San Mateo is the largest city in the county — 105,661 people at the 2020 Census, a little ahead of Daly City — and it was incorporated in 1894. It is also where Marisa has done a good deal of her work, including a sale on North Humboldt Street and leases on 30th Avenue and Mounds Road.
Three Caltrain stations sit inside the city: San Mateo downtown, Hayward Park, and Hillsdale, which was rebuilt and moved a little north when the 28th Avenue grade separation opened in 2021. US-101, Interstate 280 and Highway 92 all serve the city, which is unusual on the Peninsula and is why people who work in both directions tend to land here.
The parts of town are genuinely different from each other. Downtown has some eight hundred shops and restaurants in late-19th and early-20th century buildings, with a stretch of South B Street given over to outdoor dining since 2020. Hillsdale has the shopping center and, next to it, Bay Meadows — eighty-three acres of new transit-oriented housing on the site of the racetrack that closed in 2008. Coyote Point is a 670-acre county park on the water. And the neighborhoods east of El Camino Real are denser than those west of it.
One thing worth knowing before you worry about what might go up nearby: San Mateo has had a voter-approved 55-foot height limit on new development since 1990.
Photo: Vicki Moore, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
What she has sold in San Mateo.
San Mateo, in the questions people ask us.
Which Caltrain station would I use?
Whichever is nearest — San Mateo downtown, Hayward Park, or Hillsdale on 28th Avenue, which was rebuilt in 2021. Few Peninsula cities have three.
Which schools serve San Mateo?
The San Mateo-Foster City School District for kindergarten through eighth grade, then the San Mateo Union High School District — San Mateo, Aragon and Hillsdale high schools are all in the city.
Is San Mateo a city of owners or renters?
Almost exactly half and half: 49.8 per cent of occupied homes were owner-occupied at the 2020 Census. That is worth knowing if you are buying a two-unit building or thinking about renting a place out.
Could a tower go up next to me?
Not a tall one. The city has had a 55-foot height limit on new development since voters passed it in 1990.
I have held a California real estate license since 1989, and in that time the Bay Area has changed almost beyond recognition. What has not changed is how a good move happens: through someone who knows the neighbourhoods, knows the people, and can make the right introduction at the right moment. I call myself a real estate consultant as well as an agent because most of the job is advice — when to sell, what to fix, which town suits the way you live — and the connections I have made since 1989 are there to be used for my clients.
A consultant, an agent and a connector.
Marisa Roman Wachhorst
