Issue No. 1 · Development scorecard · October 2026

What's being built in Folsom in 2026, what is stalled, and what the Intel campus sale means for your house

Folsom has about 11,000 homes entitled south of Highway 50, two health systems holding land for hospitals, a federal dam project on the lakeside streets, a light-rail line going to 15-minute service, and its largest employer selling a 150-acre campus. Here is each one with its status in October 2026, its source, and the plain read on what it does to property values.

By Elise Marchand · Updated October 13, 2026 · 11 minute read

How to read a Folsom project list

I spent a career reading project schedules. What I look for is grading equipment, recorded maps and council votes, not renderings. By that test Folsom's list sorts cleanly into things that are happening (the Plan Area subdivisions, the dam raise, the light-rail upgrade), things that are entitled and waiting (two medical campuses, the Plan Area town center), and one thing that is a genuine unknown (the Intel campus).

The city's development projects page is the primary source for the housing items and was current in October 2026. Everything else is sourced inline. For the market the pipeline feeds into, see the fall 2026 market letter.

Housing: the Folsom Plan Area

Status: building since 2018; about a third built; new subdivisions approved in 2026.

The Plan Area is 3,520 acres bounded by Highway 50, White Rock Road, Prairie City Road and the El Dorado County line, brought into the city after voters passed Measure W in 2004 and planned over the following decade. The specific plan permits about 11,337 homes plus commercial, employment and civic uses. The city's page lists six neighborhoods built or under way (Broadstone Estates, Enclave at Folsom Ranch, Folsom Heights, Mangini Ranch, Russell Ranch, White Rock Springs Ranch), two operating elementary schools, the Shops at Folsom Ranch, Fire Station 34 (opened 2024) and Prospector Park. A 2023 count had roughly 2,650 units occupied; the state's housing-unit estimates suggest the city has added well over a thousand homes a year since, nearly all of them here.

The 2026 additions:

• Toll Brothers at Alder Creek. A 1,424-lot subdivision on 464 acres near Alder Creek Parkway and Prairie City Road, with a future elementary school, fire station, parks and trails. The council approved it 4-1 on June 23, 2026. A construction union filed a CEQA suit afterward over indoor air quality from composite wood products; that is a common tactic and rarely stops a project, but it can delay grading.
• Sierra Oaks. Taylor Morrison's 804-lot subdivision, submitted March 16, 2026, hearing date not yet set.
• CFD No. 24, Alder Creek West. Formed in April 2026 to fund police, fire and other services for the new area, on top of the facilities district that already covers the Plan Area.

What this means for a seller: if you own in the Plan Area, Toll and Taylor Morrison are your competition for the next five years, with model homes, incentives and a builder's lender. Price under the new-build equivalent, or, if the house has a problem a financed buyer will not take on, get a written number from a cash buyer that covers Folsom and compare it to the net after the price cut. If you own north of 50, the Plan Area is why there is no scarcity premium in Folsom; your premium is lot size, trees, lower taxes and lake access, and you should sell those.

Housing: the state target and the older city

Status: housing element adopted August 24, 2021; capacity surplus reported in 2025.

Folsom's state-assigned housing need for 2021 to 2029 is 6,363 units (3,567 lower-income, 829 moderate, 1,967 above-moderate). The city's housing element page carries the adopted document; a 2025 city update reported lower-income site capacity of 3,798 against the 3,567 target. The city also adopted general-plan amendments in 2023 raising residential densities on selected sites, and approved the Sutter Lofts mixed-use project on Sutter Street under a density bonus. In the Historic District, the Central Business District master plan and the River District vision for six miles of American River and Lake Natoma frontage are long-term efforts.

If you own nearby: the older city's housing count is essentially fixed, which supports values there as the Plan Area absorbs the growth. The density amendments and infill projects are small in scale; none competes with a single-family resale.

Jobs: Intel, Micron and the medical campuses

Intel's Folsom campus

Status: announced for sale with partial leaseback in late 2024; no public buyer as of October 2026.

The 150-acre campus at Prairie City Road and Highway 50 has been Folsom's defining employer since 1984, once with about 10,000 workers and now with fewer than 5,000 across 1.6 million square feet of offices and labs. Intel cut roughly 300 Folsom positions in November 2024, announced about 600 more in 2025, and said it would sell the site and lease back what it still needs as part of a company-wide cost program. I worked there until 2024. I do not know who the buyer is, and as far as I can find, nobody outside the deal does either.

My read: two scenarios. A buyer who fills the campus with employers (a university, a health system, a mix of tech tenants) keeps Folsom's daytime population and supports the move-up market. A buyer who converts it, or sits on it, leaves a hole in the office market and takes several thousand high-wage commutes out of the city over a decade. So far the housing data shows a 3.7 percent dip in the median and rising sales, not a shock. Watch the county recorder and the business press.

Micron and the rest of the tech base

Status: operating.

Micron keeps an engineering office in Folsom and has been hiring for memory-architecture roles through 2026, at salaries in the $200,000s per public postings. It is a fraction of Intel's size. The city's economic development office describes Folsom's workforce as 53 percent management, business, science and arts occupations, which is the highest share in the region and the reason the city's buyers can carry a 7.4 percent rate.

UC Davis Health and Dignity Health in the Plan Area

Status: UC Davis's first medical office building was under construction in 2023; Dignity's 28-acre campus is entitled; no 2026 construction confirmed for a hospital.

UC Davis Health bought a 34.5-acre parcel at Highway 50 and East Bidwell Street with plans for an outpatient building first and a micro-hospital, surgery center and hotel later. Dignity Health announced a 28-acre campus in Folsom Ranch, with a planned-development permit for a hospital on the city's books. Kaiser and Mercy (Dignity) already operate hospitals north of the freeway.

On your house: health care is the sector most likely to replace the Intel jobs Folsom has lost. Two campuses in the Plan Area would anchor the south side's employment the way the specific plan always intended. Until a hospital breaks ground, treat it as a plan, not a value.

Infrastructure: the dam, the train, the roads

Folsom Dam Raise

Status: under construction in phases; most sources point to completion around 2027.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is raising Folsom's eight dikes, the Mormon Island Auxiliary Dam and the left and right wing dams by about 3.5 feet and modifying the main dam's spillway gates, to add temporary flood storage for the Sacramento region. The record of decision was signed in December 2017, Dike 8 was raised in 2020, Dikes 1 through 6 followed under a 2023 contract, and the main dam and wing dams are under a $114 million contract. The Corps' own FAQ addresses the traffic, dust and noise on streets near the lake and says the project does not expand the mapped floodplain around Folsom, Orangevale or Granite Bay.

For the owner asking "and so?": a nuisance for lakeside owners while it lasts, a flood-safety improvement for the whole region when it is done, and no change to anyone's flood-zone status. Disclose it if you are on a haul route.

The Gold Line to 15-minute service

Status: passing track near Glenn station completed January 2025; new trains funded; schedules mixed.

SacRT won $84 million for new low-floor trains and the double-tracking needed to run the Gold Line every 15 minutes between Sunrise and Historic Folsom, instead of every 30. The passing loop opened in early 2025 and the line has run a mix of 15- and 30-minute headways since. Folsom's three stations (Iron Point, Glenn, Historic Folsom) serve the Historic District and the Intel and Palladio corridors.

What it does to values: within walking distance of Historic Folsom or Glenn, frequent rail to downtown Sacramento is a real line item for state employees. Elsewhere it is a talking point.

Roads

Status: ongoing.

The Plan Area's backbone roads (Alder Creek Parkway, the East Bidwell and Prairie City extensions) are built with each phase. White Rock Road along the Plan Area's southern edge is Folsom's piece of the Capital SouthEast Connector, the 34-mile expressway from Interstate 5 to Highway 50, which the JPA tracks segment by segment. Folsom Lake Crossing, the bridge below the dam, opened in 2009 and remains the only alternative to the freeway for north-south traffic.

Reading the scorecard as an owner

Folsom's pipeline is big, slow, and almost all of it is south of Highway 50. That gives the city two markets on different clocks: the Plan Area, where supply is abundant for a decade and prices are set by builders and the mortgage rate, and the original city and lakeside, where supply is fixed and prices are set by condition, lot, taxes and, newly, by what an insurer will quote.

The Intel question sits on top of both. If the campus finds a jobs-rich buyer, Folsom's premium over the county holds; if not, the city still has its schools, its lake, its tax base and two health systems holding land, and the 2026 data says buyers have already priced in what they know.

Practically: in the Plan Area, price under the model home. North of 50, sell the lot, the trees and the 1.1 percent tax rate. In the hills, get the insurance quote first. And for the house that does not fit a financed buyer, whether that is an original-condition tract home, an estate, or a lakeside property with a hazard-zone problem, Pacific Home Buyers' Folsom page will produce a written cash number in a day that belongs next to the agent's net sheet. How to weigh the two is in selling a house in Folsom in 2026; the band-by-band detail is in the neighborhoods guide.