Baywood

Living in Baywood

Baywood is the neighborhood that San Mateo real estate professionals point to when they want to illustrate what the city looks like at its best. It sits in the northwestern portion of San Mateo, pressing against the Hillsborough border — which means it benefits from Hillsborough's land-use conservatism, its resistance to density, and its atmospheric quality of large lots and mature tree canopy, without requiring the Hillsborough price of entry. The streets feel wider here than elsewhere in San Mateo, the lots run deeper, and the morning light through the oak and Bay Laurel canopy on a quiet weekday street achieves the particular quality that neighborhood buyers are specifically chasing when they pay a premium for address.

The neighborhood is bounded loosely by Hillsborough to the northwest, El Camino Real to the south, and extends east toward the College of San Mateo campus on the hill above. The College, with its 153-acre campus overlooking the Bay, generates a constant pedestrian presence and contributes to the neighborhood's sense of civic completeness — there's an institution up the hill, a main street (25th Avenue, Laurel Street) within walking distance, and the kind of park access that Central Park provides in the neighborhood's eastern section.