El Cerrito Is Building 743 Homes Next to BART. The Real Value Question Is on the November Ballot

On March 5, 2026, officials from BART, the state of California, and the city of El Cerrito gathered at a BART-owned parking lot near the El Cerrito Plaza shopping center to break ground on the first phase of a 743-unit development. Councilmember Rebecca Saltzman, who worked on the project first as a BART director and then as a city council member, called it transformative for the small city. A week earlier, on a different floor of BART headquarters, the transit agency's board had voted 8-1 to approve a plan for what staff called the worst-case scenario: closing up to 15 stations, laying off 1,200 employees, and cutting service by as much as 70 percent if voters don't come through in November.

Both things are true about El Cerrito right now. A construction crew is pouring foundations for hundreds of new apartments two blocks from a grocery-anchored shopping center that residents have wanted redeveloped for years. At the same time, the transit line that gives that construction its entire reason for being is running a structural deficit that its own board vice president described bluntly: on the question of whether BART can balance its budget without those cuts, "we're not sure that we can." If you're pricing a home near either of El Cerrito's two BART stations this fall, the apartments under construction are not the variable that should worry you. The ballot measure is.

The Deficit Nobody Priced Into the Groundbreaking

BART's ridership is still running about 50 percent below pre-pandemic levels, and the agency's funding model leans heavily on fares. That gap has produced a structural deficit BART itself puts at $350 million to $400 million a year starting in fiscal year 2027, which began this past July. Facing that number, the board approved an Alternative Service Plan in late February that lays out what happens if no new revenue shows up. The plan includes:

• Closing up to 15 of BART's stations systemwide
• Ending evening service at 9 p.m. and eliminating two lines
• Cutting overall service by as much as 70 percent
• A 40 percent reduction in system support services and roughly 1,200 layoffs

Board staff didn't name which stations would close. That decision belongs to the BART Board, and the criteria they've floated so far weight the lowest-ridership stops along with a handful of others chosen to shrink the network's overall footprint. El Cerrito Plaza's BART director, Barnali Ghosh, represents the very district where the new 743-unit development is rising, which is its own kind of tension: the person championing the housing is also sitting on a board that may have to vote on which stations survive.

The escape hatch is a regional sales tax measure that state legislators authorized last year under Senate Bill 63. The Connect Bay Area campaign submitted nearly 306,000 signatures in May 2026, more than enough to clear the roughly 186,000 needed to qualify for the November ballot. If it passes, BART is projected to receive about $310 million annually starting in fiscal year 2028, with bridge loan funds helping cover the gap before then. One detail worth knowing if you assumed otherwise: the measure only needs a majority across all five counties combined, not a majority in each county individually, which matters because early polling put support well above the threshold in San Francisco and Alameda counties but softer elsewhere.

What "Two BART Stations" Actually Means for a Listing

El Cerrito is the smallest city in the BART network with two stations inside its own limits, El Cerrito Plaza and El Cerrito del Norte. That geographic fact does real work in how homes here get marketed and priced. A 2014 analysis by the Berkeley-based consultancy Strategic Economics found that homebuyers in Alameda County paid an 18 percent premium to live within half a mile of a BART station. A 2019 national study from the National Association of Realtors and the American Public Transportation Association found homes near any form of transit sold for 4 to 24 percent more than comparable homes farther away. Neither study was measuring El Cerrito specifically, but the mechanism they describe, easier access to jobs translating directly into what buyers will pay, is the same mechanism that's been baked into every "walk to BART" line in an El Cerrito listing for years.

You can see the split play out in this year's sales. As of April 2026, Redfin reported a three-month median sale price of $1.1 million citywide, down 8.0 percent from the same period a year earlier, with price per square foot at $712, also down. Zillow's typical home value for the city sat near $1.08 million through the end of January 2026. Those citywide numbers flatten a real divide: hillside listings with view lots have continued closing at meaningful premiums over asking price this year, sometimes well above 20 percent, while flatland and station-adjacent homes trade in a different, more moderate band. A buyer comparing a Del Norte-walkable bungalow to a hillside view home isn't really comparing two homes in the same market. They're comparing two different bets on what makes a property valuable, and for one of those bets, BART's survival is the entire premise.

The Overlap Nobody's Timeline Shows

Here's where the two stories collide. The first building in the TOD, a six-story affordable complex at 515 Richmond Street designed by the architecture firm PYATOK, is expected to finish in 2027. The full six-building master plan, a joint effort between Related California, Holliday Development, and Satellite Affordable Housing Associates, isn't expected to wrap until 2029. That's a three-year construction window sitting directly on top of BART's own reckoning: the fiscal year when the deficit hits (FY27, which started in July 2026), the November 2026 election that decides the outcome, and the fiscal year when station closures would actually take effect if the measure fails (FY28, pushed back six months using reserve funds specifically so the pain doesn't land immediately).

A buyer signing a purchase agreement this fall for a home near either El Cerrito station is, whether they realize it or not, making a bet on the right-hand column not happening. That's a reasonable bet. Polling through 2025 put support in the mid-50s, and the measure has drawn backing from more than 80 elected officials and over 90 labor and advocacy groups along with more than $5.5 million in early fundraising. But it's a bet, and right now almost nobody marketing a home near BART in El Cerrito is naming it as one.

What This Means If You're Buying or Selling This Fall

If you're selling a home near the Plaza or Del Norte station, the two-BART-stations pitch still works, but it's worth being straightforward with buyers about the timeline rather than treating transit access as a fixed asset. If you're buying, ask your agent to walk you through the November measure and what a "fails" scenario would specifically mean for the station nearest the home you're considering, since staff have already floated ridership-based criteria that could put lower-volume stops at higher risk. And if you're weighing a hillside view home against a station-adjacent flatland property, understand that you're choosing between two different value drivers with two different risk profiles, not just two different price points.

None of this means the TOD itself is bad news for nearby property owners. New public plaza space, better bike and pedestrian connections along the Ohlone Greenway, and a redeveloped Plaza corridor are the kind of neighborhood investments that tend to support values over time, assuming the transit connection that makes them valuable stays intact. That assumption is what's actually on the ballot in November, not the apartments.

A Few Questions Buyers Ask

Will the new apartments near El Cerrito Plaza compete with my listing or drive prices down? The 743 units are a mix of affordable and market-rate rentals, not for-sale single-family competition, and the phased 2027-2029 timeline means the full supply won't hit the market at once. The bigger price variable for owner-occupied homes nearby is the transit measure, not the new rental supply.

If the ballot measure fails, does that mean El Cerrito loses a station right away? Not immediately. BART shifted the timeline for station closures to fiscal year 2028, which starts in July 2027, using reserve funds as a buffer. Nothing changes for riders or nearby property values in the immediate aftermath of a failed vote.

Should I wait until after the November election to list my home? That depends on your specific situation more than on the measure itself. What matters is making sure your listing strategy and your buyer's expectations both account for the outcome, whichever way it goes, rather than assuming the current transit picture is permanent.

If you're trying to figure out how a specific El Cerrito block, or a specific bet on transit access, fits your plans, Tracy Zhou can help you read the timeline correctly before you write an offer or set a list price. Let's Connect.