Westborough Way

As Jim Morrison said: “The West is the Best” and so goes the rule for pretty much the entire Peninsula. The farther west you go along the El Camino Real corridor from South SF to Sunnyvale, the better and the more expensive the neighborhoods. Corporations make their headquarters near the bay waterfront on the east, the less desirable neighborhoods pop-up right along the margins of the freeway, and the expensive homes take up the best views from the hills to the west. That is the general rule, though it doesn’t completely hold true here.

Westborough (which is the name locals give to pretty much all of the South SF neighborhoods to the west of Highway 280) doesn’t take on the souring home prices that you see just a few miles away in the western neighborhoods of other Peninsula cities. Perhaps it is because unlike those cities it doesn’t nestle against uncultivated forest areas. You actually have more homes and the Daly City and Pacifica areas to the west. Perhaps South SF just isn’t south enough to warrant the high western hills prices of other Peninsula cities.

For whatever the reason, the median home price in Westborough Way is about $550K—slightly higher than other areas of South SF, but hardly million dollar home territory (in fact, no home currently for sale in this neighborhood is even asking for more than $850K).

As with other parts of SSF, Westborough Way has been hit hard by foreclosures. Just about 90% of homes here are on the market because the former home owners couldn’t keep up with their mortgages.

The majority of single family homes here date from the 1960’s though they are mostly Ranch style homes. There are the occasional cluster of sleek looking Modernist Eichlers with their distinctive square patterned garage doors and bright high windows.

The eastern end of the neighborhood is pretty much filled with condos which, of course, go for a lot less.

The schools are good and the area feels very suburban. Overall, it seems like a pretty good spot to me, and certainly far close to most people’s reach.

Nestled between Westborough Boulevard and Highway 280, Westborough Way is a quaint, middle-class community within the dense city of South San Francisco. It is firmly gripped in middle-class suburbia and is almost exclusively residential. The district is also a recent incorporated subdivision of the city with modern residential architecture and charming residential landscaping. All in all, its a step above the typical South San Francisco neighborhood.

As a whole, Westborough Way sits on a bit of an incline, but offers views of the distant San Francisco Bay. The district is made up of nice, two-story townhouses tightly clumped along orderly streets. Homes are mostly refurbished to look nicer than most homes within South San Francisco. They fit on nice, manicured front lawns and lay ground to wide streets curving around the hilly landscape. Larger homes are concentrated towards the western side of the neighborhood, while a new community is built at the end of Shannon Drive (with tall attractive homes scaling the hillside).

The district’s commercial quarters are a bit few and far between. It’s only close neighborhood shopping area lies at its northernmost tip and next to the Interstate 280 on-ramp. The area provides your basic household essential shopping, including a small market, a Walgreens, an electronics store and a couple ethnic cuisines. For outdoor recreation, the California Golf Club sits across Highway 280. The 18-hole golf course is only in use for members, but is one of the best around. As for young families, Westborough Middle School is within the neighborhood’s vicinity, while Monte Verde Elementary straddles the southern edge of the neighborhood.