During the July 20 Albany City Council meeting, the finance staff gave council members a warning about the very measure they were about to send to voters. Referring to real property transfer tax revenue, the staff presentation put it plainly: "It is a very volatile source."
They were right to flag it. The measure the council approved that night doesn't just raise or lower a rate. It ties what a seller pays to how the rest of Albany's housing market behaved in the twelve months before the sale closes. That detail matters more than the headline percentages, and it's the piece most homeowners weighing a sale in Albany haven't seen explained yet.
What the council actually approved
Albany's current real property transfer tax is a flat rate. The measure the council voted through on July 20 would replace it with five tiers, and place it before voters as one of six measures on the November 3, 2026 General Municipal Election ballot. Under the structure council approved, the bottom 25% of property transfers in a given period would pay a 1% rate, roughly $10 per $1,000 of sale value, while the top 10% of transfers would pay 3%. Council did not detail the three middle tiers in the public session, only that they step upward between those two ends.
| Tier | Share of Albany transfers | Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest | Bottom 25% | 1% ($10 per $1,000) |
| Middle | Roughly 25th to 90th percentile | Graduated, not yet detailed publicly |
| Highest | Top 10% | 3% |
Nothing here is settled yet. Voters decide on November 3. If the measure fails, the current flat rate stays in place.
Why "top 10 percent" isn't a fixed price
Here's the part that changes how a seller should think about timing. The tiers aren't set once and left alone. Council decided the breakpoints get recalculated every year using a rolling 12-month sales window, and for this first round that window ran from September 2025 through August 2026. That means your home doesn't land in the top tier because it crosses some fixed dollar amount. It lands there because of where it falls relative to every other Albany sale in that specific twelve-month stretch.
Council actually debated this directly, weighing a one-year rolling average against a three-year average before settling on the shorter window to keep the tiers "responsive to market conditions." A shorter window sounds fair on paper. In practice it means the threshold for the top 10% moves with the market itself. Albany home prices have been climbing at double-digit rates year over year through the first half of 2026, so each new twelve-month window has tended to sit higher than the one before it. A home that would have cleared the top-tier threshold with room to spare two years ago might sit closer to the line today, even if nothing about the house has changed. The tier isn't really about your price. It's about your price against a floating target that the market itself keeps resetting.
What already stacks on top of a sale
Albany sellers aren't starting from a clean slate. The city already layers several parcel taxes onto every property, and the Albany Municipal Code spells out two of the bigger ones directly: the Safe and Accessible Sidewalks and Pathways Special Parcel Tax and a separate Parks and Open Space Special Parcel Tax that funds six named city parks, Albany Hill Open Space, the Albany waterfront, and more than a mile of Cerrito, Middle, and Codornices Creek frontage. On top of those sit the school district's own measures. Albany Unified's Measure G replaced the old flat-rate Measure B with a square-footage-based tax, generating roughly $4.8 million a year, while the older Measure J contributes close to $4.5 million annually for library, arts, and mental health funding.
None of these are new for this ballot cycle. They're the reason independent property tax data already puts Albany's effective tax rate around 1.90%, well above both the roughly 1.02% national median and the roughly 1.21% California median. A new transfer tax doesn't replace any of that. It adds a one-time cost at the exit on top of an annual bill that's already heavier than what a buyer moving from most other California cities is used to.
The language shift, and why it matters
One detail from the council session is worth sitting with. Because the new tiers cut rates for some sellers and raise them for others, council instructed legal staff to soften the ballot language from "increase" to "adjust." That's not spin for its own sake. It's an accurate reflection of a measure that genuinely does different things to different sellers depending on where their sale falls in that year's distribution. A homeowner selling a modest condo near the bottom quartile could see their transfer tax rate go down under this measure. A homeowner selling a larger single-family home in a strong year could see it go up. "Adjust" captures both outcomes. "Increase" or "decrease" alone would have misled someone.
The same council conversation touched on Golden Gate Fields, the shuttered racetrack site along the Albany waterfront whose owner had already announced the track's closure back in 2024. This year, council members raised concerns about a possible sale of the site, since losing a large taxpaying parcel from the rolls would affect Albany's tax base. It came up as one more reason council wants transfer tax revenue built to flex with whatever that tax base looks like from year to year, not locked to assumptions made today.
What this means if you're planning to sell
If you're weighing a listing in Albany before the end of the year, the practical takeaway isn't to panic about a specific number. It's to recognize that this measure, if approved, won't apply the same way twice. Where your sale lands depends on the twelve months of Albany transactions around it, not a fixed price point you can look up once and rely on going forward.
For a seller near the higher end of Albany's market, that argues for talking through timing with your agent well before you set a list date, since the tier your sale falls into could shift depending on what else closes in Albany that year. For a seller closer to the middle of the market, the bigger question is simply whether the measure passes on November 3 at all. And for anyone budgeting net proceeds, remember that this would sit on top of the parcel taxes already baked into Albany ownership, not replace them.
How the eventual cost gets split between buyer and seller is, as with any transfer tax, something to work out in your purchase agreement rather than something fixed by the ordinance itself.
A few questions worth asking directly
Is this transfer tax already in effect? No. It's a ballot measure headed to Albany voters on November 3, 2026, one of six measures on that ballot. The current flat rate remains in place unless voters approve the change.
Does the rolling window mean my tier could change between when I list and when I close? It's tied to a twelve-month sales window that resets annually, so a sale that closes near the boundary of one measurement period versus the next could see a different environment. This is exactly the kind of detail worth reviewing with your agent against your specific timeline.
Does this affect buyers too? The tax is assessed on the transfer itself. Who ultimately covers the cost between buyer and seller is a negotiated term of the deal, the same as it is with Albany's existing transfer tax today.
Albany's market rewards sellers who understand the mechanics behind the numbers, not just the numbers themselves. If you're thinking about listing before or after November's vote, the Souza Niroomand Team can walk through what this measure would actually mean for your specific sale. Let's sit down and talk.
