Fantasy Island – San Francisco Peninsula Style

I’ve come to the conclusion that those of us living on the San Francisco Peninsula really live on Fantasy Island.  How else could we get such crazy prices for houses?  Today, I traveled down to Palo Alto and Mountain View for the weekly Brokers tour.  I have clients who want to live there so I need to see what’s coming on the market.  Not much.  Over priced.  Guaranteed to garner multiple offers. And definitely not a castle or mansion. Mr. Roarke, where are you?

Growing up in Palo Alto,  whenever a property comes up in my old neighborhood I’m very curious to see it.  Today I saw one that, granted had been added on to and updated nicely, but was priced at almost two million dollars.  Come on, its on a 6600 sq. foot lot and has been enlarged to 2322 sq feet.  But, for that money I still expect to see more.  More house.  More land.  More.  And, it will sell for that, or above, within a week.  Fantasy Land.

Our territory, the town of Burlingame, is priced as crazy as Palo Alto but you do get a bit more for your buck.  Not more land, but generally you do get a bit more house.  I’ve come to the conclusion that we live in Fantasy Land, sitting on Fantasy Island.  Sure, the economy is good but it takes a lot of moola to buy a house in Palo Alto, or Burlingame, or Los Altos.  Mountain View used to be a Navy town and had a lot of truck farms and very reasonable housing prices.  No more.  The prices are less than their neighbor to the north, but catching up quickly especially if you want the Los Altos School District.

In fact, anywhere you look for a home on Fantasy Island (it really runs from Marin County, throughout San Mateo County, and  to northern Santa Clara County) with a good school district, will mean paying over a million dollars for a basic home.  We buy our schools with the price of the house.  There’s a reason for this that goes back to the Serrano Priest decision in the 1970s and 1980s.  Its the crazy way California collects property taxes and funds our schools.  But that’s for another time.