Experience Floating Home Living
The number one reason people come to the floating homes is community. And moments like this.
Paul & Roman Bergeron, on the docks since 1985
Experience Floating Home Living
People arrive for the view, the light on the water, the idea of a house that moves. Those are real. But ask anyone who has been here ten years why they stayed and you will hear the same answer, and it is never the view.
It is the people on the dock.
This site is for them, and for anyone thinking about joining them. What the community actually does, how these homes actually work, and what they actually sell for.
None of this is organised by any governing body. It happens because people who see each other every day start making plans.
Twice a day the water leaves and the mud takes over — that is when you find out what is really under the dock. Waders on, someone always ends up filthy and laughing about it.
During a king tide, when the water runs unusually high, the parking lot floods and the cars left in it end up sitting in a foot of water — from the right angle they genuinely look like they're floating. It happens a few times a year, and everyone still stops to take a photo.
Someone puts the word out — sometimes it's a post on the DockPeeps Facebook group, sometimes just word of mouth — and within the hour there's a flotilla of boats and paddleboards gathered on the water. No invitations, no RSVP, just the whole dock showing up.
It used to be that everyone here did this work themselves. That's not really true anymore — some hire it out, and some families still do as much of it as they can, like Paul and Roman Bergeron. Pictured here: Paul cleaning the floats on one of their docks.
The events are the postcard. This is what the community is made of the rest of the year.
There are no garages here and no driveways. Everyone walks the same dock to get home, which means you pass the same people every single day. That one structural fact does more for community than any amount of good intention.
A paddleboard, a kayak, an afternoon with nothing else planned — this is what a free Saturday looks like out here. Kids grow up treating the bay the way other kids treat a backyard.
Herons on the pilings. Seals in the channel. The tide moves your whole house twice a day and after a while you stop noticing, until a guest points at the window and asks whether the room is level.
Written for two people: the neighbor who has lived aboard for twenty years and still is not sure how the slip lease works, and the person who saw a listing last week and has questions nobody will answer straight.
Every dock in Richardson Bay, what each one is like, and how they differ.
Read it →How a floating home purchase actually works, start to finish.
Read it →Every closed sale since 1994, updated quarterly. Real numbers, not estimates.
Read it →Why most banks say no, and who says yes.
Read it →The daily practicalities nobody warns you about.
Read it →Slip lease, chattel, freeboard, stringers. Plain answers.
Read it →
The only father-and-son team brokering Sausalito floating homes. Between them they have owned more than twenty of these homes, built or remodelled more than fifteen, brokered over fifty, and lived on the water for sixty years. Paul has been on these docks since 1985. Roman grew up on Gate 6½ and East Pier.
We are real estate agents, so you should read anything we publish with that in mind. It is also why the market numbers on this site are the actual closed-sale record rather than a round figure someone guessed.
This page is meant to belong to the community, not to us. If we have missed an event, got a detail wrong, or you have photos from a paddle or a concert that belong here, send them over and we will add them.
Send us something (415) 789-5278Paul Bergeron DRE #01356345 · NMLS #399152 · Roman Bergeron DRE #02439924