If you are financing a condo in one of Alameda's older HOA buildings this fall, your loan file just got thicker. A Fannie Mae rule that took effect for loan applications dated on or after August 3, 2026 retired the Limited Review process for most condo projects. Anything with more than 10 units now generally needs a Full Review of the association's finances, reserves, litigation history and insurance before a lender will fund the loan.

That sounds like a national underwriting story. In Alameda, it is a local one, and the reason traces back much further than this year.

An Island That Voted to Stay the Same Size

In 1973, Alameda voters passed Measure A, a charter amendment that banned the construction of new multifamily apartment buildings across most of the city. The measure became Article 26 of the City Charter. A later ballot measure in 1991 added a hard number to the idea: no residential development anywhere in Alameda could exceed one housing unit per 2,000 square feet of land, a density cap of roughly 21.78 units per acre.

The debate at the time was not quiet. Then-Mayor Terry LaCroix, arguing against the measure, warned it would create what he called "artificial scarcity" and price out people of modest means. Voters passed it anyway, and it has shaped the island's housing stock for more than five decades.

Alameda had a chance to undo it. In November 2020, the city put Measure Z on the ballot, a proposal to repeal Article 26 and let the city build denser housing again. Voters rejected it by a wide margin, 59% to 41%, according to the San Francisco Chronicle's election coverage. Whatever else has changed on the island since 1973, the appetite for more apartment buildings has not.

That single fact explains more about Alameda's current market than any median price does.

Where the New Supply Actually Comes From

A citywide ban on multifamily construction does not mean nothing gets built. It means what gets built has to clear a specific legal exception rather than ordinary zoning. Right now, there are really only a handful of addresses doing that work for the entire island.

The Harbor Bay Landing project is the clearest illustration of how this works today. Burlingame-based Harbor Bay Landing LLC filed preliminary permits to redevelop 9.6 acres at Island Drive and Mecartney Road, and the application specifically invokes SB 330 to lock in the existing planning rules and move the project through faster than a standard Alameda approval process would allow. The plan will also remove Bay Farm Island's only grocery store once construction begins, which tells you how thin the existing commercial and housing infrastructure already is on that side of the island.

State law, not city zoning, is doing the heavy lifting on all three of these projects. That is not an accident. Alameda's own Housing Element documentation acknowledges that Article 26's density cap conflicts with state housing law and that the city has had to carve out multifamily overlay zones and rely on statutes like SB 330 just to meet its legally required housing targets, according to technical analysis submitted to the state Department of Housing and Community Development.

What This Means for the Rest of the Island's Housing Stock

Outside of those few named projects, Alameda's housing stock is old by Bay Area standards and largely frozen in place. The Gold Coast, the city's most expensive neighborhood, is built around large Victorian homes constructed near Grand Avenue at the turn of the twentieth century. The adjacent Bronze Coast carries a similar mix of Queen Anne, Craftsman and Edwardian architecture from the same era.

The island's condo and townhome inventory tells a different but related story. Most of it sits in Harbor Bay Isle and Bay Farm Island on the island's east end, planned communities that Doric Development began building on filled land starting in 1976. The first Harbor Bay Isle neighborhood, a collection of 239 attached townhomes, broke ground in 1978. Those buildings are still governed today by homeowners associations that have overseen the same properties since the late 1970s and early 1980s, exactly the kind of older, larger HOA structure that now falls under Fannie Mae's Full Review requirement rather than the faster Limited Review path.

Ask for HOA financial statements, reserve studies and insurance documentation earlier in your search than you would in a city with a steadier pipeline of newer condo construction, because your lender is going to ask for the same paperwork before they will fund.

The Pace Hasn't Slowed Even Though Prices Have Cooled

The most recently reported figures, covering the three months ending in May 2026, put Alameda's median sale price around $1.1 million, down from the same period a year earlier, with price per square foot down as well. Normally that combination signals a market handing leverage back to buyers. It has not worked out that way here. Homes were still selling in about 15 days on average during that same window, close to the prior year's pace, with around two offers per listing typical over that rolling three-month period.

That is the practical fingerprint of Measure A. When a city cannot add meaningful new supply outside a short list of exempted or state-mandated sites, price growth can soften without the market actually loosening. Buyers are still competing hard for the same finite set of Victorians, 1970s and 1980s townhomes, and whatever units eventually reach the market at Alameda Point, Del Monte or Harbor Bay Landing.

What This Actually Means If You're Shopping Alameda

If you are comparing Alameda to a nearby East Bay city and using the median price as your yardstick, you are missing the part of the story that actually determines what you can find and how fast you need to move. Three practical takeaways follow directly from the mechanism above.

First, decide early whether you want the character of the Gold Coast and Bronze Coast, which comes with older wiring, older roofs and a lot of charm, or the planned-community layout of Harbor Bay Isle and Bay Farm Island, which comes with an HOA that has been in place for close to five decades. Both are effectively the ceiling on what exists today. Neither is going to be substantially added to under current zoning.

Second, if a lender has told you your condo purchase now requires a Full Review under the new Fannie Mae guidelines, request the HOA's financial documents the same week you go into contract, not after. Older associations sometimes take longer to produce a current reserve study, and that document is now central to your approval.

Third, if you specifically want new construction, your list of places to watch is short and named: Alameda Point on the west end, the Del Monte warehouse conversion, and Harbor Bay Landing on Bay Farm Island once it clears its remaining approvals. Everywhere else on the island, you are shopping the same finite stock that has existed for decades, competing against buyers who understand that as well as you now do.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Measure A still legally enforceable today? The underlying ban remains in the City Charter, but state housing law has forced Alameda to carve out specific exceptions and overlay zones to meet its required housing targets, which is why a project like Harbor Bay Landing leans on state statutes such as SB 330 rather than standard local zoning approval.

Where is the best place to look for condos or townhomes in Alameda right now? Harbor Bay Isle and Bay Farm Island hold most of the island's existing attached housing stock, built mainly from the late 1970s through the 1980s. Just budget extra time for HOA document review given the new Fannie Mae Full Review requirement on larger associations.

Will Alameda Point or Harbor Bay Landing bring prices down once they're finished? Alameda Point continues to build out its housing component and Harbor Bay Landing is still working through preliminary permits, so it is too early to say what either will do to island-wide pricing once complete.

Alameda's market rewards buyers who understand why it behaves the way it does, not just what the median happens to say this month. If you are weighing a Gold Coast Victorian against a Harbor Bay townhome, or trying to figure out how the new condo financing rules apply to a specific building, the team at Dapkus Real Estate Team works this side of the Bay every day and can walk you through what your money actually buys here. Reach out for a conversation grounded in the details that matter for your specific address, not just the county-wide averages.