We Buy Houses in Seaside, CA

Seaside is a renter's city. The 2020 census counted about 59 percent of occupied homes as renter-occupied, and households are larger than elsewhere on the Peninsula, averaging just over three people. Many owners are small landlords holding a single-family rental or a duplex, often with tenants who have been there for years. Selling a tenant-occupied house through an agent means coordinating showings, inspections and appraisals around people who live there; selling to us means the tenant can stay and the lease transfers.

The older stock shows its age. Homes built for Fort Ord families in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s often still have original wall heaters, aging sewer laterals, ungrounded wiring and roofs at the end of their life, and decades of rental use bring add-on bedrooms and garage conversions without permits. Any of those can sink an FHA or VA loan — and VA buyers are a large share of Seaside's buyer pool given the Presidio of Monterey and the Naval Postgraduate School nearby.

Water in Seaside is a patchwork worth understanding. Most of the city is served by California American Water and falls under the State Water Board order that bars new or intensified service from the Carmel River system. A small part is served by the city's own Seaside Municipal Water System, and former Fort Ord neighborhoods in the east fall within the Marina Coast Water District's Ord Community service area. Underneath it all is the Seaside Groundwater Basin, which a Monterey County court adjudicated in 2006 in California American Water v. City of Seaside, capping pumping and appointing a watermaster to slow seawater intrusion. For a seller, the practical effect is that adding a unit or bathroom can be harder here than buyers expect.

None of that means a Seaside home needs us. A well-kept house with permitted rooms sells to owner-occupants and military buyers through an agent, often at a better price than we can pay. We are the right fit when repairs, tenants, unpermitted space or timing make a conventional sale impractical.

The western flats near Del Monte Boulevard and Fremont Boulevard hold the oldest, most affordable housing, close to Highway 1, Laguna Grande and the Monterey Peninsula Recreation Trail. Farther east, streets climb toward bay views and the homes are generally larger. Sand City borders Seaside on the west and Del Rey Oaks on the south, and buyers often shop all three together.

East of General Jim Moore Boulevard the former base has been converting to civilian use since the Army's departure in the 1990s. The city bought the Bayonet and Black Horse golf courses — opened in 1954 and 1964 as Army courses — in 1997 and opened them to the public, and newer subdivisions such as Seaside Highlands sit on former base ground near California State University, Monterey Bay. Fort Ord National Monument, designated in 2012, is reached through Seaside, and much of Fort Ord Dunes State Park lies within city limits.

Because Seaside is the Peninsula's most affordable city, prices here move on condition more than location. A remodeled home on a quiet hillside street competes well; an original 1950s house needing a roof, a sewer lateral and electrical work competes poorly against it, and that spread is where an as-is sale can make sense.