A buyer who falls for a Lennar-built home on Hadley Road or Horizon Parkway in Dublin's Boulevard neighborhood usually asks the same question about two weeks into escrow: what is this line item on the preliminary title report. By then, contingencies are often gone. The number on the report is a Mello-Roos special tax, and it was never going to show up on the listing sheet, because it isn't a feature of the house. It's a feature of the parcel, set by a taxing district that was formed before a single foundation was poured.
That timing problem is real and worth planning around. But it sits on top of a bigger pattern that most Dublin comparisons never explain: the newer side of town is priced lower per square foot than the older side, and almost nobody asks why.
The number that looks backward
As of June 2026, closed sales in East Dublin, the master-planned side of the city that includes Dublin Ranch, Schaefer Ranch, Positano, Jordan Ranch, Fallon Village, and Dublin Crossing, carried a median price of $606 per square foot. That's a real discount against the city's blended active-listing figure of roughly $720 per square foot in active inventory earlier this year. Dublin Ranch specifically closed sales at $587 per square foot in February 2026.
Meanwhile, West Dublin, where the housing stock is largely 1970s ranch construction, was trading closer to $1.4 million median sale price over the three months ending June 2026, moving fast, averaging 14 days on market. There's no clean per-square-foot figure published for West Dublin alone, but a citywide blend sitting well above the East Dublin number tells you which side is pulling it up.
New construction usually costs more per square foot than resale. In Dublin, right now, it doesn't. That's the part worth stopping on before anyone runs a comp sheet off the citywide median, which averages two markets that behave nothing alike and tells an individual seller almost nothing about their own parcel.
What 1978 and 1982 have to do with your HOA statement
The reason isn't lot size or builder margin. It's a law that is older than most of the housing stock on either side of town.
Proposition 13 passed in 1978 and capped California property tax at 1% of assessed value, with increases limited to 2% a year. That protected existing homeowners from runaway tax bills, but it also cut off the revenue cities used to rely on for new infrastructure. In 1982, the state answered with the Mello-Roos Community Facilities Act, which let cities and counties form Community Facilities Districts, CFDs, to fund roads, parks, and utilities for new development through a special tax layered on top of the base 1% rate.
Dublin's west side is anchored by ranch-style homes built in the 1970s, years before that tool existed. There was no mechanism to attach a CFD to those parcels because the mechanism hadn't been invented yet when they were platted and taxed. Dublin's east side is the opposite case. Nearly every master-planned community out there, Dublin Ranch, Schaefer Ranch, Positano, Jordan Ranch, Fallon Village, and Dublin Crossing, was built well after 1982, in an era when a CFD is close to the standard way California cities finance a new subdivision's roads, parks, and utility lines. The City of Dublin currently maintains three separate CFDs for exactly this purpose.
That's the real split in Dublin real estate. It isn't new versus old in square footage or finish level. It's post-1982 versus pre-1982, and it happens to fall neatly along a north-south line through the middle of the city.
Two Dublin addresses, two very different bills
Here's what that split looks like on paper, using the two submarkets Redfin tracks separately and the one CFD with public dollar figures attached to it.
| West Dublin (pre-1982 stock) | Boulevard / Dublin Crossing (CFD No. 2015-1) | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical build era | 1970s ranch homes | 2017 to present, Lennar and Brookfield |
| Mello-Roos CFD | Generally none | CFD No. 2015-1, roughly $3,900 to $5,800 a year in FY 2024-25 depending on home size |
| HOA | Often modest or none | Standard dues fund a large rec center, two pools, fitness and game rooms, and fire pits |
| Price per square foot | Pulls the citywide blend upward | Closed at $606/sf citywide East Dublin figure, $587/sf in Dublin Ranch, as of first half of 2026 |
| Median closed price | Around $1.4M (3 months ending June 2026) | Dublin Ranch closed median $1.1M (Feb 2026) |
A $3,900 to $5,800 annual special tax works out to roughly $325 to $485 a month, on top of the base 1% property tax rate and on top of HOA dues. Under CFD No. 2015-1's own rate and method of apportionment, that number can climb as much as 2% a year, and it isn't scheduled to fully sunset until fiscal year 2050-51. That's not a fee that ages out with the mortgage. It's closer to a second, smaller mortgage payment that runs for decades.
The lower price per square foot on the east side isn't a discount. It's a different tax structure wearing a discount's clothes.
Why the timing trap catches people who did their homework
The CFD amount is fixed to the parcel, not the buyer, and it's disclosed on the preliminary title report, the prelim, which typically arrives after an offer is accepted and often after a buyer has already weighed removing their loan or inspection contingency. Builders in Dublin's newer communities are required to hand over a CFD and HOA disclosure package, but the practical habit that protects a buyer is asking for it before writing the offer, not after.
The fix is simple and doesn't require waiting for the prelim. Any buyer looking at a home in Dublin Crossing, Positano, Jordan Ranch, Fallon Village, or Schaefer Ranch can ask the listing agent or builder for the specific CFD name and the current annual levy before submitting an offer, and can check the parcel against the current CFD list on the City of Dublin's own site. That single step turns a surprise into a line item you priced in from day one.
What this actually changes for a move-up buyer
None of this means East Dublin is the wrong choice. A buyer moving up from a starter condo into a 2,600-square-foot Boulevard home, close to the Dublin/Pleasanton BART station and zoned to the new Shamrock Hills TK-8 campus, is still often buying more house for less per square foot than the same budget would get on the west side. What changes is the monthly math you should run before you compare two listings on sticker price alone. A $200,000 gap in list price can close, or even reverse, once you add back several hundred dollars a month in Mello-Roos that a comparable West Dublin resale simply doesn't carry.
For a seller on the west side, the same fact cuts the other way. If your home has no CFD and modest HOA dues, that's a genuine carrying-cost advantage over a newer competing listing, and it belongs in your marketing, not just your disclosures.
A few questions that come up
Does every new home in East Dublin carry a Mello-Roos tax? Not automatically. The obligation is specific to the parcel, tied to whichever CFD, if any, was formed over that phase of development. Dublin currently has three active CFDs, and coverage varies by community and even by phase within the same community. Always verify the specific address rather than assuming from the neighborhood name.
Does the special tax ever go away? It expires when the underlying bonds are paid off, which for CFD No. 2015-1 covering Dublin Crossing is not scheduled to happen before fiscal year 2050-51. Until then, the rate and method of apportionment allows the levy to increase, in this district's case by as much as 2% annually.
If you're comparing a move up between Dublin's east and west sides, or you're weighing a sale on one side while you shop the other, the two transactions are easier to plan together than apart. Janice Habluetzel has spent more than two decades reading Tri-Valley parcels down to the tax roll, not just the listing sheet. List with me, and let's map the real numbers on both sides of your move before you write an offer.
