Two floating homes go on the market the same week, both on Richardson Bay, both listed within a few thousand dollars of each other. A buyer touring both assumes the choice comes down to finish quality and dock location. Then the disclosure packages arrive, and the numbers stop matching the listing price. One home carries a berth lease signed under the old rules, due for a jump the seller never had to disclose as urgently as a land-based rent increase. The other was re-leased after July 2025 under a new formula that caps what the marina can do at the point of sale. Same price. Different cost of ownership for as long as either buyer stays.
That gap is not a fluke of timing. It is the direct result of Assembly Bill 754, a Marin-specific rewrite of the state's Floating Home Residency Law that finished phasing in on January 1, 2026. If you are looking at a floating home in Sausalito this year, the sale price on the MLS tells you what the structure costs. The berth lease tells you what living there actually costs, and that number now depends on a set of rules most buyers have never heard of.
Why the Old Rule Broke the Market
Sausalito holds the overwhelming majority of the Bay Area's floating homes. Marin County's own legislative filing put the count at 425 floating homes in the county as of June 2025, compared with 42 in Alameda County and 11 in Contra Costa. Every one of those homeowners owns the structure but leases the water underneath it from a marina operator, the way a mobile home owner leases a pad.
For decades, many Sausalito docks ran on long leases, ten to twenty years, with rent tied to the Consumer Price Index and periodic realignments when a home changed hands. Then Alameda's Barnhill Marina raised berth rents by close to a third after a change in ownership, and the state responded in 2022 with Assembly Bill 252, a blanket rule for Alameda, Marin, and Contra Costa. AB 252 capped annual increases at CPI plus 3 percent, up to a 5 percent ceiling, and it barred marinas from raising rent when a home sold, a protection known as vacancy control.
In Marin, that blanket fix created a new problem. Marina operators who had historically relied on rent realignment at sale to fund seawalls, piling repairs, and flood mitigation lost that mechanism overnight. Several responded by shortening leases from ten or twenty years down to one year and adding new fees to recoup the difference, according to Marin County's own account of the fallout in its legislative filing. A homeowner's equity was protected on paper, but the lease under their home got shorter and less predictable at the same time.
What AB 754 Actually Does
AB 754 is the negotiated fix, built over roughly eighteen months by the Sausalito Floating Homes Association's Legislative Action Committee working directly with the four marina owners and Marin County supervisors. Governor Newsom signed it in 2025, and its rent provisions apply to any berth tenancy change occurring on or after July 1, 2025, with the new numbers taking effect January 1, 2026. The law now runs through January 1, 2038, well past AB 252's original 2030 sunset.
The mechanics are specific enough to change how you should shop:
| Legacy short lease (AB 252 era) | New 10+ year lease (AB 754) | |
|---|---|---|
| Annual increase | CPI plus 3%, capped at 5% | CPI-indexed, 3% floor, 7.5% ceiling, with any CPI above 5% halved |
| What happens at sale | Rent frozen regardless of sale price | Marina may adjust rent, capped at the lower of 25% above prior rent or 0.15% of the home's sale price |
| Resale within 5 years | No special provision | Adjustment capped lower, at 15% |
| Lease term typically offered | 1 year, common after 2022 | 10 years or longer |
The practical effect is that a floating home with a freshly signed 10-year-plus lease carries a predictable, formula-bound rent path even through a sale, while a home still sitting on a legacy short lease from the AB 252 years may reset in ways that are harder to model. Homes sold before January 1, 2026 can remain under the old AB 252 terms, but marinas are now authorized to offer the revised long-form leases going forward, which means the two regimes will coexist on the same docks for years.
The Question to Ask Before You Write an Offer
Ask your agent, and ask the seller directly, whether the berth lease is a legacy short-term lease or a new lease governed by AB 754. Then ask what the "in-place transfer" math looks like against the actual sale price, since that 0.15 percent figure is not abstract once you attach it to a $1.2 million floating home.
This matters more in Sausalito than almost anywhere else in Marin real estate, because floating homes trade in a genuinely small pool. Only a handful of homes list across all of Sausalito's docks at any given time, and the docks themselves, Waldo Point Harbor, Yellow Ferry Harbor, Commodore Marina, and Kappas Marina, each run their own lease terms and their own capital projects. Waldo Point Harbor, the largest with 282 berths that have sat fully occupied since the 1970s, is currently working through seawall and dock upgrades aimed at flood prevention, the kind of capital project that AB 754's sale-triggered rent adjustment is specifically designed to help fund on newer leases.
A few other diligence items carry real weight on the water in a way they never do on land:
A documented, recent hull inspection tends to add measurably to a floating home's value, since buyers pay a premium for certainty about a structure they cannot see the underside of without hauling it out. Deep-water berths that never touch mud at low tide command a real premium over shallow ones, and end-of-dock positions with open views typically price ahead of interior berths on the same dock. None of that shows up in a square footage figure. All of it shows up in the total cost of the specific berth attached to the home you're considering, which is exactly why the lease paperwork deserves the same scrutiny as the inspection report.
Financing adds another layer. Floating homes require lenders who specifically underwrite this asset class, since a conventional mortgage product was not built for a structure that floats on a leased berth rather than sitting on owned land. If you are already comparing jumbo financing options elsewhere in the county, the same specialized-lender logic applies here, only more so.
The Water Itself Is Changing Too
A separate but related shift is unfolding on Richardson Bay this fall. Under a 2021 settlement between the state's Bay Conservation and Development Commission and the Richardson Bay Regional Agency, aimed at protecting eelgrass habitat, all illegally anchored vessels in the bay must be cleared by October 15, 2026, a deadline now just weeks away, after which anchorage anywhere in the bay is limited to 72 hours. That process governs unauthorized anchor-out vessels and is separate from the legally berthed, marina-leased floating homes covered by AB 754, but it does mean the open water around Sausalito's docks is settling into a more clearly defined, more heavily managed state than it has been in decades. For anyone evaluating a long-term purchase on the water, that is useful context for what the surrounding anchorage will look like going forward.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does AB 754 apply to land-based homes in Sausalito or elsewhere in Marin? No. It governs only berth rent at floating home marinas within Marin County. Land-based leases and rentals fall under separate state and local rules.
If I buy a home still on a legacy one-year lease, can I ask the marina to convert it to a 10-year AB 754 lease? Marinas are authorized to offer the new longer leases going forward, but they are not required to convert every existing lease immediately. Ask the marina operator directly what their conversion timeline looks like before you write an offer.
Is berth rent regulated the same way in Alameda and Contra Costa? No. AB 754 is Marin-specific. Alameda and Contra Costa floating home marinas remain under the original AB 252 framework, which is a different formula with different sale-related provisions.
Buying on the water in Sausalito rewards the same discipline as any high-value transaction: read past the price to the paper underneath it. If you are weighing a floating home against the hillside and village options elsewhere in Marin, or you want a second opinion on what a specific berth lease actually means for your resale position down the road, Wynne + Morgensen can walk through the disclosure package with you before you're under contract. Request a Private Consultation to start that conversation.