Diamond Heights

Perched in the hills above Noe Valley and Glen Canyon, San Francisco’s Diamond Heights neighborhood offers a small-town feel with all the amenities of the city.

Sweeping views, a suburban-style shopping center, and easy commuting are among the perks Diamond Heights residents enjoy.

The neighborhood also boasts some fabulous mid-century and Eichler homes located along twisty streets surrounding the Diamond Heights Shopping Center, with its Safeway supermarket, Walgreens, and All Season Chinese Restaurant.

The iconic St. Nicholas Orthodox Church on Diamond Heights Boulevard makes for an interesting silhouette in the hilly neighborhood and operates a daycare and preschool.

Residents enjoy easy access to an array of shops and restaurants in nearby Noe Valley and Glen Park, as well as a variety of parks, including the gorgeous and expansive Glen Canyon Park.

Various Muni metro lines and the Glen Park BART station are just a bus ride away, and freeway access is a snap via O’Shaughnessy Boulevard.

Diamond Heights homes for sale are in demand: The number of single-family homes under contract increased 50 percent in April compared with a year earlier, according to MLS data. That same month, the average sale price rose 18 percent to $1.2 million, up from $1 million in April 2012.

The neighborhood also boasts an array of condominium and apartment complexes, including the Diamond Heights Village on Red Rock Way. In April the average condominium sale price shot up 53 percent to $480,800, from $313,750 a year earlier.

This little gem of a neighborhood is buried away on the hills just to the west of Noe Valley. It is a somewhat newer area as compared to much of the SF, with the oldest homes seeming to date to the 1980’s. The homes are largely squarish condo style homes—many sporting wood shingles, popular to the area. The hilly area offers very nice views out to the bay and the easterly facing hills somewhat shield it from the worst of the foggy weather that marks the Sunset District.

This is a residential neighborhood and has many of the conveniences of such, including its own Safeway supermarket with an ample parking lot—a relative rarity in much of corner market infested SF—and the usual drugstores, etc. Basically, just about everything you would expect in a suburban community of this kind.

Given what I have said about this neighborhood so far, you might expect rents to equal the elevated heights. In fact, however, the prices are relatively moderate given these facts. On average, most rents go for about $1500/room for homes that are 2-bedrooms or more (most are 2-4 rooms in this area). Single room homes tend to jump to $2800 for some reason, but this may simply be a fluke—not many of these kinds of homes around here.

So, the prices are relatively moderate given the location.

You won’t find much to write home about in terms of restaurants or bars (there are a few of the first and none of the second that I know of) but you are so close to Noe, Castro and the Mission, that this is not really a problem—you could be eating at a great restaurant in 15 minutes no matter what the traffic.

One thing there is however is a number of good choices in terms of education and childcare. The San Francisco School of the Arts High School is here and there are at least a half dozen choices for the younger kids. Basically, this is a nice family nook on the western side of SF—somewhat expensive but nowhere near as some of the even more expensive areas on the other side of the hills.

Diamond Heights is a pristine, well-groomed neighborhood squeezed in between Noe Valley and Balboa Terrace. Those that live in the area have primarily a white, asian or African American background. The district takes on a different feel than most grid-like San Francisco neighborhoods with its streets curling along the hilly landscape. Some of the natural geography offers sweeping views of the neighboring districts. Moreover, houses are organized in clusters like separate apartment complexes on a college campus. Most of these houses were built in or around the 1960s, but have maintained a modern feel. They can range from $300,000 up to 1 million, but real estate has hit a lull over the last couple of years due to the economic downturn.

For those who enjoy the outdoors, the area hosts a few public parks fit with playgrounds and trails that loop around the neighborhood. Travel down the hillside to Diamond Heights Shopping Center on Diamond Heights Avenue. The shopping center accomodates a Safeway, Walgreens and other smaller commercial stores.

Weather can be somewhat of an issue with wind and fog climbing the steep hills. For those taking public transportation, the 35, 52 and 48 serve the area quite frequently with the nearest Bart transit stop at Glen Park Station.

To those just passing through on Portola Drive, Clipper, or O'Shaunessy Boulevard, Diamond Heights seems like an uninviting place: windswept and foggy, its modern condos and apartments looking like Anywhereseville, U.S.A. This first impression is seconded by longtime San Franciscans, who often shudder at the mention of the name: “They have terrible weather up there.”

Yet looks can be deceiving, as any longtime resident of the neighborhood will also say. Yes, it’s windy. Yes, it can be foggy. But the cool, ocean- and pine-scented air is invigorating in its own right. And once you have settled in, the “marine layer” (as people often call the misty, breeze-buffeted fog as it spreads inland over the crests of nearby Mount Davidson and Twin Peaks) seems less an issue after a while. Like other parts of the city situated west of the fog line, it becomes a given, something expected—and when absent, people are pleasantly surprised (though always reassured when it returns).

And because it is one of the city’s highest-elevation neighborhoods, sitting on the eastern edge of the Mount Davidson/Twin Peaks ridge, the views can be spectacular, particularly if oriented northeast, toward downtown and the East Bay. Not everyone is lucky enough to enjoy such a perspective, but even those whose windows face west, toward the broad expanse of the Sunset District and the Pacific beyond, look out upon a vista that can be just as jaw-dropping.

Though there were some homes in the area before the 1950s (including one built in 1895 on Gold Mine Drive, just below the Avalon apartment complex) Diamond Heights is a distinctly modern neighborhood—“modern” being a loose term to denote architecture from the mid-20th century that emphasized clean, rectilinear forms with little ornamentation. The area began as the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association’s premiere project, intended to deploy the California Redevelopment Law of 1951 by utilizing land on the hills in the city’s geographic center by working with, rather than against, the topography. This meant breaking away from the city’s existing grid, where blocks run straight up and down the hills, in favor of curved streets that follow a hill’s perimeter. Because the forbidding terrain of Diamond Heights had few existing residents (who would have required relocating), the redevelopment program represented an ambitious, large-scale master plan for a neighborhood, encompassing housing for all income levels, churches and schools, parks and greenspace, along with a sizable shopping/commercial area.

A feature of many homes in Diamond Heights, built as they are along countoured hillsides (some of them quite steep), is that they are oriented front-to-back, with the living room and other areas of the home facing the backyard or on the downside of the hill, rather than the front, to take advantage of views and the relative quiet such an orientation affords. (The houses on the western side of Turquoise Way illustrate this well). Consequently, many streets look like a collection of garage doors, with living areas either above (as in the neighboring Miraloma Park) or hidden from view toward the rear of the house, similar to homes found along seaside cliffs in coastal communities, where all one perceives from the street is a carport or garage and an unassuming entryway. Many complain that this imparts a deserted or impersonal air at best (or the look of an alley at worst), though others appreciate the privacy and sense of being above it all these homes possess. For still others, the advantage of communal life is embodied in places like Diamond Heights Village, a complex of 14 residential buildings divided into 396 privately-owned units, from studios to two-bedrooms. The association maintains the grounds, a pool, and a clubhouse with gym and library.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Diamond Heights is today home to about 10,000 middle-aged San Franciscans (the median age is 43), the great majority of them white (65 percent), with Asians (20 percent) and African Americans or persons of two or more races making up the rest. They tend to own (65 percent) rather than rent, and are comfortably middle class, with an annual median household income of $80,000.

Being situated between Noe Valley on one end and Glen Park on the other is a big plus. Though the Diamond Heights Shopping Center includes a well-stocked Safeway, a Walgreens drugstore, and some essential service stores, the village square that is Glen Park’s main commercial area beckons for those seeking a good book to read, a nice dinner, or just a stroll around some appealing storefronts and shop windows. The same goes for even-closer 24th Street in Noe Valley: a good plate of pasta, a cozy tavern, and more boutiques await those willing to make a short walk (or drive) down the hill.

Adjacency to Glen Park also offers another exceptional amenity: the wilds of Glen Canyon Park, a ravine cut into the serpentine rock and drained by one of the remaining uncovered streams in San Francisco: Islais Creek. Much of the park remains in the same state as when the native Ohlones came here to gather food, which included the wild cherries (“islay,” after which the creek is named). Though hiking trails cut through the park’s steep slopes and there are other concessions to human activity like a recreation center, a day camp, benches, and restrooms, most of the park is classified a natural-resource area, which means it appears and feels a lot different from the manicured lawns and gardens that define places like Golden Gate Park. The open grasslands and sharp cliffs of the canyon, made of chert and serpentine common throughout the area’s geology, offer habitat for birds (notably raptors, including red-tailed hawks and great-horned owls) along with mammals from coyotes and raccoons to rats and mice (the latter a favorite foodstuff of the raptors and coyotes) as well as rare flying insects, including the damselfly and mission blue butterfly.

In addition to Glen Canyon Park, the neighborhood also has the tidily groomed George Christopher Playground, which features some up-to-date swings and jungle-gym equipment for children as well as a baseball diamond and tennis courts, plus a paved path that leads down to a series of steps that go into Glen Canyon itself. The neighborhood also borders Douglass Playground, a Noe Valley park that extends up the steep hill to its border with Diamond Heights.

Schools include a day care center/preschool at the landmark St. Nicholas Orthodox Church (an imposing, domed church on Diamond Heights Boulevard) as well as the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts, a magnet alternative high school for the performing arts and sciences whose alumni include comedian Margaret Cho and actor Sam Rockwell. (Miraloma Elementary School, on the other side of O’Shaughnessy Boulegard in nearby Miraloma Park, is the option for K-5 public school children; it received an 8 out of 10 rating by GreatSchools.)

Getting around Diamond Heights via public transportation is easier than it looks at first, thanks to one workhouse bus: the No. 52, which swings through en route to Glen Park (and its vital BART station) and terminates at its northern end at the Forest Hills station, for connections with the downtown-bound subway lines. The No. 48 bus also travels up and down Portola Drive to destinations on both the east and west sides of town. Though many residents have cars (and drive rather than use public transportation), and owing to the number of garages in both homes and apartment buildings, on-street parking is generally quite a simple matter, with few time limits or restrictions other than street-sweeping every week or two a month.

Crime in Diamond Heights is infrequent (it helps that the San Francisco Police Academy is located here, on Amber Drive), led in a three-moth period by noise nuisances (car alarms going off at night for the most part) and the occasional burglary or armed robbery. As with the rest of the city, however, vehicle theft and auto break-ins are on the rise. Assaults are rare, however, and there have been no homicides reported in the last three years.

Real-estate prices have held their own through the recent economic downturn, showing an uptick of about 7 percent in the last year, according to Trulia. Though many are forced sales due to foreclosures, condos here are deemed affordable (with one-bedrooms on Ora Way going for a hair under $300,000, a studio in Diamond Heights Village asking $350,000, and a two-bedroom, two-bath around the corner asking $475,000), single-family homes can fetch anywhere from $900,000 to $1 million or more (a three-bedroom, two-bath on Amethyst Way listed for $1.125 million recently). Rentals are moderate, and some bargains are to be had considering the amount of square footage. A studio goes for about $1,300, with one bedrooms starting at about $1,600 and going to $1,850 (at the aforementioned Avalon). A four-bedroom, two-bath townhouse recently listed for $4,500.

Though Diamond Heights may not look or feel like a typical San Francisco neighborhood (its modern architecture and amenities like heated pools seemingly more suited to Southern California), it has an appeal for those who wish to come home to a clean, up-to-date area with few parking hassles, little crime, and a glimpse of the big city below.

Like all other “Heights” neighborhoods, Diamond Heights comes with a great view. However, much of what you may expect to see will be blocked by tall trees and lots of green vegetation. This is because most of the homes here in Diamond Heights are surrounded by, what it feels to be, literally, a forest. I’ve been through this neighborhood quite often and you’ll always be running along some sort of vegetation. The homes here are quite nice as well, great for new families. Although these homes run alongside a huge park, I don’t think pests and such would be a problem as I haven’t seen any yet. When I think of this neighborhood, Diamond Heights, I think SOTA, School of the Arts. One of the well-acclaimed high schools in San Francisco that many people know of. This school is mainly for high school students who show outstanding talent in the arts, and would definitely be a great school for future students holding such talent. I myself didn’t attend SOTA but I’ve been there for a sports league and such, the campus is quite big and definitely has the feel of an art school. There is also a nice big football field.

Diamond Heights is roughly in the center of San Francisco. It is near Glen Canyon Park though, and as I explained in my review of Glen Park, this is one of my favorite spots in the city. So right off the bat, I can tell you that Diamond Heights is alright in my book.

The neighborhood is built into hills and the streets are very curvy. Some of the homes have very interesting modern architecture. I would say that this is one of the newer areas in San Francisco, so you see more houses that were built in the 60’s and 70’s.

Diamond Heights also has Diamond Heights Shopping Center, which actually isn’t too exciting. It has your boring stores like Walgreens and the bank. You aren't going to find a lot of intriguing shops in Diamond Heights, but at least they aren't too far away.

There is also the Walter Haas Park. This park has a nice playground, picnic tables and excellent city views. Walter Haas also contains a dog park.

This is a convenient and cute area that I think would be perfect for families. You are not going to find tons of hotspots or nightlife in Diamond Heights, but it is a good place to relax and unwind.