Manor

The Manor neighborhood in Millbrae is a long strip of a neighborhood that stretches along El Camino Real just to the east of Downtown Millbrae. It is a bit of a hodgepodge of a neighborhood with older homes, apartments and businesses all mixed together.

The homes are mostly north of Millbrae Avenue between El Camino and the train tracks. These are largely older homes dating to the 40’s and 50’s as far as I can tell and it looks as if the average home goes for about $500 K or so. These are not particularly attractive streets—there are too many nearby commercial structures to create the kind of homey feel that can sometimes make older neighborhoods seem quaint.

As to the commercial offerings in the Manor neighborhood, they aren’t much to write home about. You have fast food places like Burger King, law offices, a locksmith, and a mixed bag of stores (like a computer repair shop, for example). There is a nice looking Marriot as well.

On the southern end of the neighborhood, near the BART/Caltrain that leads up to the SFO, there is a Lucky supermarket which is the main grocery store for this part of Millbrae.

One thing you do have in this neighborhood are a number of Asian restaurants. You can get everything from your typical Chinese or Dim Sum to Vietnamese. There are a few other restaurants like this as well. So it is pretty good as far as eating out goes.

The real draw of this neighborhood however are the apartments and condos—especially when you take into consideration the proximity of the BART and Caltrain stations which are just to the east on Millbrae Avenue. Most of these condos and apartments are right by Millbrae. You can buy one for between $650 k and $1 million. Okay, so you might as well buy a house somewhere else in Millbrae for those kinds of prices.

Unfortunately rents here can be pretty high as well, with a 2-bedroom going for around $3K/mo in these newer apartments.
(Though I would assume they are cheaper in the boxy 1970’s style apartment buildings that also make up much of the neighborhood as well—though I couldn’t currently find any for rent to verify this.)

The other problem with the area is the airplane noise. Since you are right in the path of SFO, you get fairly constant jet noise.

Overall, I would not call this a great neighborhood except in terms of commuting. (I would live in another nearby neighborhood and just bike over here for the commute, rather than live here.)

A skinny sliver of land located next to downtown Millbrae, the neighborhood of Manor is a mixed used, rarely visited district. It is split between a commercial hub to the south and bland, residential quarters to the north. The district’s most featured attraction is its proximity to the San Francisco International Airport (within a couple blocks). For perspective residents, be cautious of loud airplanes flying overhead throughout the night.

Manor’s residential quarters are nothing special. In fact, it’s overrun by middle to lower-middle class housing options included a couple mixed in apartment buildings. If you drive through the neighborhood, you’ll be met with tree-lined streets, small, boxy homes and petite front yards. Moreover, homes are tightly packed into small properties taking up the 4 or so suburban streets. There are also a couple new, sizable apartment buildings are situated along the southern end of the community’s quarters. And for commuters, Millbrae Caltrain and Bart station anchors the southeastern edge of the neighborhood. The two stations are outfitted with an enormous parking garage and are convenient transit options for the San Francisco area.

For your shopping needs, residents head towards Magnolia Avenue. The area is complete with a Lucky’s, CVS Pharmacy and other recognizable chain stores. It’s more recognizable commercial hub is situated along El Camino Real. The area is surrounded with everything from mixed-use commercial buildings to unlabeled two-story office buildings, from mid-size apartment buildings and hotels to a small industrial area. There are also a handful of ethnic restaurants, a tire depot and smaller boutique shops for almost every need. Yet as a whole, its hard to build this up as anything more than an much than an unpolished, small-town commercial hub.