Newark, CA Down Payment Help, New Homes and NewPark Mall: What the Mayor Told Us

Newark, California has set aside $3 million to lend first-time buyers up to $200,000 toward a down payment. That was the news Mayor Michael Hannon most wanted a room of local agents to pass along, and it was only the start.

On Thursday, September 17, the mayor spent half an hour with the Tri-Cities Marketing Council, the Thursday morning group of Fremont-area real estate professionals I belong to, walking us through what's coming to Newark. He brought City Manager David Benoun and Community Development Director Steven Turner with him. I took the pictures, and they're at the end of this post, printed as postcards.

This isn't a recap of his talk. It's what I'm taking from it as an agent who helps people buy and sell in Newark, sorted by who it matters to, along with what I checked afterward in the city's own documents.

The short version

• First-time buyers: Newark has set aside $3 million for down payment loans of up to $200,000, depending on household income. The program hasn't opened yet, so get on the interest list now.
• Newer homes: hundreds of new homes are under construction or approved around Willow Street, Cedar Boulevard and Mowry Avenue, and the state's target for Newark is 1,874 new homes by 2031.
• NewPark Mall: T&T Supermarket is opening its largest California store in the former Macy's building, expected in winter 2027. The rest of the mall is waiting on its owner.
• Roads and safety: repaving Thornton Avenue from I-880 to Olive Street is funded, and two fire stations are slated for replacement.
• On the November 3 ballot: Measure DD would replace the business tax Newark adopted in 1970.
• Commuters: Newark sits at the East Bay approach to the Dumbarton Bridge, and the mayor says Peninsula buyers have noticed.

Up to $200,000 for Newark first-time homebuyers

This is the part I'd read twice. The City Council approved the down payment loan for first-time buyers on May 14, 2026, and the nonprofit Hello Housing runs it for the city as the City of Newark Down Payment Assistance Loan Program. I read the program guidelines dated June 23, 2026, and here's how it works:

• "First-time" means no one in your household has owned a home they lived in, anywhere, in the last three years. There are exceptions, such as a home owned with a former spouse.
• Up to $200,000 at household incomes up to the area median, and up to $150,000 at incomes up to 120 percent of it. The city's loan can never be larger than your main home loan.
• $3 million is set aside, enough for at least 15 buyers, funded from Newark's Housing Impact Fee Fund.
• No monthly payments. As long as you own the home and live in it, nothing is due.
• It's due after 30 years, or sooner if you sell, transfer the home, refinance your main loan without the city's approval, rent it out, borrow against it without the city's consent, or stop living there.
• What you pay back is the loan plus whichever is larger: a share of the home's gain in value, in the same proportion as the loan was to the purchase price, or 3 percent simple interest for each year you had it.
• It's for the down payment only, not closing costs or repairs, and only for a home you'll live in. Houses, condos, townhomes and some ADUs and live/work units in Newark qualify; duplexes and other multi-unit buildings don't.

The mayor put the case in one line of arithmetic: a 20 percent down payment on a million-dollar home is $200,000, and very few first-time buyers can raise that without family help. Because the loan comes back to the city with its share of any gain, the same money can help the next buyer.

Here's what that repayment rule looks like at Newark prices. These are my own illustrations, not a quote from the city: say you buy a $1,000,000 home and the city lends $200,000, which is 20 percent of the price.

So the city's loan is never free money, even in a flat market. If the home hasn't gained value by the time you repay, you still owe the interest, and the guidelines add a payoff fee. The value the city uses is the higher of your sale price or an appraisal, so selling below market value doesn't shrink its share.

When can you apply? Not yet. When I checked on October 6, 2026, Hello Housing's Newark page still listed the program as upcoming with an interest list, and no opening date had been published. When it opens it won't be first come, first served: pre-applications open at least 30 days before a lottery, you attend a required workshop, and the lottery gives priority first to households displaced by a proposed residential project, then to people who have lived or worked in Newark for at least six months.

The income limits

The program uses the state's 2026 income limits for Alameda County, effective June 23, 2026 (California HCD). Hello Housing confirms each household's eligibility, and the limits change every year. One caution: Hello Housing's income page for the program currently puts the $200,000 tier at 80 percent of the area median, while the council-approved guidelines say 100 percent. Confirm which applies with Hello Housing before you count on the larger amount.

What I'd do now if you're a first-time buyer looking at Newark

1. Join the interest list on Hello Housing's Newark page, so you hear when applications open.
2. Take the homebuyer class early. Every adult who will be on title needs 8 hours of HUD-certified homebuyer education, with a certificate dated within 12 months of your application.
3. Talk to a lender who has closed loans with city assistance before. Your main loan has to be fixed for its whole term, 30 years or less, with nothing adjustable, and it has to cover at least half the price. The guidelines also set a minimum of 28 percent of your income going to housing costs and a maximum of 45 percent for all your debts together.
4. Know the asset rule. You can have up to $225,000 in assets when you apply, but you can keep no more than $60,000 after closing. The rest goes into the purchase.
5. Match the home to the household. The program sets a minimum of one person per bedroom, so a two-bedroom home needs at least two people in the household.
6. Plan on a longer escrow. The program needs at least 35 days from when your purchase contract is submitted, so a 21-day close won't work with it.
7. Read the repayment terms before you buy, not after, and have a HUD-approved housing counselor or your attorney walk you through the note and deed of trust.

Other help to know about this fall: CalHFA's Dream For All loan has finished its 2026 round, and Alameda County's AC Boost program has been closed since May 2024. CalHFA's MyHome loan is still offered through approved lenders. The city's staff report says Newark's loan was designed to layer with other assistance, and your lender can tell you what stacks. For the rest of the buying process, my first-time buyer's guide walks through the steps, and my post on buying with less than 20 percent down covers the loan side.

Shopping for a newer home in Newark

Newark keeps building. In the state's last eight-year housing cycle, 2015 to 2023, the city's target was 1,078 homes and it issued permits for 2,416, more than twice that, nine in ten of them market-rate (ABAG and MTC's tally of the cities' own reports). The target for the current cycle, 2023 to 2031, is 1,874 homes, and 1,050 of those are meant to be affordable at moderate incomes or below (ABAG). The mayor expects that to be a stretch. He'd prefer that Sacramento leave housing decisions to local governments, he added, because the traffic and noise land on the established neighborhoods next door, but Newark will try to meet whatever the state requires.

The neighborhoods he walked us through, with what the city's own documents say:

• Bayside Newark: FMC Willow and Grand Park, at the northwest corner of Willow Street and Enterprise Drive. Lennar's plan has 279 townhomes, a building with 90 affordable apartments over ground-floor retail, and a five-acre park the city expects by July 2028; the affordable building's deadline is now the end of 2030. Demolition and rough grading started in May (city staff report, July 23, 2026).
• Mowry Village, 7400 to 7550 Mowry Avenue: 196 single-family homes and 30 affordable rentals in place of the Pick-n-Pull auto dismantling yard, approved in December 2025. The yard has to be cleaned up before anything is built (city development projects).
• Marabel by Robson Homes, on Cedar Boulevard: 118 homes, single-family and two-home duets, expected to finish in early 2027. Robson's website lists four-bedroom plans from the upper $1.3 millions.
• The Emery by Taylor Morrison, 38600 Cedar Boulevard, which the city calls Cedar Townhomes: 76 three-story homes next door to Marabel. The builder's website lists them from the low $1 millions and shows the community as coming in late 2026.
• Timber Senior Apartments, 37660 Timber Street: Eden Housing's 79 one-bedroom apartments for seniors earning up to half the area median income, opened at the end of May (Eden Housing).
• Thornton Avenue Apartments, 6347 to 6375 Thornton Avenue: Satellite Affordable Housing Associates' five-story building of 59 apartments, 58 of them affordable plus a manager's unit, with $12 million committed by the city. The mayor said it's still a few million dollars short, and the city's housing site says 2028 at the earliest; SAHA's own project page estimates June 2030.

Further out, two proposals are still under review: about 1,000 apartments at NewPark Plaza on Cedar Boulevard, 200 of them affordable, and 274 rentals at Ohlone College's Newark Center (city budget, 2026 to 2028).

The first thing he asks a developer, he said, is the affordable count, because too many people who grew up in Fremont, Union City and Newark can't buy a home there now. He said the builders haven't fought him on it.

If you're shopping new construction here:

• Ask about the builder's agent registration rules before your first visit. Many sales offices have one, and you'll want your own agent reading the builder's contract with you.
• Ask about everything beyond the base price: HOA dues, any special tax district, what's standard and what's an upgrade, and what the builder's incentives require of you, such as using its lender.
• Budget for the supplemental property tax bill that follows a purchase. My Alameda County property tax post explains it and has a calculator.
• If you're counting on the city's down payment loan, the home needs its certificate of occupancy when you sign the purchase contract, so a home that's still being built doesn't qualify yet.
• Get your own inspection. New homes can have defects too, and the builder's orientation walk isn't an inspection.

Working on the Peninsula, living in Newark

The mayor's pitch to the room was mostly geography. Newark sits at the East Bay approach to the Dumbarton Bridge, and as he sees it, Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Redwood City across the water aren't adding much new housing. Buyers are crossing over, he said, because Newark is the more affordable side and its new construction is good.

If that's you, two pieces of advice. Drive the bridge at the hours you'd really commute before you write an offer, both directions. And let's put the numbers side by side before you decide what you can afford on either side of the bay. My Newark city page has the area basics, and what Newark homes sold for in August is the most recent read on prices.

If you already own in Newark

In a recent city poll, residents put the condition of the streets first, ahead of public safety, which the mayor said isn't the answer most cities get. His State of the City address in April said the same. Here's what's on the calendar:

• Thornton Avenue gets repaved from I-880 to Olive Street. The $4.07 million first phase is paid for with $2 million in federal Congressionally Directed Spending and about $2.07 million in Bay Area bridge toll money, and the city planned to seek construction bids this fall (city staff report, June 25, 2026). Alameda County Water District work on Thornton between Cedar Boulevard and Cherry Street has to finish first, and the mayor's State of the City put the repaving toward the end of this year (State of the City, April 18, 2026).
• Old Town's stretch of Thornton is being rebuilt as a streetscape, narrowing from four lanes to two between Ash and Olive Streets, with construction expected to start late this year or early next (city budget; capital plan, June 25, 2026).
• Two fire stations are slated for replacement: Station 27 at Cherry Street and Mowry Avenue, built in 1981, and Station 29 at Ruschin Drive and Newark Boulevard, built in 1962 (Alameda County Fire Department). The plan draws on Measure GG, a half-cent sales tax approved by Newark voters in 2016, on Measure LL, which raised the hotel tax, and on the general fund. It needs interim stations while the new ones go up, and in his April State of the City the mayor put the job at four to five years from start to finish.
• A new Cultural Arts Center would replace the Newark Community Center at 35501 Cedar Boulevard, built in 1968 and now mostly closed to the public because of water damage. In March the council chose a plan with a project budget of up to $63 million (council minutes, March 26, 2026), and his State of the City said design work would start early next year.
• The Newark Resource Center opened this year at 37365 Ash Street, in a renovated former Head Start building, with $1 million of its funding from the state, secured by Assemblymember Alex Lee (city news release).

Behind all of it, the mayor said, sits a balanced budget with a small surplus while many cities are cutting back. And in June the council adopted Newark's first five-year capital plan, with more than 100 projects on it.

What it means if you're selling in Newark:

• Roadwork means detours. If your home is on or near Thornton, we'll check the city's construction schedule before we pick a listing date.
• New construction nearby is your competition. When a builder is selling down the street, buyers will hold your price up against theirs, incentives included.
• Your prep helps the block. The mayor thanked the room for something agents rarely get credit for: as he put it, hardly anyone lists a house without fresh paint, new landscaping or a repair first, so every listing leaves its block a little better.

NewPark Mall: what's confirmed and what isn't

To the mayor, the mall may be the biggest issue Newark has. Here's how I'd sort what he said from what's on the record:

• Confirmed: T&T Supermarket is opening its largest California store in the former Macy's building at 200 NewPark Mall Road: 72,600 square feet, expected in winter 2027, about 400 jobs, and T&T's first East Bay location (T&T). The mayor told us it takes the whole ground floor. That building has its own owner, separate from Brookfield.
• Open now: a Costco that opened on the mall property in 2023, a busy AMC theater and 24 Hour Fitness. The former Sears and Macy's buildings were both empty when the Urban Land Institute's panel wrote its report.
• The plan that stalled: the city's 2018 specific plan allows about 1,500 homes on the mall property, much of it in place of surface parking, and in 2021 the council approved a first phase of 319 apartments alongside the Costco. The mayor said Brookfield Properties, which owns much of the mall, told him the numbers stopped working after the pandemic, and those approvals expired in mid-2023 (city budget).
• The mayor's read, not an announcement: he believes a sale of the mall is in the works, and he said he hoped to see one within 60 to 90 days. He pointed out that Brookfield already sold Hayward's Southland Mall, which changed hands last fall (KTVU), but nothing about NewPark has been made public that I've seen.
• The outside view: the city brought in the Urban Land Institute, whose panel met in February, and its report on reviving the mall came out this summer.

What revives a mall, in his view, is people living on its parking lots, because restaurants and coffee shops do best when their customers can walk over.

Until a sale or a new plan is public, I won't tell a buyer the mall is about to change, and I wouldn't price a listing on it. T&T is different, because it's been announced.

Measure DD, the business tax on Newark's November ballot

On November 3, Newark votes on Measure DD, which appears on the ballot as the Newark Essential Services Protection Measure. It would replace the business tax the city adopted in 1970 with a new one starting January 1, 2027. The mayor made the room guess the year of the last real overhaul before he told us.

Here's how it would work, from the measure filed with the county Registrar of Voters and the city's page on it:

• A $25 base tax covers a business's first $100,000 of gross receipts, in place of today's flat minimum of about $39, which covers only the first $25,000.
• Above $100,000, each category pays its own percentage: 0.03 percent for retail and restaurants, 0.075 percent for rentals (residential included), hotels and self-storage, 0.075 percent for manufacturing and wholesale, 0.2 percent for contractors and services, 0.25 percent for professional services, and 0.3 percent for distribution and logistics. Banks, insurance companies and not-for-profits as the city code defines them are among the exempt.
• The city estimates it would raise about $6.6 million a year, against roughly $1.4 million a year from the current tax. It's a general tax, so the money goes to general city purposes rather than a set list.

Estimates of how many businesses would pay less differ. The mayor told us about two thirds, and said the higher bills would fall on large manufacturers and corporate businesses; the rebuttal argument he signed says 68 percent; and city staff's estimate in July was about half. Councilmember Terrence Grindall, the one council vote against putting it on the ballot, wrote the argument against it: he calls it an increase of about $5 million and says it would hurt local businesses and raise prices. Both arguments are part of the official election materials.

Who it touches among the people I work with:

• If you run a business from a Newark home, find your category and do the math before you vote.
• If you own a rental in Newark, residential rentals fall in the rental category, along with commercial rentals and hotels: $25 on the first $100,000 of rent, and 0.075 percent above that.
• If you're an agent, your commission is what counts as gross receipts, not the sale price. The mayor said only commission on Newark sales counts, wherever your office is. The ordinance taxes receipts from business activity in the city, so check how that's applied with the city before you budget for it.

I'm not telling anyone how to vote. Read the measure and both arguments, and decide for yourself.

What I'm doing differently after this talk

• First-time buyers who are open to Newark will hear about the city's loan early, with the interest list and the income table.
• I'll walk buyers through the repayment math before they apply, the flat-market case included, so the city's share of a future sale is never a surprise.
• When an offer uses the city's loan, I'll plan for an escrow of at least 35 days and explain why to the listing agent up front.
• For Newark sellers near a new neighborhood, I'll aim to price against the builder too, incentives included, not only against the last resale.
• I'll keep mall rumors out of my listing copy. T&T, yes, because it's been announced. A sale of the mall, only once it's public.

Hear it from the mayor

The council's recap of the morning has the recording, cued to the moment Susan Munkner introduces him, and it runs through the questions from the room. The city's own site is newarkca.gov.

Thank you, Mayor Hannon

Thank you to Mayor Hannon, City Manager David Benoun and Community Development Director Steven Turner for coming with specifics: dates, dollar figures and straight answers to the room's questions. And thank you to Susan Munkner for inviting them.

The Tri-Cities Marketing Council meets Thursday mornings in Fremont, and guests are welcome. The council's speaker calendar shows who's coming next.

If you're hoping to buy your first home in Newark, or you're thinking about selling one there, call or text me at (510) 600-3425, or email homes@HarvRealtor.com. We'll check where your household lands in the city's income limits, look at what's been selling nearby, and if you're selling, I can put together a home value estimate so the numbers are on the table from the start.

Harv Balu, REALTOR®

• Cell / Text: (510) 600-3425
• Email: homes@HarvRealtor.com
• Web: HarvRealtor.com
• REALTY EXPERTS® · 41051 Mission Blvd, Fremont, CA 94539 · DRE #02195792

Disclosures

This post is general information for home buyers, sellers and owners. It is not legal, tax, lending or financial advice, and it is not a recommendation on how to vote on any measure. Harv Balu is a REALTOR® and California real estate licensee, not a mortgage lender, attorney or tax advisor. Program rules, income limits, tax rates and project details are summarized from the City of Newark, Hello Housing, the Alameda County Registrar of Voters, California HCD and the other sources linked above, as of October 2026. They change, so confirm anything that affects you with the agency or program involved. The repayment table is an illustration of the program's published formula, not a quote, an approval or an offer of credit. Statements attributed to Mayor Michael Hannon are from his presentation to the Tri-Cities Marketing Council on September 17, 2026, except where the post cites his April 18, 2026 State of the City address.

Photographs by Harv Balu, taken at the meeting.

Equal Housing Opportunity. Harv Balu, CA DRE #02195792. REALTY EXPERTS® (CA DRE #00414413) is independently owned and operated. © 2026 Harv Balu, REALTY EXPERTS®.