San Diego's $600,000 Home Plan vs. What Those Homes Sell For

By Karl Kyler, Your San Diego Realtor · DRE #01439839

San Diego has a plan to put you in a $600,000 home. I pulled a year of sales from the neighborhoods it targets, and the cheapest of them traded at $975,000.

Twelve homes sold there over those twelve months. The median sale price was $1,117,500. Those two figures sit in different universes, and the City anticipates zoning amendments in late 2026, subject to the public process.

Here is the plan, the promise bolted to it, and what the sold data does to both.

What The Plan Changes

The plan is named Neighborhood Homes for All of Us. Mayor Todd Gloria introduced it last December at 3Roots in Mira Mesa.

The proposal considers reducing or removing minimum lot sizes in selected single-family areas, allowing more options such as townhomes, rowhomes, duplexes or cottages. Final development rules and parcel eligibility still depend on the adopted amendments.

Many single-family zones have minimum lot sizes around 5,000 square feet. Existing ADU and state-law pathways mean those areas are not limited categorically to one detached house. The plan would open that land to buildings of three stories or less, inside the areas the city labels high-resource and close to transit.

The City anticipates amendments in late 2026. A proposal and anticipated schedule do not mean every parcel will be rezoned or that construction will follow immediately.

The $600,000 Promise

Axios reported a potential $600,000–$700,000 range, compared with a $950,000 median. Those are projections, not guaranteed prices.

That range traces back to a study by London Moeder Advisors. Shrink the lot, the firm found, and the finished home prices roughly 42% under a standard single-family house. Take 42% off $950,000 and the math lands near $550,000.

Gary London, the adviser behind it, put a finer point on the label. It isn't affordable housing, it's attainable housing. So I tested attainable.

Twelve Sales

I went to the MLS and pulled a year of attached sales out of the three neighborhoods the plan names. North Park, Bay Park, Clairemont. Attached covers townhomes and condos, the exact housing type this plan exists to multiply. I limited it to construction from 2022 forward.

I dropped the coastal ZIP deliberately. Pricing in Mission Beach and Pacific Beach would inflate the whole result, and oceanfront has nothing to do with what this plan is after.

Twelve sales came back. The floor was $975,000. The ceiling was $1,325,000. The reported sample median was $1,117,500.

Line them up. The city points at $600,000 to $700,000. The study underneath it works out near $550,000. What's selling in those neighborhoods clears a million. Roughly twice the study's figure, and $400,000 past the highest number the city has floated.

Clairemont comes up more than any other neighborhood whenever this plan gets discussed. On Misty Place there, a three-bedroom townhome finished in 2025 closed this spring at $1,060,000. Over in Bay Park, a three-bedroom on Tonopah Street, 1,705 square feet, fetched $999,900. North Park added three more on 31st and 32nd, each around 1,500 square feet, closing anywhere from $1,140,000 to $1,325,000.

Every one of those is the housing type this plan wants more of. They sold at roughly a million dollars or more.

That Home Already Exists

Here is the part that changed how I read the whole thing. I widened the same search to the rest of the county, and I found closed-sale examples of the kind of home the city keeps describing.

Chula Vista, a new three-bedroom attached home at $690,000. Santee, $749,900. South San Diego, $629,000.

Same product. Same size. Same construction era. Roughly $400,000 less.

Nobody has to invent this house. It's already built and already trading inside this county. The roof doesn't set the price. Neither do the walls or the unit count on the lot. It's the dirt underneath it. Zoning shapes what can be built and can affect supply, land value and development cost. It does not, on its own, guarantee a buyer’s final purchase price.

What To Do With This

Own in one of these neighborhoods? Watch this one closely through the fall. The City anticipates amendments in late 2026. Follow the proposed maps, development rules and hearing schedule to see how your parcel could be affected, and submit comments through the City’s public process.

Buying instead? Don't freeze your plans waiting on this to produce a $600,000 house in Bay Park. The supplied sales show lower-priced examples in Chula Vista, Santee and South San Diego, though Santee’s $749,900 example is above the $600,000–$700,000 range. Closed sales are not current availability. Worth a look this year, not in 2028.

Watch The Full Video

This post covers the price claim and the sold data behind it. The full video goes further. I walk through where mortgage rates sit and why the window in the fives slammed shut, the 2023 run at this same idea that the city pulled when homeowner groups organized against it, each Clairemont, Bay Park and North Park comp one at a time, and what I see on the ground from San Diegans in their thirties and forties the city says are leaving.

Watch the full video on YouTube

If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to reach out.

As always, I'm Karl Kyler, your San Diego Realtor.

Karl Kyler · Karl San Diego
eXp Realty of Southern California, Inc.
KarlSanDiego.com · 619-829-2908
DRE #01439839