Sausalito's Median Home Price Is an Average of Three Different Ways to Own a Home

When a floating home changes hands on one of Sausalito's docks, the buyer isn't just negotiating a purchase price. They're also renegotiating the rent on the water beneath the house, and as of January 1, 2026, the formula for that renegotiation changed under state law. Anyone comparing a floating home to a hillside estate or a downtown waterfront lot using last year's numbers is comparing three different products with one borrowed yardstick.

That's the piece missing from most Sausalito market summaries. The city's median home price, wherever you find it quoted, is a blend of properties that don't share a common ownership structure. A hillside estate comes with the land under it. A floating home at Waldo Point Harbor comes with a lease on the water under it. Treating those as the same asset class because both have a Sausalito zip code is how buyers end up misreading what they're actually purchasing.

The Lease Nobody Puts on the Flyer

Marin County is home to roughly 425 floating homes across its marinas, more than Alameda and Contra Costa counties combined, according to the Marin County Board of Supervisors' own account of the community. The overwhelming majority sit on Richardson Bay in Sausalito. Waldo Point Harbor alone, at the northern end of town, operates 282 berths that have stayed fully occupied since the 1970s, by the harbor's own description.

In this arrangement, the buyer purchases the structure itself and separately leases the berth from the marina operator. That lease sets the monthly berth fee, parking rights, maintenance obligations, and how long the term runs before it's up for renewal. It is functionally a ground lease, the same mechanism that shows up under co-ops in Manhattan or land-lease communities elsewhere, just applied to water instead of dirt.

For years this worked under a patchwork of local custom and a 2022 state law, AB 252, that was written with Alameda County's rent spikes in mind and applied uniformly across all three Bay Area counties with floating home marinas. Marin's marina owners say that one-size approach didn't fit a community where long-term leases and CPI-only rent structures had already kept things stable, and it left them without a clear way to fund seawall repairs, dock upgrades, and flood mitigation as sea levels shift.

What Changed on January 1

Assembly Bill 754, authored by Assemblymember Damon Connolly and sponsored by the Marin County Board of Supervisors, rewrote the rules specifically for Marin's floating home marinas. It was signed into law on October 10, 2025, and its provisions apply retroactively to rent increases starting July 1, 2025, with the new framework running through January 1, 2038.

The bill caps annual berth rent increases to the percentage change in the cost of living, with a floor of 3 percent and a ceiling of 7.5 percent, and cuts any increase above 5 percent in half. That part mirrors general California rent-cap logic. The part that matters more for a buyer is what happens when a floating home sells. Under AB 754, if the home carries a long-term lease of ten years or more, the marina can reset the rent for the incoming owner, but the increase is capped at whichever is lower: 25 percent over the previous rate, or 0.15 percent of the home's certified sale price.

That formula did not exist in this form a year ago. It came out of more than two years of negotiation between the Floating Homes Association's Legislative Action Committee and marina owners, who held twelve in-person dock meetings across all six marinas and put the final proposal to a resident vote. More than 400 floating home residents responded, a 67 percent turnout, and 93 percent voted in favor. The bill then passed the Assembly and Senate without a single no vote, which is not a common outcome for real estate legislation anywhere in the state.

For a buyer today, this means the berth fee quoted in a listing isn't necessarily the berth fee you'll pay after closing. If the home is under an existing long-term lease, the marina has room to adjust your rate at the point of sale, bounded by that new formula. Ask for the certified sale price calculation and the specific lease document before you assume the current owner's berth fee is your future berth fee.

Three Products, One Median

Here's how that plays out across the town's inventory.

Hillside properties with unobstructed bay views consistently command the top end of the market, and single-family detached homes across Sausalito have averaged close to $2.5 million in early 2026 reporting. Downtown waterfront parcels trade on a different logic entirely, smaller footprints but immediate proximity to the commercial strip, with inventory tight enough that well-maintained properties draw quick competition when they list.

Floating homes occupy their own range, and it's a wide one. Reported sale prices across Sausalito's docks, Issaquah, Main, South Forty, East Pier, and the Kappas piers among them, span roughly $400,000 for entry-level, basic-finish homes up to $2.8 million or more for premium properties with deep-water berths and high-end finishes. Within that range, floating-home specialists consistently point to two pricing signals a portal search won't surface: deep-water berths that don't sit on mud at low tide typically carry a premium of 15 to 25 percent over shallow berths, and end-of-dock positions with unobstructed views often sell for 10 to 20 percent more than interior slips on the same dock.

Put those three segments in one pool and average them, and you get a number that describes none of them well. That's part of why published medians for Sausalito disagree so much depending on the source and the month, ranging from roughly $1.36 million to $2.07 million in various 2026 reports. The spread isn't a data quality problem. It's what happens when you average a land purchase, a small urban lot, and a leased-berth structure into a single figure.

What to Ask Before You Write an Offer

If you're evaluating a floating home against a land-based property anywhere else in Marin, the sale price is the least useful number on the listing sheet. Before making an offer, get clear answers on:

• The current monthly berth fee and whether the lease is a long-term lease of ten years or more
• Whether the rent resets on sale, and if so, the certified sale price calculation that determines the new rate under AB 754
• The remaining term on the lease and whether it's transferable
• Hull material, whether it's concrete, steel, or fiberglass, and the date of the most recent marine survey
• Dock position, specifically whether the berth sits in deep water at low tide or on mud, and whether it's an end slip or interior

None of this shows up in a standard comparative market analysis pulled from public records, because floating homes are assessed as real property in Marin but the berth itself is never part of the deed. The lease lives in a separate document, held by the marina, and it's the piece that determines your real monthly cost of ownership for as long as you live there.

The Broader Point for Marin Buyers

Sausalito isn't unique in having a mixed inventory. What makes it a useful case study is how cleanly the ownership structures separate, and how recently one of them changed under state law. A buyer comparing a Sausalito floating home to a waterfront property in Tiburon or Belvedere is not comparing like assets even if both listings say "waterfront." One comes with a lease that resets on sale under a formula finalized this year. The other doesn't.

If you're weighing a hillside estate against a floating home at Waldo Point, or trying to figure out whether a quoted median actually applies to the kind of property you're considering, Sarkissian Bullock Team can walk through the berth lease, the hull survey, and the underlying comps with you before you write an offer. Request a Confidential Valuation and we'll tell you which of Sausalito's three markets you're actually looking at.