a mortgage broker licensed in California through C2 Financial Corporation, and I have been originating loans since 1996. I work from Bluffton, South Carolina, so I make no first-hand claims about the Bay Area. Every fact on this page comes from a public source, cited beside it, and the research behind it was gathered on September 23, 2026 and reviewed on October 2, 2026. I'll take the counties one at a time, and then we'll get to the homework worth doing on any address before you compare it with another one.

Local names worth knowing before you search

A few words come up in listings and directions here that mean something specific. "The City" is San Francisco, always, and never Oakland or San Jose. "The Avenues" means the Richmond and Sunset districts on the west side of San Francisco, laid out on numbered avenues. Karl the Fog is the summer fog itself, given a name on social media that stuck (DoTheBay Bay Area Slang Dictionary; Wikipedia: San Francisco fog). The MacArthur Maze is the interchange in Oakland where the east end of the Bay Bridge splits into I-80, I-580 and I-880 (Wikipedia: MacArthur Maze). The Caldecott is the Caldecott Tunnel, which carries State Route 24 under the Berkeley Hills between Oakland and Orinda (Wikipedia: California State Route 24). The Tri-Valley means Dublin, Pleasanton, San Ramon, Livermore and Danville together (City Center Bishop Ranch). And South San Francisco calls itself The Industrial City, which the sign on Sign Hill has said since 1923 (Wikipedia: South San Francisco hillside sign).

San Francisco, where the city and the county are one government

The Avenues and the west side

Sunset Dunes is one of two big changes on the west side this year. The other is the Family Zoning Plan, which the Board of Supervisors adopted on December 2, 2025 and which took effect in January 2026. It changes the zoning on about 96,000 parcels, raising allowed heights by two to four stories, mostly near transit and commercial corridors, and the increases are concentrated in the western and northern neighborhoods (SF Planning; KQED). The plan makes room for about 36,000 new homes, planners approved the first project under it in July 2026, and lawsuits were filed in 2026 from both directions (The Real Deal; HousingWire). So if you are looking in the Richmond or the Sunset, the planning department can tell you what the new zoning allows on the lots around the home you are considering.

Golden Gate Park runs 1,017 acres from Stanyan Street west to Ocean Beach, with the parks department's office at McLaren Lodge on Stanyan (SF Recreation and Parks). Lake Merced is at the southwest corner of the city with a trail loop around it (SF Recreation and Parks), and Sava Pool on 19th Avenue in the Sunset holds a 25-yard, eight-lane tank (Richmond Sunset News).

Mission Bay, the waterfront and the islands

Mission Bay School opened in August 2026, a new elementary built with bond money in one of the city's fastest-growing neighborhoods (SFUSD; SF Standard). The district is also planning consolidations elsewhere, with closures or mergers now expected no earlier than the 2029-30 school year, and it plans to change its enrollment lottery (SF Standard). The district has not decided which schools are affected, so for any address its current enrollment information is what to read. The city finished 2,406 homes in 2025, up from 1,457 the year before (KQED).

Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island are part of the City and County of San Francisco, reached from the Bay Bridge. Over the past five years the redevelopment there has produced about 1,000 homes, eight waterfront parks and a ferry terminal with a ten-minute ride downtown, and the tallest building so far is the 22-story Isle House (SF Chronicle; SF YIMBY). A 2026 revision would raise the full plan from 8,000 homes to as many as 10,800, most of them rentals, with about 27% permanently affordable (SF.gov). The SFMTA approved metered street parking on both islands on March 3, 2026 (SFMTA).

Candlestick Point broke ground in September 2026 after years of delay. The current agreement calls for 7,218 homes, about 32% of them publicly subsidized, and the 2026 work is sewer, streets and electrical ahead of the first 700 or so homes. The first homes are expected in 2030, with full build-out running into the 2040s (SF Standard; SF OCII). The city formally separated Candlestick from the Hunters Point Shipyard project in November 2024.

For everyday life in the middle of the city, Mission Dolores Park covers close to 16 acres on a slope between 18th and 20th streets (SF Recreation and Parks). The Ferry Plaza Farmers Market sets up outside the Ferry Building at the foot of Market Street (Foodwise), and the Exploratorium's 600 or so hands-on exhibits are on Pier 15 on the Embarcadero (Exploratorium). A San Francisco condo or flat also comes with two things I cover in the homework below: the balcony inspection law and, on some buildings, a form of ownership called a TIC.

Alameda County: Oakland, Piedmont, Berkeley, the island, Fremont and the Tri-Valley

Oakland

In July 2026 the Oakland City Council approved a $125 million sale of the city's stake in the Coliseum and Oakland Arena to Oakland Acquisition Company. That company is a partnership of the African American Sports and Entertainment Group and Chicago-based Loop Capital, and Oak View Group is taking the arena parcel. The city also keeps 6% of annual gross ticket revenue, and closing was expected between September 2026 and January 2027 (The Real Deal; Oaklandside). The new owners have not decided what gets built on the site, so if you are looking near the Coliseum, the city's own project page is where a plan will appear first.

On the waterfront, Brooklyn Basin is a master plan for 3,100 homes, including 465 affordable rentals, two renovated marinas and a restored wetland. Parcel H's first phase of 83 apartments was under construction in March 2026 (SF YIMBY; City of Oakland). The city permitted 712 new homes in 2025 and has moved to over-the-counter approval for anything from a duplex to a 30-unit building that meets its new design standards (Oaklandside). And after a two-year trademark suit brought by San Francisco, the airport's name is settled by a 2026 agreement: it is Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport, with "Bay" required right after "San Francisco" and the word "International" left out (Oaklandside).

Lake Merritt, the tidal lagoon just east of downtown, has a path the whole way around it (Wikipedia: Lake Merritt), and the Chabot Space and Science Center runs a planetarium and public observatories on Skyline Boulevard in the hills (Chabot). New places this year include Sable Lounge on Grand Avenue near the lake, which soft opened April 23 to 25, 2026, and Kitsch Coffee at Jack London Square. In Fruitvale, Shibam, a Yemeni coffee shop, took over the former Red Bay Coffee flagship (Oaklandside, East Bay Nosh).

Piedmont

Piedmont is a separate city of about 1.7 square miles with the City of Oakland on every side of it. It was incorporated in 1907, and Oakland later annexed Montclair, Rockridge and the rest of the hills around it, which left Piedmont enclosed. It has its own city government, its own schools, and its own police and fire departments (KQED Bay Curious; City of Piedmont). So a Piedmont home and an Oakland home a block apart are in two different cities, with two different school districts and two different tax bills. The county assessor's parcel record shows which one an address is in.

Berkeley

Berkeley's one hospital is being replaced. Sutter Health has said since 2016 that the 339-bed Alta Bates hospital on Ashby Avenue will close by 2030, because the building does not meet California's seismic-safety rules for hospitals. In February 2025 Sutter confirmed the replacement: a campus in Emeryville costing more than $1 billion, with a 200-bed hospital. Outpatient care starts there in 2028, the hospital opens in 2032 or 2033, and Alta Bates keeps its emergency department open until the Emeryville emergency department is running. Herrick Hospital on Dwight Way keeps and expands its psychiatric services (Berkeleyside; Daily Californian). If an emergency room close to home matters to you, those dates are the ones to plan around.

Berkeley's planning staff were expected to bring forward an ordinance in September 2026 letting an accessory dwelling unit be sold separately from the main home under state law AB 1033 (Abodu AB 1033 tracker). If a Berkeley home with a second unit is on your list, the city's planning department can tell you whether that ordinance passed, and the state-law section below explains what it would change. For time outdoors, Tilden Regional Park covers 2,079 acres in the Berkeley Hills with a botanic garden, a little farm and a merry-go-round (East Bay Regional Park District). Downtown, Shake Shack opened on April 28, 2026, and Hinodeya, a dashi ramen shop, held its grand opening on June 1 (Oaklandside, East Bay Nosh). Berkeley also has its own city transfer tax, which the transfer tax section below covers.

Alameda

The City of Alameda is an island, and its biggest project is on the former Naval Air Station at Alameda Point. Site A covers 68 acres, and its first phase is 673 homes, 130 of them for low-income households and 310 for middle-income households, with eight acres of parks and 100,000 square feet of retail. The full Site A program is about 800 homes and a new ferry terminal (REBusinessOnline). The cost of streets, utilities, levees and stormwater basins for all of Alameda Point rose from $700 million in 2020 to $840 million in 2025. The City Council held a January 20, 2026 workshop on selling land faster to pay for it (Alameda Point Environmental Report). The aircraft carrier USS Hornet is berthed at Pier 3 on the same waterfront as a museum (USS Hornet Museum), and Robert W. Crown Memorial State Beach runs along the bay shore with the Crab Cove marine reserve at its north end (East Bay Regional Park District).

Fremont

Fremont is five towns. It was incorporated on January 23, 1956 by merging Centerville, Niles, Irvington, Mission San José and Warm Springs, and those names survive as districts of one city. The community grew up around Mission San José, founded in 1797. From 1912 to 1915 the Niles district was an early home of California's film industry, and Charlie Chaplin shot films there (City of Fremont; Washington Township Museum of Local History). So when you compare a home in Mission San José with one in Irvington, you are comparing two districts of the same city, with the same city government and the same city rules.

Warm Springs is where the newest building is. The Warm Springs Innovation District covers 850 acres around the 5.3-million-square-foot Tesla Factory and the Warm Springs/South Fremont BART station. The city reports it about 70% built out, with most of its housing complete and a target of more than 40,000 technology jobs there by 2035 (City of Fremont). Pulte Homes has proposed 140 condominiums, 21 of them affordable, on a former industrial site at 45846 Warm Springs Road near the station (The Real Deal, June 18, 2026). On the bay side of the city, Coyote Hills Regional Park covers marsh and grassy hills with a visitor center, and Quarry Lakes is on former gravel pits along Alameda Creek (East Bay Regional Park District).

The Tri-Valley

City Center Bishop Ranch in San Ramon is a 300,000-square-foot open-air shopping and dining center designed by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop with BAR Architects, with a ten-screen cinema and a fitness club (City of San Ramon). Trumark Homes holds approvals for 1,813 homes across Dublin, Livermore, Pleasanton, San Ramon, Danville and Walnut Creek. Its active communities include Francis Ranch in Dublin, 573 homes on 165 acres in four neighborhoods named Orchid, Marigold, Azure and Jasmine, Arroyo Crossings in Livermore, and Parkton at Dublin Centre, 15 detached homes (Trumark Homes; SF Chronicle). Dublin has three Community Facilities Districts, and the Mello-Roos section below explains what that line on a new home's tax bill is.

The southbound I-680 express lane between Alcosta Boulevard and State Route 84 opened on February 13, 2026, about nine miles through San Ramon, Dublin, Pleasanton and Sunol, with tolling to start later in the year. The northbound lane has no date yet (Alameda CTC). John Muir Health's San Ramon Outpatient Center turned one year old on June 11, 2026, with a further $50 million investment planned and 25 to 30 new physicians across primary care, oncology, cardiology and surgery, targeting 2027 (John Muir Health). For a swim, Shadow Cliffs in Pleasanton is a former gravel quarry turned lake on Stanley Boulevard, and Del Valle Regional Park surrounds Lake Del Valle in the hills south of Livermore (East Bay Regional Park District).

Contra Costa County: Concord, Richmond, the SR-24 and I-680 towns, and the east county

Concord

The former Concord Naval Weapons Station is the metro's largest single housing approval. The base closed in 2005, and the site covers 2,422 acres. In May 2026 the City Council unanimously approved a term sheet with the U.S. Navy, the outline of the terms both sides agree to before the full contracts are written. That cleared the master developer, Brookfield, to plan 12,272 homes, a quarter of them affordable, six million square feet of commercial space and 868 acres of parks. The Navy takes $628 million of the profits (City of Concord; SF Chronicle). Brookfield expects to submit the specific plan, the detailed zoning and street layout for the site, along with the environmental report and the development agreement in early 2027. Infrastructure could start as early as 2028, the specific plan reaches the Council around summer 2029, and build-out runs about 30 years (Local News Matters). The Concord Library is on Salvio Street near Todos Santos Plaza downtown (Contra Costa County Library). Mount Diablo State Park's Mitchell Canyon entrance is on the Clayton side of the mountain the whole valley is named for (California State Parks).

Richmond and the shoreline

Prologis is redeveloping the closed Hilltop Mall and the land around it, 143 acres, into housing, shops, restaurants and parks under the name Hilltop Horizon. The Walmart on the south side is expected to stay, and demolition is planned for 2026 or 2027. Glydways has taken 14 acres of the north parking lot to test driverless vehicles for a proposed 28-mile automated transit network (Richmondside; Hilltop Horizon). The number of homes has not been set. At Point Molate, a 2018 lawsuit settlement requires the city to build at least 670 homes, with 70% of the land preserved as open space (Wikipedia: Point Molate Naval Fuel Depot). The city's planning department can tell you where that project stands today.

Point Isabel Regional Shoreline, 50 acres that came into the regional park district in 1975, is the East Bay Regional Park District's shoreline for walkers, windsurfers, kayakers and dogs (East Bay Regional Park District). The Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front visitor center is in the old Ford Assembly Building on the waterfront (National Park Service). West Contra Costa Unified has a school tax on the November ballot, which the ballot section below covers.

Walnut Creek, Martinez and the towns along SR-24 and I-680

If weekends outdoors are part of the plan, these towns put a lot of open ridge country within a short drive of home. Castle Rock Regional Recreation Area is under the sandstone outcrops on Castle Rock Road in Walnut Creek, next to Diablo Foothills (East Bay Regional Park District). The Gardens at Heather Farm on Marchbanks Drive is open from sunrise to sunset (Visit Walnut Creek). In Martinez, the National Park Service keeps John Muir's home and fruit ranch on Alhambra Avenue (National Park Service), and Briones Regional Park covers the ridges between Martinez and Lafayette (East Bay Regional Park District). Danville has the Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site in the hills above town and the Blackhawk Museum's galleries of classic cars at Blackhawk Plaza (National Park Service).

Brentwood, Oakley and Antioch

The east county is where most of the metro's new detached homes are being built, by builders including Trumark, Davidon, Tri Pointe, Shea and Meritage (NewHomeSource). Brentwood has had four Community Facilities Districts since 2002, funding public facilities and services from new development (City of Brentwood). So if a new home out here is on your list, please ask for its property tax bill and the district's annual report early, and the Mello-Roos section below explains how to read that line. The Brentwood Union School District moved in July 2026 to place a school improvement bond on the November ballot (Contra Costa News). South of Antioch, Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve covers the old coal mining district with a visitor center at the Greathouse portal, and Contra Loma Regional Park wraps a reservoir on the city's south edge (East Bay Regional Park District).

San Mateo County: the bayshore cities, SFO and the coastside

South San Francisco, Colma and Millbrae

Genentech was founded in South San Francisco in 1976, and the city describes itself as the birthplace of biotechnology, with dozens of biotech companies based there (KQED; City of South San Francisco). Next door, Colma has roughly 1.5 million people buried in it and about 1,700 living residents, with 17 cemeteries on about 75% of its 2.2 square miles. San Francisco outlawed burials in 1900, and between 1920 and 1941 more than 150,000 bodies were moved to what was then Colma farmland. The town's motto is "It's great to be alive in Colma!" (City of Colma; Mental Floss). Millbrae had issued about 408 of the 2,199 building permits the state requires of it by 2031, roughly 18%, with a project of about 97 homes at 1301 Broadway and about 278 at One Meadow Glen (Hoodline, March 2026).

SFO's Terminal 3 West is a $2.6 billion seismic retrofit and rebuild of the western half of Terminal 3, with nine new gates by 2026, full completion in fall 2027 and a rebuilt Terminal C parking garage. Harvey Milk Terminal 1 finished its final phase in June 2024 (Magnusson Klemencic Associates). If you fly for work, you'll be walking through that construction for another year.

Redwood City, San Mateo and Woodside

Redwood City was the first city in San Mateo County to have a state-approved housing element, the part of a city's general plan that shows where new homes can go. It also holds a Prohousing designation, the state's label for a city that has made building easier, which gives the city an edge when it competes for state housing money. In July 2026 its council passed, 6 to 1, two ordinances and a resolution that changed several hundred pages of the zoning code and engineering standards to speed up housing (City of Redwood City; Redwood City Pulse). The county Board of Supervisors approved $24.3 million for six affordable housing developers in August 2026, funding 459 homes (Redwood City Pulse).

Coyote Point Recreation Area on the San Mateo bay shore holds a marina, picnic areas and the CuriOdyssey science museum (San Mateo County Parks). Filoli's historic home and formal gardens are on Cañada Road in Woodside (National Trust for Historic Preservation), and the Hiller Aviation Museum keeps its aircraft indoors beside San Carlos Airport (Hiller Aviation Museum).

Half Moon Bay, Pacifica and the coastside

Along the ocean, the California Coastal Commission has a say in local zoning. State law puts the shoreline in a coastal zone, and a city there cannot put a zoning change into effect until the Commission certifies it as part of the city's local coastal program (California Coastal Commission). So building takes longer on the coastside, and the rules on what can go up near a home there are set by the city and the Commission together. Half Moon Bay is the only Northern California city without a state-approved housing plan, and in March 2026 the Governor gave it 30 days to respond or face legal action. The city's answer is that waiting on Coastal Commission certification of its zoning changes is what slows it down (Local News Matters; Planetizen). A 40-home farmworker housing project at 555 Kelly Street had not broken ground after two years, while Stone Pine Cove, 46 modular homes for farmworkers, is complete and 40 senior homes were targeted for 2026 (SF Chronicle). The coastal zone runs along the Pacific side of San Mateo County, Marin and San Francisco. If you are looking at a home near the ocean in any of the three, the city's planning department can tell you whether it is inside the zone. They can also tell you what that means for changes to the home or to the lots around it.

Half Moon Bay State Beach is at the end of Kelly Avenue, where the Coastside Trail follows the bluff (California State Parks). In Pacifica, surfers call Pacifica State Beach Linda Mar Beach, after the neighborhood behind it, and San Pedro Valley Park climbs Montara Mountain from the valley behind that (City of Pacifica). The tide pools at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in Moss Beach are just north of Pillar Point Harbor (San Mateo County Parks).

Marin County

Marin County's housing plan is approved by the state, and about 700 homes were in the county's development pipeline as of March 2026 (Local News Matters). The largest project is Northgate Town Square in San Rafael, approved by the City Council in December 2024 for up to 1,422 residences, mostly rental apartments, on the former Sears site. Interior demolition began in early 2026 and full demolition was permitted from March 2026 (Call Marin Home). Novato has more than 2,100 homes approved, under construction or in review, a mix of apartments, condominiums, single-family homes and assisted living (same source).

The road to watch is State Route 37 across the top of the bay. The Sears Point to Mare Island improvement project, about $500 million, finished design in summer 2026, and construction is planned from spring 2027 to fall 2029 (Caltrans District 4; Transportation Authority of Marin). A separate partnership of Marin, Sonoma, Napa and Solano counties is working on sea level rise along the same corridor (Sonoma County Transportation Authority). Marin is also the one county of the five that is not part of the regional transit measure in the ballot section below.

Muir Woods needs a parking or shuttle reservation to visit (National Park Service). Stinson Beach is three miles of National Park Service sand on the coast north of Mount Tamalpais (National Park Service). China Camp State Park keeps the buildings of a Chinese shrimp-fishing village on the San Pablo Bay shore off North San Pedro Road (California State Parks). The Bay Model in Sausalito is the Army Corps of Engineers' working hydraulic model of the bay and delta (Visit Marin). The Sunday Marin Farmers Market sets up on the Marin County Civic Center grounds (Agricultural Institute of Marin).

Two state laws that change what can be built next door

Senate Bill 79, signed in October 2025, sets taller height and density standards within about half a mile of major transit stops and overrides local zoning there, effective July 1, 2026. In the Bay Area it applies in Alameda, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, and it does not apply in Contra Costa or Marin (Holland & Knight; ABAG summary). Cities may adopt their own ordinances that exclude certain parcels, and the approaches differ sharply from one city to the next (CalMatters). So if the home you are considering is near a BART or Caltrain station in one of those three counties, the city's planning counter can tell you what the lots around it may now hold.

AB 1033 lets a city allow an accessory dwelling unit, a second smaller home on the same lot, to be sold separately as a condominium. It has been on the books since January 1, 2024, but only where a city opts in. As of July 2026 nine California cities had done so, including San Francisco for certain newer detached units. No city in Alameda, Contra Costa or Marin counties had yet, and Berkeley's ordinance was expected in September (Abodu AB 1033 tracker; KQED). If a listing in San Francisco offers an ADU on its own, that is the law that makes it possible.

What is on the November 3, 2026 ballot?

Three things on this ballot reach a home purchase here.

The regional transit measure comes first. SB 63, the Connect Bay Area Act, signed in October 2025, authorized a 14-year sales tax of one cent in San Francisco and half a cent in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. It would raise about $980 million a year for BART, Muni, AC Transit, Caltrain, SF Bay Ferry, SamTrans and others. Organizers turned in more than 300,000 signatures on May 26, 2026, and Marin County is not part of it (SPUR; SF Standard). It is a sales tax, so it would not add a line to a property tax bill. BART's board approved an Alternative Service Plan on February 26, 2026 against a $376 million deficit, describing what happens if the measure fails: 30-minute frequencies, a 30% fare increase and the closing of up to 15 stations (BART). That plan only goes into effect if the measure fails.

The second is Proposition G in San Francisco, which would reopen the Great Highway to cars and undo the Sunset Dunes park from the top of this page. The third is for schools: West Contra Costa Unified's $10 million school tax expires next year unless voters renew it (Hoodline), and the Brentwood Union School District moved to place a school improvement bond on the same ballot. A school bond, if it passes, is repaid through property taxes, so it becomes a line on the bill for homes in that district.

BART and the airports

BART fares rose 6.2% on January 1, 2026, taking the average fare from $4.88 to $5.18 (BART). Ridership is still about half of what it was before the pandemic, though November 2025 was up 11.6% from a year earlier at more than 4.4 million trips. The budget the board adopted on June 11, 2026 for the coming year cut $18 million and includes no fare increase (BART FY27 budget). The two airports are covered above: SFO's Terminal 3 West finishes in fall 2027, and Oakland's airport is now Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport.

Hospitals under construction

Three hospital projects are worth knowing about, and the Alta Bates to Emeryville move in the Berkeley section is the first. The second is UCSF Health's Helen Diller Hospital at Parnassus Heights in San Francisco: $4.3 billion, 15 stories, about 900,000 square feet and roughly 336 beds, with expanded emergency, imaging and surgical services on the former Langley Porter site. Foundation and basement work finished in April 2026, construction runs through 2029, and the opening is expected in 2030 (UCSF Real Estate). The third is John Muir Health's San Ramon expansion, targeting 2027, in the Tri-Valley section above. If you are comparing two addresses, it is worth checking the drive from each one to an emergency room that is open today, because two of these three are years from opening.

The employers

San Francisco office leasing in 2026 ran at a 30-year high, driven by artificial intelligence companies. OpenAI and Anthropic each passed one million square feet in the spring, and Anthropic signed a 13-year lease for all 420,000 square feet at 300 Howard Street plus about 100,000 square feet at 400 Howard (The Real Deal; Businesswire). Across the county line, Genentech has been in South San Francisco since 1976, and the Tesla Factory in Fremont covers 5.3 million square feet. If you work for one of those, how your income is documented is one of the first things we would talk through.

The city and the tax rate area for any Bay Area home

Before you compare two homes here, please look up each address in the county assessor's parcel record. It shows the city the home is in and its tax rate area, the code that decides which voter-approved bonds and district taxes are added to the 1% base on that parcel's bill. The transfer tax, the Mello-Roos line and whether SB 79 applies all follow from that one record, so it is the place to start.

How does property tax work on a Bay Area home?

California's Proposition 13 caps the general property tax at 1% of assessed value, plus whatever voter-approved bonds the local districts have passed. The county reassesses a home to its purchase price when it changes hands, and the seller's old assessed value does not come with the home (San Bernardino County Assessor). So the tax figure on a listing reflects what the seller pays, and your bill starts from what you paid.

A purchase also produces a supplemental tax bill. The county bills the difference between the seller's assessed value and your new one, prorated for the months left in the fiscal year, effective the first day of the month after the sale. It is a separate bill from the regular annual one, it is mailed to you rather than to your lender, and it often arrives months after closing. I walk through the timing and how to have the money waiting in the California supplemental property tax bill. Each county assessor's own page gives its timing, and I would read the one for the county you are buying in.

What is Mello-Roos?

Mello-Roos is a special tax charged by a Community Facilities District, a district formed to pay for the parks, schools, libraries, utilities and police protection a new neighborhood needs. It appears as its own line on the property tax bill, on top of the 1% Proposition 13 rate. Each district sets its amount by a formula in its Rate and Method of Apportionment, usually keyed to square footage or lot size, with a stated maximum (Contra Costa County Public Finance). In this metro it clusters in the newer subdivisions of the east county and the Tri-Valley. Brentwood has had four of these districts since 2002, and Dublin has three, including CFD No. 2023-1, East Ranch, established December 5, 2023, which levies one special tax for facilities and a second for services (City of Dublin).

Please ask for the current property tax bill by the home's assessor's parcel number, or APN, and read each line labeled CFD or Community Facilities District, along with the district's annual report, which the cities above publish. That dollar figure goes into the monthly payment a lender qualifies you on, and the parcel's own bill is the only number I would trust for it.

Who pays the transfer tax in San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley?

No California law assigns the transfer tax to either party. It is a term of the purchase contract, and local custom varies from one city to the next. San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley each charge their own city transfer tax on top of the county's, tiered by the sale price, and the custom on who pays it differs among the three (City of Berkeley). Each city publishes its current schedule on its own page, and your escrow officer applies it at closing. The California page covers the state's customs on who pays what at closing.

Condos, HOAs and the balcony inspection law

California's SB 326 added Civil Code section 5551 to the Davis-Stirling Act, the law that governs homeowners' associations. Condominium associations with three or more units must have their exterior elevated elements, meaning balconies, decks, stairs and walkways, and their waterproofing inspected by a licensed structural engineer, then again every nine years. The first deadline was January 1, 2025, with no extension. The inspection is an association expense, normally paid from reserves, and owners can be specially assessed if the reserves fall short (Bay Legal PC). San Francisco's Housing Code section 604 adds a separate local inspection requirement on multi-unit buildings. Bay Area association dues rose a median 30% between 2019 and 2024, with insurance named as the leading driver (SF Chronicle).

So for a condo here, I would ask for the reserve study, the most recent balcony inspection report and the last year of board minutes early, and read them before you waive the inspection contingency. The dues go into the monthly payment, and why condos are harder to finance explains how the building itself gets reviewed along with you.

What is a TIC in San Francisco?

A TIC is a tenancy in common, a form of ownership rather than a type of building. Two or more owners hold undivided fractional interests in one property, and a recorded TIC agreement gives each one the exclusive right to occupy a specific flat. In 2013 San Francisco sharply limited how many properties may convert to condominiums, which is why the form persists here (Andy Sirkin; Ruth Krishnan).

Financing works differently. Fractional loans let each owner carry their own loan rather than share one, and only a short list of local lenders offers them, with no large national lenders among them. The appraisal is its own exercise, because the appraiser typically values the whole building and then the fractional interest separately. If you are looking at a TIC, please tell me early. The lender list is short and the terms differ from a condo's, and we would want to know what they are before you write an offer.

Earthquake, the disclosure packet and insurance

Every California purchase comes with a Natural Hazard Disclosure Statement, which the seller must deliver after checking the state's zone maps. It is where you read whether the property is in an earthquake fault zone, a liquefaction zone, a flood zone or a fire zone (California Geological Survey). The Hayward Fault runs under the cities on the east side of the bay. The UC Berkeley Seismology Lab puts the chance of a magnitude 6.7 or larger earthquake on it before 2043 at about one in three (UC Berkeley Seismology Lab). Liquefaction, where filled or sandy ground loses strength in shaking, is a separate question from fault distance. A home can be far from a fault on filled bay land and still be in a liquefaction zone, or near the fault on bedrock and outside one. The state's liquefaction maps cover Alameda, Berkeley, Emeryville, Oakland and Piedmont (SFGate).

Earthquake insurance is a separate, optional policy. The California Earthquake Authority offers deductibles from 5% to 25% of the dwelling limit, which is the amount the policy insures the home itself for, and a larger discount for a verified retrofit (California Earthquake Authority). The deductible is the part to understand, with made-up numbers to show the arithmetic:

Dwelling limit (invented)        $1,000,000
Deductible                       x      15%
                                 ----------
Paid by you before the policy      $150,000

For the homeowners policy itself, the California FAIR Plan, the state's insurer of last resort, raised rates an average of 29.1% effective October 15, 2026 for more than 675,000 customers. The increase is weighted toward high-wildfire-risk areas, and some urban Bay Area communities may see reductions (KQED). The premium on the policy you end up with becomes part of your monthly payment, so a quote for the specific address is a number I would want in hand before you compare two homes.

The down payment programs, by name

CalHFA and the City of San Francisco each run a down payment program with a lottery. CalHFA's Dream For All Shared Appreciation Loan opened its 2026 round on February 24 and closed it on March 16, with a randomized selection because demand exceeded the funding. It serves first-generation buyers, and repayment includes a share of the home's appreciation (CalHFA). The 2027 dates had not been announced when I checked. San Francisco's Downpayment Assistance Loan Program, DALP, from the Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development, is a deferred second loan for first-time buyers purchasing a market-rate home in the city. It has no monthly payments while the home is your primary residence, and it is repaid with a share of appreciation when you sell, transfer or refinance. Every adult in the household must have had no ownership interest in a home for three years, and MOHCD runs a lottery each spring (MOHCD). The amounts for both programs change by round, so please pull the current figures from the agency's own page. If you are buying in one of the other four counties, we can look at what that county or city offers when we talk.

Loan limits and the monthly payment in the five counties

In 2024, 28,869 homes in the five counties were bought with a mortgage (HMDA 2024, published by the FFIEC). Only 1,411 of those loans were FHA and 420 were VA, about 6% together, the lowest share of any metro in these guides. The loan limits explain part of that. The conforming limit is the largest loan Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will buy in a county, and a loan above it is called a jumbo loan. The agencies allow a higher limit in high-cost areas, with a ceiling on how high it can go, and all five counties here are at that ceiling for 2026. The FHA one-unit limit equals the conforming one-unit limit in all five as well, so an FHA loan reaches the same size a conforming loan does. The 2026 figures for one- to four-unit homes are in the box below this article, and conforming versus jumbo explains what changes when a loan crosses that limit. If you are also weighing Southern California, the Los Angeles area guide and the Inland Empire guide show how differently the limits and the FHA share work there.

Property tax at the parcel's rate, any Mello-Roos line, the association dues, and the homeowners and earthquake premiums if you carry them all go into the monthly payment a lender qualifies you on. The transfer tax, where it falls to you, is part of your cash to close, and the supplemental bill arrives after closing on your own account. Pre-approval in California covers what the letter is based on and why the estimate should be built for the actual city and parcel.

When you're ready, you can run your numbers for a purchase in any of the five counties: pricing for your scenario and California closing costs, with no credit pull and no account. Choose the rate option that works best for you, knowing the selection can change, and the application opens from there.

Nothing here is a loan approval, a denial or a commitment to lend, and it is not tax advice. The assessed value, the tax rate area and any special taxes on a specific parcel are set by that county, so please confirm them with the assessor and the treasurer-tax collector.

Common questions

Is Piedmont part of Oakland?

No. Piedmont is a separate city of about 1.7 square miles with the City of Oakland on every side of it, incorporated in 1907 before Oakland annexed the surrounding hills. It has its own city government, its own school district and its own police and fire departments, so a Piedmont home and an Oakland home a block apart get different tax bills from different cities.

Is Mission San Jose a separate city from Fremont?

No. Mission San José is one of the five towns that merged to form the City of Fremont on January 23, 1956, along with Centerville, Niles, Irvington and Warm Springs. All five survive as named districts of one city, so two Fremont homes in different districts share the same city government and city rules.

What is a TIC in San Francisco, and can I get a mortgage on one?

A TIC is a tenancy in common, where two or more owners hold fractional interests in one building and a recorded agreement gives each the right to occupy a specific flat. San Francisco limited condominium conversions in 2013, which is why the form persists. Financing is through fractional loans from a short list of local lenders rather than national ones, and the appraisal values the whole building and then the fractional interest, so please tell me early if you are looking at one.

Is the FHA loan limit the same as the conforming limit in the San Francisco Bay Area?

Yes. All five counties in this metro, San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Marin, have the highest limit the agencies allow for 2026, and the FHA one-unit limit equals the conforming one-unit limit in each of them. The exact figures for one- to four-unit homes are in the loan-limits box on this page.

When can I buy a home at the former Concord Naval Weapons Station?

Not for a while. The City of Concord approved a term sheet with the Navy in May 2026, the outline of the terms before the full contracts are written. The master developer expects to submit its specific plan and environmental report in early 2027. Infrastructure could begin as early as 2028, the specific plan reaches the City Council around summer 2029, and the full build-out of 12,272 homes runs about 30 years.

What is on the November 3, 2026 ballot that affects buying a home in the Bay Area?

The regional transit measure under SB 63, a 14-year sales tax of one cent in San Francisco and half a cent in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. It would fund BART, Muni, AC Transit, Caltrain and other agencies, and Marin is not included. San Francisco's Proposition G, which would reopen the Great Highway to cars. And two school measures, West Contra Costa Unified's school tax renewal and a Brentwood Union School District bond, which would show up on property tax bills in those districts if they pass.

Does SB 79 apply in Marin and Contra Costa counties?

No. SB 79 is the state law that sets taller height and density standards within about half a mile of major transit stops. In the Bay Area it applies in Alameda, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties as of July 1, 2026. It does not apply in Contra Costa or Marin, and the cities where it does apply may adopt ordinances that exclude certain parcels.