Seaside shows up on portal searches as the affordable door onto the Monterey Peninsula. The median list price tells one story, the median sold price tells another, and neither explains why a buyer touring in the same week can walk through a 1,000-square-foot mid-century cottage priced near $700,000 and a 3,600-square-foot Seaside Highlands home priced past $1.5M without leaving the 93955 zip code. The gap is not random. It is the product of a decades-old water settlement, a 122-acre construction site, and a housing stock that was never built to be uniform.
The Constraint Nobody Puts In The Listing Description
Before you compare Seaside to Pacific Grove or Marina on price per square foot, understand what governs new supply here. A 2018 legal settlement between Marina Coast Water District, LandWatch Monterey County, and Keep Fort Ord Wild capped new residential groundwater hookups on the former Fort Ord at 6,160 connections. That number is not a target. It is a ceiling.
The Campus Town project alone accounts for all but ten of those remaining hookups, according to LandWatch's letter to Seaside City Council. When the neighboring Main Gate property came back into play in February 2026 with KB Bakewell Seaside Venture II selected as the developer, the city had to reallocate roughly 30 acre-feet of water from Main Gate to Campus Town's Phase 1 just to keep the first project moving.
For a buyer, that reads as follows. Every "new construction coming soon" headline you see about Seaside is drawing from the same finite pool. The two mega-projects on the horizon are competing for water with each other, and neither is going to soften prices on the older housing stock the way a normal build-out would. The scarcity floor under a 1965 tract home in Ord Terrace is not the tract home. It is the water.
Two Seaside Markets Sharing One Median
Portal medians average out something that ought to be split. The city's housing was largely built in the post-war era as modest three-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath homes around 1,000 square feet, and many of those are being torn down and rebuilt into larger residences. Then there is Seaside Highlands, the Bakewell-built 2003 to 2005 subdivision above the Bayonet and Black Horse golf courses, where floor plans run from 1,720 to 3,878 square feet.
Depending on which tracker you read for July 2026, the median list price is either near $997,000 or $1.29M, and Zillow's ZHVI put the typical home value at $746,708 in May 2026, down 3.1% year over year. Redfin's February 2026 read had the median sale at $769,000 with days on market at 72, up from 38 the year before. Those are not contradictory numbers. They describe two different products.
| Segment | Typical size | Rough price band | What the buyer is buying |
|---|---|---|---|
| Post-war tract (Ord Terrace, Noche Buena, older core) | ~1,000 sqft, 3/1.5 | Sub-$800K entry | Lot value, remodel or teardown optionality |
| Seaside Highlands (2003–2005) | 1,720–3,878 sqft | $1.1M–$1.6M+ | Newer construction, golf course adjacency, HOA |
| Newer infill and completed projects (Seagrove/former Ascent, scattered rebuilds) | Varies | Mid-market | Move-in condition without Highlands premium |
| Campus Town Phase 1 (not yet delivered) | TBD | TBD | New construction with lottery allocation likely |
A buyer who anchors to the $770K median and then tours a Highlands listing at $1.5M is not looking at an outlier. They are looking at the other Seaside. The two rarely trade at the same time, which is part of why any single monthly median moves so much.
Campus Town, Read Honestly
The Campus Town Specific Plan, approved by City Council in 2020 and finally broken ground on April 11, 2025, envisions 1,485 housing units, up to 250 hotel rooms, 75 youth hostel beds, 150,000 square feet of retail and dining, and 50,000 square feet of office or maker space across 122 acres south of Lightfighter Drive. Developer Danny Bakewell Jr. put total build cost near $400 million.
Here is what matters for a buyer deciding this year or next:
- Phase 1 is 241 to 242 for-sale homes and roughly a 175-room hotel. Bakewell told an April 2025 town hall the first phase alone would run about $75 million.
- The first phase required a year to eighteen months of underground infrastructure work before vertical construction. That timeline started in spring 2025.
- Only four to five homes in Phase 1 will qualify as affordable. Bakewell said Seaside residents would likely get priority through some form of lottery, contingent on legal sign-off.
- The affordable-housing offset is built off-site. Twenty-one very-low-income apartments on the Greater Victory Temple property are meant to satisfy Campus Town's affordable requirement.
- The Department of Toxic Substances Control cleared the site only in early 2025 after two years of delays for soil contamination remediation on the former Fort Ord parcel.
The takeaway for a Peninsula shopper who has been told to "wait for Campus Town": Phase 1 is small, its affordable allocation is smaller, and it is not competing on price with older Seaside stock. It is a separate product on a separate timeline.
Main Gate And The Courthouse Effect
The 60-acre Main Gate parcel next door, north of Lightfighter Drive and east of Highway 1, is the second shoe. In February 2026, the Seaside City Council selected KB Bakewell Seaside Venture II to develop it. The scope now includes a hotel and the new Monterey County Superior Courthouse.
A courthouse changes the ground under a submarket in ways a hotel does not. It generates daily foot traffic from attorneys, court staff, and case-related visitors. It concentrates demand for weekday lunch spots, short-term parking, and rental housing within a walkable radius. For an owner of a small multi-unit or a duplex on the north side of Seaside, that is a demand story that does not depend on tourism cycles or CSUMB's academic calendar.
Two cautions worth stating in the same breath. Water for Main Gate is unresolved. LandWatch has argued in writing that additional groundwater is not available under the Fort Ord settlement, and the city and Bakewells have committed to finding a viable non-groundwater source. And the entitlements picture on Main Gate remains open, with a likely new environmental review required if the 2010 site plan is materially revised. A buyer positioning ahead of that project should treat the courthouse as the near-certain anchor and everything else as a question.
The DOM Signal Nobody Is Talking About
The most useful number in the Seaside data set for a 2026 buyer is not a price. It is time on market.
Homes in Seaside sold after a median of 72 days in February 2026, compared with 38 days a year earlier. By July, several trackers showed median days on market in the 84 to 93 range across active listings.
Days on market roughly doubled year over year while the price index drifted down a few percent. That combination is the buyer's negotiating window. It says list prices have not fully reset to what closes, and homes that have been sitting past the 60-day mark are the ones where a well-supported offer with a clean inspection contingency has room to move. A listing at day 90 in Ord Terrace is a very different conversation than a fresh listing in Seaside Highlands at day 10.
Statewide context sharpens the point. The California Association of Realtors reported a June 2026 median of $904,640, down from May but still up 0.4% year over year, while the 30-year fixed sat around 6.65% to 6.75% in late July 2026. Seaside is trailing the state on price and running longer on the shelf. That is a submarket where patience is compensated.
What This Means For A Buyer This Quarter
Two decisions collapse the analysis:
- Are you buying land or buying a house? The sub-$800K tract stock is often best evaluated as a lot with a small structure on it. Rebuild economics in Seaside have been pushing the median size and finish level up for years. If you want a move-in Highlands product, expect to underwrite from a different comp set entirely and to accept HOA governance as part of the deal.
- Are you racing new construction or ignoring it? Campus Town Phase 1 is unlikely to deliver keys in a window that matters for a 2026 or early-2027 move, and its affordable units are few and lottery-allocated. If you need to be housed on the Peninsula this cycle, the trade is with existing sellers whose listings are aging.
Frequently Asked
Will Campus Town's completion push down prices on older Seaside homes? Unlikely at the scale often implied. The Fort Ord water settlement caps total new hookups, so the region cannot build its way to abundance. Campus Town shifts the mix and adds retail and hotel demand, both of which tend to support surrounding values rather than depress them.
Is Seaside Highlands still the premium submarket? For newer construction on larger lots with golf course adjacency, yes. That will remain true until Campus Town delivers a competing new-build product, which is a multi-year timeline.
Does the new Superior Courthouse at Main Gate affect residential values nearby? It is a plausible positive for small multi-unit and walkable residential within the north side of Seaside once construction is underway. Rental demand from court-adjacent workers is durable in ways tourism demand is not.
What is the single most useful number for a 2026 Seaside buyer? Days on market. It has roughly doubled year over year while prices have drifted, which is where negotiation lives.
Seaside rewards buyers who read the market at the parcel level rather than the portal level. If you are weighing an offer on an older core home, a Highlands listing, or positioning for what comes next around Campus Town and Main Gate, the team at Carmel Valley Realty Company will walk the block with you and price the trade honestly. Request a Home Valuation when you are ready to move from research to a plan.
