Say you spend a Saturday touring new construction in Windsor. Your first stop is a Ryder Homes unit near Old Redwood Highway, an attached three-bedroom under 1,900 square feet with a $298 monthly HOA payment, listed near $700,000. Your second stop, twenty minutes later, is a Schellinger Brothers single-story home going up near Chalk Hill Road, solar panels already wired to a battery backup, exposed beams overhead, priced at $1.3 million. Both are brand new. Both sit inside the Windsor town limits. And they have almost nothing else in common.
That gap is not a fluke of two builders with different tastes. Windsor is running at least three distinct new-construction tracks at once, and the line between them isn't the finish level buyers usually shop for. It's which set of rules the land qualified under before a single foundation was poured.
The Train Changed What Gets Built Near It
Windsor's SMART station opened for passenger service on May 31, 2025, tucked into a remodeled depot a short walk from the Town Green. It is not even a year and a half old, which matters because the projects clustered around it are being built to a different formula than anything Windsor approved before the train arrived.
Ryder Homes' attached project near Merner Drive and Old Redwood Highway trades yard space for location. Six of its floor plans include flex or office rooms built for remote workers who want to walk to a train platform instead of drive to one. A few blocks over, an all-electric 106-unit apartment community called Cora Creek is going up at 8975 Conde Lane inside the same transit corridor, and its site plan includes deliberately fewer parking spaces than a project that size would normally get, on the assumption that residents will use the rail line instead of a second car.
That's the trade a downtown-adjacent buyer is actually making. Less land, an HOA line item, and often a shared wall, in exchange for a walk to a station that didn't exist two summers ago.
A Different Set of Rules Governs the East Side
Head to the other side of town and the incentive disappears entirely. Near Windsor Golf Club, a twelve-lot custom subdivision called The Overlook sits at Windsor Road and Mitchell Lane, with lots running from about 10,000 to over 22,000 square feet along a private street with its own design guidelines. Developer Phil Richardson has already finished the utilities and grading, so a buyer here brings their own architect and builds what they picture, not what a builder pre-designed.
A few miles away, Schellinger Brothers' eight single-story homes near Chalk Hill Road follow the same east-side logic: large single-family lots, no shared walls, no transit incentive pulling density onto the parcel. There is no HOA fee buying you a shorter walk to a platform, because there's no platform to walk to. What you're paying for instead is land and distance from anyone else's wall.
Windsor's Active New-Construction Map, at a Glance
| Project | Location | What's being built | Price or lot size | What's driving it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ryder Homes | Merner Drive / Old Redwood Highway | 29 attached homes, HOA around $298/month | Starting near $700,000 | Walking distance to downtown and the SMART station |
| Cora Creek | 8975 Conde Lane | 106-unit all-electric apartment community | Rental, not for sale | Sits inside the transit zone; parking count reduced by design |
| Christopherson Builders | 357 Cornell Street, near Robbins Park | 24 homes across five floor plans, some with ADUs | High $600s to high $800s, ADU plans into the low-to-mid $900s | Close to downtown but outside the immediate transit footprint |
| Schellinger Brothers | Near Chalk Hill Road | 8 custom single-story homes, 1,900 to 2,300 sq ft | Roughly $1.25 to $1.3 million | East-side acreage, no transit incentive at play |
| The Overlook | Windsor Road & Mitchell Lane, beside Windsor Golf Club | 12 custom lots, 10,000 to 22,000+ sq ft | Land only, buyer builds | Golf course frontage and a private street, not train access |
| Quail Acres | Arata Lane / Los Amigos Road | 301 homes, 271 market rate and 30 affordable | Phased over several years | A state housing law, not proximity to transit |
The 301-Home Middle Ground Runs on a Different Law
Quail Acres doesn't fit either pattern above. It sits east of Highway 101 near Arata Lane and Los Amigos Road, nowhere near the SMART corridor, yet it's approved for 301 homes on just under 59 acres, a density that would be hard to imagine on a standard-zoned parcel that size. The paperwork explains why. The project's environmental filing states plainly that it "uses State Density Bonus Law waivers and parking standards" to get there.
State density bonus law lets a developer build more units than normal zoning allows in exchange for setting aside a share of those homes as affordable. Quail Acres uses that trade to include 30 deed-restricted units among its 271 market-rate homes, and the bonus is what makes the larger number pencil out on a site that has nothing to do with train access.
The project has also drawn out a real dispute worth knowing about if you're tracking it as future inventory. Windsor Unified School District argued it needed nine of those 59 acres for a future school, a request the developer resisted, and the Planning Commission's approval moved forward without the school site attached, a decision the Press Democrat reported the district planned to appeal. The Town of Windsor's own project page confirms the subdivision as approved, phased, and still working through those conditions. None of that changes what's on paper today, but it does mean a 301-home project isn't the kind of thing that shows up on the market next spring. It rolls out over years, and buyers who like the plan should treat it as a long-range option rather than near-term inventory.
What This Does to the Median You Already Looked Up
Windsor's median list price in September 2026 sat at $774,000, down about 3 percent from the prior month, with homes spending a median of 78 days on the market, according to Movoto's tracking. Zillow's separate home-value index put the town's average closer to $798,777 as of its July 2026 update, essentially flat over the past year. Neither number is wrong. They're just measuring a town where a resale bungalow near downtown, a $700,000 attached home with an HOA a block from the train, and a $1.3 million custom lot on the east side are all getting averaged into one figure.
That median tells you almost nothing about what a specific new-construction dollar buys, because the town isn't selling one product. It's selling at least three, sorted by which incentive got the land through approval. Before you compare a listing price to "the Windsor median," it's worth asking which side of the transit line the lot sits on, and whether the density came from a train platform or a state housing law.
Questions Buyers Keep Asking
Does living near the SMART station change resale value in Windsor? It's too early to say with any certainty, since the station itself opened in May 2025. What's already visible is the trade-off builders are making around it: smaller lots, attached product, and HOA fees in exchange for walkability, which is a different value proposition than the acreage on offer near Chalk Hill Road or Windsor Golf Club.
Can I buy into Quail Acres right now? Not yet. The project is approved but still working through conditions tied to the school district dispute, and it's slated to roll out in phases over several years rather than deliver as a single batch of finished homes.
What's the real price range for new construction across Windsor today? Roughly $700,000 to $1.3 million, depending mainly on three things: whether the home is attached or detached, how close it sits to the SMART corridor, and whether the lot came through under a transit-oriented parking waiver or a state density bonus.
If you're weighing a move into one of these projects and want to know what your current Windsor home would need to sell for to make the math work, The Spaulding Group can walk you through it, starting with a straightforward Get Your Instant Home Valuation. It's a fast way to see where you stand before you fall in love with a floor plan on either side of town.
