Best Places To Live In The Bay Area Mid-Peninsula

The mid-Peninsula neighborhoods offer a kind of compromise. You’re still close enough to San Francisco that it’s not a real trek to get there after work or on the weekends, but you’re far enough away that the choice of properties available to buy or rent deepens a little bit.

For the purposes of this article, we’ve classifying anything south of San Francisco city and north of Palo Alto, as being “mid-Peninsula). There’s a little bit of conjecture as to where Silicon Valley starts and where it ends, so anything south of Palo Alto will be classified as Silicon Valley.

Here are some of our favorite places to call home in the mid-Peninsula

BELMONT

Neighborhood Overview
Nestled between San Mateo to its north, and San Carlos to its south, Belmont is a popular choice for families because it boasts a good school district. As such, the area is filled with young-ish families looking to get their children the best start money can buy.

A little fun fact about Belmont, is that it passed a smoking ordinance in 2009, which essential bans smoking in all businesses, and multi-storey apartments and condos. The area has a mixed demographic, with 30 percent made up of families with children under the age of 18, and almost 10 percent had someone over the age of 65 living there.

Over half the properties in Belmont are owner-occupied, and 42 per cent are rented out.

Pros

• Quiet neighborhood (unless you live on the Caltrain corridor)
• Close to grocery stores
• Very safe
• Almost equidistant to San Francisco and San Jose
• Clean
• Good schools
• Lots of restaurants in San Carlos and San Mateo
• Close to Caltrain and lots of buses
• Close to highways 101, 92 and 280
• Quite a few festivals (Chocolate, Greek, Polish, etc)
• Good open spaces (Waterdog Park)

Cons

• Not much nightlife
• Lots of schools (that 3.30pm traffic)
• Caltrain only stops here once an hour

REDWOOD CITY

Neighborhood Overview
Redwood City boasts San Francisco’s only deepwater port, and has a population of around 76,000 people. Since there is a high Hispanic and Latino population in the area, you’ll find plenty of great family-run Mexican restaurants like Tacos Los Gemelos (Taco Twins).

There is a high proportion of couples living in Redwood City (48.8 per cent), and families with children under the age of 18 make up just 7 per cent of the population. The downtown area is packed with restaurants, shops, theatres, and a cinema.

Since Redwood City is the seat of San Mateo County, it also regularly hosts free community events,especially during the summer and autumn months.

Pros

• Plenty of restaurants and coffee shops offering outdoor seating, which is feasible all year round.
• Lots of free events; concerts, outdoor movie nights and attractions downtown. Redwood City Events do an amazing job.
• Handy commute to Facebook, Google, and Apple campuses, with staff shuttles servicing the area.
• Close to San Francisco International Airport.
• Caltrain station for ease of commuting into San Francisco.
• Bicycle friendly roads close to downtown.
• Has a DMV, Social Security office and a variety of banks for newcomers in town to get established.  This is a big plus for an expat getting started in the USA without a car.

Cons

• Cost of living.
• Traffic congestion (everywhere in the Bay Area issue) .
• Locals being resistant to gentrification and very anti Facebook, Google, Apple.

Attractions/Things to do

• Courthouse Square always has events and attractions downtown. As mentioned before – Redwood City Events does an amazing job.
• Fox Theater and Dragon Theater.
• Bair Island Ecological Reserve.
• Edgewood Park (467 acres with walking trails, lots of flora and fauna).
• Filoli Mansion and Gardens (650 acre estate with walking trails and a 16 acre garden accessible to the public for a fee).
• Pulgas Water Temple is very Instagramable.
• Redwood City has a campus of Stanford University.
• Cañada Community College.
• Stanford Medicine Outpatient Center, Kaiser Permanente and Sequoia Hospitals.

FOSTER CITY

Neighborhood Overview
Foster City is located within San Mateo County and as such, is close to both San Mateo and Belmont (mentioned above). Its big draw card is that it is one of the safest cities in the country – and averages one murder per decade.

Foster City was built in the 1960s on top of landfill and the marshes that line the San Francisco Bay. Back in 2009, Forbes ranked Foster City as number 10 in its list of the top 25 towns to live in. It is just 51 kilometres square (19.8 miles square), but includes many of the amenities you’ll need including a Costco, and shopping center.

Pros

• More residential and not congested
• Heaps of park and active community center
• Very safe, clean and with water views
• Very convenient to shops
• People are friendl
• Good schools

Cons

• Access to BART, closest is Millbrae.
• Closest Caltrain is Hillsdale which is 5 – 10 mins away by car.