Search "Sea Haven Marina homes" and you'll find a three-bedroom cottage listed at $614,000 sitting a few streets away from single-family homes priced well past $1.4 million. Same subdivision name. Same builder marketing. Same clubhouse in every brochure photo. The prices don't reconcile because they were never describing the same product.
Sea Haven, the 248-acre coastal community built on former Fort Ord land in Marina, is not one housing market wearing one price tag. It's three separate tracks that happen to share a name, a clubhouse, and a set of parks. Buyers who treat it as a single comparable neighborhood end up confused by listings that look identical on the surface and behave nothing alike at resale.
What the city actually calls this place
Marina's planning department doesn't use "Sea Haven" on its own. In city documents, the project is filed as Marina Heights, and the specific plan behind it dates back to 2003, amended most recently in 2019. That plan set the terms for everything that followed: how many homes, what mix of income levels, and how the site would be divided once builders started pulling permits.
Trumark Homes, which now markets the community, describes Sea Haven as a coastal enclave near the 14,651-acre Fort Ord National Monument, built where a U.S. Army post once stood. That's accurate as far as it goes. What it doesn't spell out on the landing page is that "Sea Haven" covers at least three distinct products, each with its own eligibility rules, its own price ceiling or floor, and its own path if you ever want to sell.
Three tracks, one name
Here's the breakdown, based on the builder's own community pages and the City of Marina's housing program:
| Track | Homes | Typical size | Who can buy | Resale rules |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Layia | Single-family, one and two story | 1,849 to 2,725 sq ft | Open market | None beyond standard HOA terms |
| Villosa | Single-family, one and two story | Up to 3,411 sq ft | Open market | None beyond standard HOA terms |
| Larkspur (BMR) | Townhomes and cottages | 2-bedroom townhomes, 3-bedroom cottages | Income-qualified only | Deed-restricted, equity-share note |
Layia is the smaller-footprint side of the community. Trumark's own marketing lists it starting around $1.1 million, and homes that actually came to market in early 2026 priced from roughly $1.19 million to $1.31 million, a gap between advertised starting price and realized transaction price that's worth remembering the next time a builder's website quotes a "from" number.
Villosa is the larger-footprint side, homes running past 3,400 square feet with up to seven bedrooms in the biggest floor plans. Listings that came to market in mid-2026 priced from roughly $1.4 million to $1.6 million. Villosa also carries its own homeowners association due, listed at $150 a month covering ground maintenance, separate from anything tied to the income-restricted units elsewhere in the community.
Then there's Larkspur, which isn't a neighborhood you can simply decide to buy into. It's the City of Marina's Below Market Rate program, layered into Sea Haven's master plan from the start. The program calls for 210 townhomes and single-family cottages total, sold only to households that meet specific income thresholds: Moderate income households at 120% of Area Median Income and Workforce households at 135% AMI for the two-bedroom townhomes, and Workforce households at 150% AMI up through Bridge income households at 200% AMI for the three-bedroom cottages. One cottage in this program, built on the Larkspur floor plan, listed at that $614,000 figure mentioned earlier, a price that looks like a bargain next to Villosa until you read the fine print: buyers must prequalify through the program's affiliated lender, sign a deed restriction, and accept an equity-share note that caps how much the home can appreciate before it's sold again.
Why the name repeats itself
The reuse of "Larkspur" isn't a coincidence worth ignoring. Before Trumark's name was on anything at Sea Haven, an earlier phase of the community was built and marketed by Renasci Homes and Wathen Castanos Homes. In 2019, that earlier team released a market-rate product also called Larkspur, priced from the high $600,000s, pitched on proximity to Marina State Beach and Fort Ord Dunes State Park. That product sold out. Years later, when the City's income-restricted homes needed a floor plan name, the builder reused Larkspur for a completely different purpose: a deed-restricted cottage available only to income-qualified buyers.
A buyer doing a quick search today might land on an old 2019 listing for "Larkspur at Sea Haven" and reasonably assume it describes the same kind of home being sold under that name now. It doesn't. The name survived a change in ownership, a change in builder, and a change in what the home is legally allowed to do at resale.
That builder change is its own piece of the story. In December 2023, Trumark Homes announced it was entering the Central California market by absorbing Wathen Castanos Homes, with Josh Peterson, who had run Wathen Castanos, becoming Trumark's Central California division president. The announcement described the move as a way to officially usher in the Trumark Homes name at Sea Haven and Avila Ranch. Anyone who toured Sea Haven before that date was talking to a different sales team, under a different corporate name, selling homes that would later carry the Trumark brand without necessarily changing anything about the physical product.
What's still open right now
The Below Market Rate program's original application window ran from September 8 to October 8, 2023, drawing 776 applications for a lottery that ranked who could buy first, with preference points given to households that already lived or worked in Marina. According to the City's most recent update, that lottery list hasn't been fully worked through yet. Interested buyers who meet the income requirements can still join the waitlist, and once the original lottery ranking is exhausted, remaining homes will be offered first come, first served.
Given that the program was framed as a 2 to 3 year rollout starting in 2023, and that at least one Larkspur cottage carried an estimated completion date in mid-2025, the program is likely in its later innings as of this writing. Buyers who qualify and want a Sea Haven address at a price well under the market-rate tracks shouldn't assume there's no runway left.
What actually ties the three tracks together
Despite the price gap, every buyer at Sea Haven, whether in Layia, Villosa, or Larkspur, gets access to the same shared infrastructure. The Cove Clubhouse is described by Trumark as the only amenity of its kind along the Monterey Bay coastline, with lounge space, a fitness area, and programming like gourmet cooking classes and outdoor movie nights. Ten planned neighborhood parks are woven through the site, and the whole community sits within a short drive of Fort Ord National Monument's trail network. That shared amenity package is the one part of the Sea Haven pitch that holds up no matter which price tier you're comparing.
What this means if you're comparing Marina to the rest of the Peninsula
If you're weighing new construction in Marina against resale inventory elsewhere on the Peninsula, the Sea Haven example is a good reminder to ask a more specific question than "what's the median price." Ask which neighborhood within the development a listing belongs to, ask whether the builder of record has changed since the home was first marketed, and if a price looks unusually low for the square footage, ask directly whether it carries an income restriction. None of that shows up in a search results snippet. It shows up when you read the listing agreement.
FAQ
Are Layia and Villosa part of the same HOA? They're marketed as distinct neighborhoods within Sea Haven, each with its own homeowners association due covering shared maintenance. Villosa's due has been listed at $150 a month; buyers should confirm current dues and what they cover before writing an offer.
Can someone who buys a Larkspur BMR home eventually sell it at full market price? No. The City of Marina's program attaches a deed restriction and an equity-share note to every BMR unit, which limits the appreciation a seller can capture and requires future buyers to meet the same income qualifications.
Is the BMR waitlist still open in 2026? According to the City's most recent notice, yes. Applicants can still join the interest list, and once the original 2023 lottery ranking is exhausted, remaining homes are offered first come, first served to qualified buyers.
Sorting out which track a Sea Haven listing belongs to, and what that means for financing, resale, or timeline, is exactly the kind of groundwork Monterey Coast Realty does before a client ever writes an offer. If you're comparing new construction in Marina against other Peninsula neighborhoods, reach out and we'll walk through what each price actually buys.
