What the Windemere Median Doesn't Tell You: Three Products, One Number, and the Tax Line the Portal Comparison Hides

If you are toggling between Windemere and Westside Danville on a portal, the medians look close enough to compare directly. They are not comparable. Windemere in San Ramon is a 5,170-home master plan built out on 2,300 acres by Lennar, Centex, Brookfield, and D.R. Horton between 2001 and roughly 2015, and the community carries a Mello-Roos Community Facilities District obligation that a Prop-13-only property in Westside Danville or Alamo does not. That obligation, plus a product mix that runs from 1,211 square foot condos to 4,610-plus square foot detached homes, means the "median" you are reading is a blended average of three separate sub-markets stacked on top of one another.

Before you write the offer, this is the mechanism worth understanding.

Three markets, one median

The Redfin data for January 2026 puts the Windemere median at $1.9M with 12 sales and 47 days on market. Movoto's June 2026 snapshot puts the median list at $1.85M at roughly $686 per square foot with 21 days on market. Both numbers are correct. Both are also averaging across product tiers that a buyer would never cross-shop against each other.

Three active attached listings on Fioli Loop and Joree Lane sit between $1.00M and $1.23M as of mid-2026, and East Bay Condo Mania shows zero attached sales in the trailing 180 days at those price points. That is the floor of the community, and it moves slowly. The detached mid-tier moves faster and drives the visible portal median. The larger plans transact rarely enough that a single view lot closing in a given month can shift the reported average by six figures.

The practical takeaway: if you are underwriting against the $1.9M headline, you are underwriting against a number that describes almost none of the specific homes you will actually tour.

The tax line the portal comparison hides

Windemere sits inside the Dougherty Valley, and Dougherty Valley is a Mello-Roos area. JVM Lending's May 2026 write-up of Contra Costa property taxes places the effective combined rate for Mello-Roos communities in Brentwood, Dougherty Valley, and parts of Danville at 1.50% or higher, against a 1.10%–1.40% baseline for most of the county. That is not a rounding difference. On a $1.9M purchase, the delta between a 1.15% Westside Danville parcel and a 1.55% Windemere parcel is roughly $7,600 per year, or $633 per month, before HOA.

Two things about the CFD line item that catch buyers off guard:

• Mello-Roos is a flat parcel-level special tax, not a percentage of assessed value. Two neighbors on the same street can pay different amounts based on square footage, lot size, or product category, and reassessment on resale does not reset the CFD in the way Prop 13 resets the ad valorem base.
• California requires the seller to deliver a Notice of Special Tax within 14 days of opening escrow, disclosing the current annual amount, the authorized maximum, and the conditions under which it can escalate. Under the Mello-Roos Community Facilities Act, a buyer who receives the notice late has a three-day right to rescind. That right is the buyer's leverage. Sellers who wait until escrow to hand over the packet routinely lose price on the back end when the buyer runs the true carry math.

The cleanest way to verify the exact CFD burden before writing an offer is the preliminary title report and the parcel's most recent Contra Costa County tax bill. The bill will list the CFD as a separate line under Special Assessment Charges with the issuing agency's phone number attached. You can also cross-reference against the California Debt and Investment Advisory Commission yearly fiscal status reports, which publish maturity dates and remaining bond balances by district.

A CFD approaching bond payoff in 2032 versus one still levying to 2045 can represent a $10,000 to $30,000 difference in remaining tax burden, and that fact never appears in the listing.

What Fioli Loop tells you about the floor

The attached tier is worth its own section because it explains why the community-wide median behaves the way it does. Three current Fioli Loop and Joree Lane listings ranging from 1,211 to 2,330 square feet are priced between $1.00M and $1.23M. The nearest sale in the same product cluster is far enough back that the East Bay Condo Mania dashboard shows no reported attached sales in the last 180 days.

Thin volume at the bottom of the stack does two things:

1. It anchors the buyer perception of "entry-level Windemere" at roughly $1M, even though very few units actually trade there in any given quarter.
2. It means every attached seller is pricing off a small handful of stale comps. A well-prepared listing in this tier can, and often does, set the next comp for the whole product line.

For a move-up buyer coming out of Fioli Loop, the math is unforgiving. Selling attached at $1.1M and buying a mid-plan detached at $2.0M means writing a check for the difference plus reset property tax basis plus, in most cases, a higher CFD line if the new parcel sits in a differently formulated tax rate area. Move-up sequencing inside Windemere is a real transaction, not a lateral one.

Address determines school, school moves the price

Windemere is served by San Ramon Valley Unified. Most Windemere addresses feed Hidden Hills Elementary or Live Oak Elementary, then Windemere Ranch Middle, then Dougherty Valley High. Some addresses on the community's edges feed California High instead. San Ramon Valley Unified publishes a Find Your School address lookup tool that resolves this in one click for a specific parcel, and confirming assignment before offer is standard practice.

Because the school assignment shifts on some streets rather than at any obvious neighborhood boundary, two homes with identical square footage and identical CFDs can trade at different prices, and the difference does not always show up in the portal comps. When you see a listing that appears mispriced relative to the immediate cul-de-sac, this is usually the reason.

The offer sequence for a CFD parcel

For buyers moving from a non-Mello-Roos market (most of Westside Danville, most of Alamo, most of Diablo), the transaction sequence changes in a specific way. Run these in order, before you sign:

1. Pull the Assessor Parcel Number from the MLS sheet and look up the current Contra Costa tax bill. Identify every line under Special Assessment Charges.
2. Request the preliminary title report as early in due diligence as possible, not the week before closing. The prelim will show every recorded CFD lien and every voter-approved bond obligation.
3. Read the Notice of Special Tax when it arrives. Compare the current annual amount to the authorized maximum, and note the CFD's expiration year.
4. Convert the CFD line to a monthly figure and add it to your PITI. Some jumbo lenders factor special assessments into DTI, and it is worth flagging to your loan officer early rather than at underwriting.
5. Confirm the exact SRVUSD school assignment for the address, not the neighborhood, using the district's lookup tool.
6. Ask the listing agent for HOA disclosures on the specific sub-community. Fioli, Mill Creek, and Canyon Oaks each carry different dues structures and amenity access.

None of these steps are exotic. They are the same steps a well-prepared seller-side agent will have taken before the property hits the MLS. Buyers who work them in parallel with tours rather than sequentially after offer acceptance keep leverage.

FAQ

Does the Mello-Roos ever come off? Yes, when the bonds are fully repaid. Most California CFDs have terms of 20 to 40 years from issuance, and some carry an ongoing services component that continues after the bond principal is retired. The specific expiration year is on the Notice of Special Tax and in the CDIAC annual filings.

Is a $1.9M median in Windemere comparable to a $1.9M median somewhere else in the San Ramon Valley? Not directly. Adjust for the CFD tax line, HOA structure, product age, and the width of the product distribution the median is drawn from. On a same-price basis, the Windemere annual carry is meaningfully higher than a Prop-13-only Westside Danville comparable.

How much room is there to negotiate on a Windemere resale in 2026? The Redfin January 2026 window shows 47 days on market against 12 sales, and the June 2026 Movoto window shows 21 days at $686 per square foot. Well-prepared listings in the mid-plan detached tier still move at or near list. Attached listings and larger plans sit longer, and there is usually more room in those two tails than in the middle of the distribution.

If you are running Windemere against Westside Danville or Diablo on a portal, the version of the story that respects the CFD, the product mix, and the address-level school assignment is the one that will hold up in escrow. Scott Thompson works these three variables into the offer strategy before the first showing, and can walk through the specific carrying-cost math for any parcel you are considering. Get Your Instant Home Valuation to start the conversation with a number that reflects your actual position, not the blended median.