A buyer searching Union City this month will run into a wall almost every other East Bay BART city breaks the same way for them everywhere else: the closer you get to the platform, the more you'd expect to pay. In Fremont, in Hayward, in most of the transit-served East Bay, proximity to a BART station is a line item that adds value. In Union City, it does the opposite. The neighborhood built directly around the Union City BART station, Decoto, is the most affordable single-family corridor in the entire city. The neighborhoods that cost the most, Seven Hills and Mission Hills, sit up in the hillside zone on the far side of town, a longer drive from the platform than almost anywhere else in Union City.
If you're comparing Union City to a portal median and trying to figure out what that number buys, this is the fact that actually matters. The citywide number hides two different housing markets running on two different logics, and only one of them has anything to do with BART.
The number that doesn't hold up
Recent market tracking puts Union City's citywide median in the $1.3 million range as of mid-2026, with single-family averages running higher than that and condos pulling the blended number down. That's the figure a portal search shows you. It's also close to useless for deciding where to look, because it averages a $850,000 corridor against a $1.9 million one.
Here's roughly how the city actually breaks down by neighborhood right now:
| Neighborhood | What it is | Distance from BART | Typical price band |
|---|---|---|---|
| Decoto | Railroad-era core, oldest housing stock, built 1940s to 1960s | Walking distance | Under $900,000, the only sub-$900K single-family corridor in the city |
| Alvarado | Original pre-merger town, historic core with Victorian-era homes mixed with mid-century infill | Short drive | Roughly $1.1M to $1.4M |
| Mission Hills | Eastern hillside zone, cul-de-sac streets | Longer drive | Roughly $1.3M to $1.6M |
| Seven Hills | Upper hillside tier, bay views | Longest drive in the city | $1.4M to $1.9M and up |
The gap between the top and bottom rows is over a million dollars, inside one city, inside one zip code in most cases. That spread is the actual story. The median is just the average of it.
Why the oldest homes sit closest to the station
Decoto isn't cheap because it's undesirable. It's cheap because it's old. The neighborhood grew up around the rail line before BART existed, back when Decoto was its own railroad town before merging with Alvarado to form Union City in 1959. The housing stock reflects that history: smaller post-war homes on smaller lots, built for a different generation of buyer than the one shopping today.
Compare that to Seven Hills, where the newest custom lots still coming to market run 3,800 to 5,800 square feet, several times the footprint of a typical Decoto home. A developer proposed exactly that in 2020, subdividing a 6-acre hillside parcel into six lots for homes at that scale. Nobody is proposing anything like that in Decoto, because there's no hillside land left to subdivide and the existing lots were platted for a smaller kind of house.
So the price gap isn't a transit story. It's a housing-stock story that happens to sit on top of a transit map. Square footage, lot size, and a hillside view are doing the work that BART access does everywhere else in the Bay Area, and in Union City they're pulling in the opposite direction from the platform.
What's actually changing in Decoto right now
That said, Decoto isn't frozen. In May 2026, public and private partners gathered with developer MidPen Housing to raise the walls on Lazuli Landing, the first new affordable housing built in Union City's Decoto neighborhood in decades. The project will bring 81 one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments to a long-vacant, city-owned site, funded in part by Alameda County's Measure A1.
"Today's wall raising at Lazuli Landing is a significant step toward expanding housing affordability and economic mobility for our residents."
That's Alameda County Supervisor Elisa Márquez, at the framing milestone. The project won't move Decoto's single-family comps on its own since it's rental housing, not for-sale product, but it's the first sign of real reinvestment in that BART-adjacent tier in a generation. It's also happening inside the city's broader Station District Specific Plan, a 471-acre area around the Union City Intermodal Station that the city has been steering toward transit-oriented redevelopment for years, anchored by projects like the award-winning Station Center apartments a short walk from the platform.
If you're watching Decoto as a value play, this is the detail worth tracking. A neighborhood that hasn't seen new construction in decades just got some, and new construction next to a BART platform is exactly the kind of thing that eventually closes a price gap like this one.
What the hillside tier is actually selling
Seven Hills and Mission Hills aren't selling transit access. Seven Hills, in the city's northeastern hillside zone, is laid out with streets named Monaco and Riviera, a nod to a more upscale ambition than the flatland grid below it, and its selling point is the view back over the city toward the bay. Mission Hills, just to its west, runs a similar hillside logic with Mission Hills Middle School as its neighborhood anchor and a network of cul-de-sac streets that reads as quieter and more suburban than the arterial grid closer to BART.
Buyers paying the premium here aren't commuting by train. They're buying square footage, newer construction, and a view, and they're accepting a longer drive back down to the platform or the freeway as the tradeoff.
Why this matters against Fremont, not just against itself
The other place this shows up is in how Union City prices against its neighbor to the south. Comparable single-family product in Fremont runs meaningfully higher, often by a few hundred thousand dollars, which is a big part of why Union City continues to draw competitive offer activity even as the broader market has cooled. Buyers priced out of Fremont's family neighborhoods are landing in Union City, and depending on which Union City neighborhood they land in, they're either getting BART-adjacent affordability in Decoto or hillside space in Seven Hills at a price that would barely get them a starter home a few miles south.
That's the real use of the neighborhood breakdown above. It's not just a curiosity about how BART pricing works here. It's the tool for deciding which version of "cheaper than Fremont" you're actually shopping for.
What to do with this if you're searching now
- If your priority is a short commute and you're comfortable with an older home and a smaller lot, start in Decoto and watch how Lazuli Landing and the Station District buildout affect nearby comps over the next year.
- If you want new construction, more square footage, or a view, expect to pay the hillside premium in Seven Hills or Mission Hills and expect a longer drive to the platform.
- If you're comparing against Fremont listings, price the Union City equivalent by neighborhood tier, not by citywide median. A Decoto comp and a Seven Hills comp are not the same market.
- Don't assume walking distance to BART is a value driver here the way it is elsewhere in the East Bay. In Union City it's frequently a discount, not a premium.
A few questions that come up often
Is Decoto a good long-term buy given the Lazuli Landing project? It's the first new construction the neighborhood has seen in decades, which is worth watching, but one 81-unit rental project won't move single-family comps by itself. Track it alongside broader Station District activity rather than treating it as an isolated signal.
Why don't Alvarado's older homes trade at Decoto's price level? Alvarado carries a historic-core identity, walkability to Union City Boulevard, and a mix of infill construction alongside its older stock, which puts it in a higher band even though both neighborhoods predate the BART station.
Does this pattern hold in every East Bay BART city? No. Fremont and Hayward generally show transit proximity adding value in a more conventional way. Union City's inversion is specific to how its housing stock happens to be distributed relative to the platform.
If you're trying to figure out which Union City neighborhood actually fits your budget and your list of must-haves, that's a conversation worth having before you start touring. Sanjay Mitra works this market neighborhood by neighborhood, not by median, and can walk you through what a Decoto dollar buys against a Seven Hills dollar before you make an offer. Schedule a consultation to get the comparison built around your actual search.
