Farm Hills, Redwood City

Like neighboring Canyon, Farm Hills is another hillside neighborhood with median home prices floating around $850K, though almost half are significantly over $1 million.

Some of the most expensive homes in all of Redwood City, however are up on the far western end of the oddly shaped neighborhood. It is up in these hills that you will find some of the newest constructions dating from the 90’s.

We drove up here and looked around. It is really beautiful and leafy--the kind of place that just exudes wealth without seeming pretentious or off-putting. You can tell that it costs a pretty nickel (there is a 6000 ft. home up here that is going for $2.6 million). But it is not gaudy.

(There is one home up here that has a miniature train track circling it—clearly made for the kids but looking to be for one of those toy trains on which you can actually ride—like the kind you might see at a fair. Pretty amazing.)

You will definitely get some pretty good views from here though you will also pay for them.

On the low end, the only kinds of homes that fall below $500K are condos and townhomes. Most of these are located at most southern end of Farm Hills, where you will find a number of them. The views are pretty good, but condos and townhomes don’t quite work for people with really young children, think because of the noise factor.

Most of the mid-level homes are along the lower end of Farm Hills on the eastern end. These homes mostly run around $800K to just under $1 million and date from the 50’s. They are well-kept and beautiful but way outside of our price range.
You would pay almost $6000/month in mortgage, which is not even remotely doable for one these houses.

This would definitely be a dream area in which to live, however. You have great schools, great views and a really leafy secluded neighborhood that is totally family centered, by all appearances. I would love to live here.

One of the drawbacks of the areas though would be having to drive down to town to get any little thing. You are just too far away from things to actually walk.

Also, I am given to understand by my friends who have lived in hillside homes that the maintenance requirements for living on woody hills are greater than on regular flat neighborhoods: fire clearing, erosion problems, mudslide worries, critters eating plants, skunks, etc.

It would definitely be worth it to live in a place like this, however.

Farm Hills is a rarely visited, exclusively residential neighborhood pocketed within the foothills of the San Francisco peninsula woodlands. It is considered a safe, middle to upper middle-class community great for a young family. The district as a whole spans about 1.6 square miles, most of which garner to an elementary school zone setting. Demographically speaking, the community is largely white (over 75%) and is made up of some 6,000 residents.

The Farm Hills community is situated on a rather hilly geography with a woodsy aesthetic. As you might expect, homes sit on a bit of an incline and are shaded by much of the surrounding environment. They are mixed between one and two-stories in size, but don’t seem to be too congested along neighborhood streets (like many Redwood City communities are). The typical home is two-stories and offers an attached two car garage and clean, well maintained yards. They are priced around $1.1 million, while the median household rakes in about $110,000/year (well above Redwood City’s average). These homes lay ground to wide, orderly roads and other charming communal aesthetics.

For recreation, Farm Hills is a short drive to the vast San Francisco peninsula parkland and within the reaches of the beautiful Crystal Springs Reservoir. Elsewhere, Emerald Hills Golf Course is within the neighborhood’s limits and is a fun, quirky, kid-friendly 9-hole golf course. For young families, Roy Cloud Elementary School is situated along Jefferson Avenue while Canada College skirts the southern corner of the neighborhood. Both our convenient options for local students. For the working resident, the neighborhood is nestled close to Interstate 280, making for an easy option for commuters.