Western Hills

Western Hills is an affluent, exclusively residential and highly leafy neighborhood set within the vast savannah grasslands that saturate the city of Belmont. The community’s aesthetic inventory comes with old, but still charming house fronts, rolling hills, orderly streets and modest, bushy communal spaces. It is a pretty spacious community stretching from Ralston Avenue to Club Drive and spans about 1.2 square miles. Demographically speaking, the total population (about 4,000) is a largely white community with a small asian and hispanic minority.

Most homes are rather old, built between the 1960 and 1970’s, and mixed between one and two-story homes. If you visit the area, you’ll find an abundance of nice, country style manors saturating the neighborhood, some coming complete with attached three-car garages. And since public transportation is virtually non-existent, people’s luxury cars parked in their driveways will just have to suffice. But with such expenses, these residents can easily afford it since median household incomes are estimated at $95,000 (just on par with the city’s average). And its nice to have some deep pockets, considering average estimated house values are upwards of $1.2 million. For renters, there are some older condominiums lining Continentals Way and Carlmont Drive with some beautiful landscaping surrounding each residence. Market prices for these rentals are circling around $1,300/month.

Western Hills is also a very secluded neighborhood, to which crime is of little concern. This makes it easy on young families because Fox Elementary School (a very reputable institution) skirts the western edge of the neighborhood. For recreation, Water Dog Lake is situated within the heart of the community. The grasslands comes with a couple woodsy hiking trails and ridges overlooking the small, serene lake. And while the area is a bit isolated, it is within minutes of the Highway 280/US Route 92 junction which connects commuters in all directions.

Appropriately named, the Western Hills neighborhood of Belmont stretches out on the far western section of Belmont. This area is largely made up of hilly streets, many of which have apartment buildings.

You could roughly divide the Western Hills neighborhood into three sections. On the lowest section you find the main artery in the area, Alameda de las Pulgas, which forms the eastern border of the neighborhood and has a number of stores including the local supermarket, Lunardi’s. (There is also a Safeway just north of Ralston.)

There are also a good half dozen restaurants right off Avenida de las Pulgas. You have an Italian restaurant named Vivace, a Subway, a pizza place, and a Mexican food place. These are nothing to write home about but they will do the job as far as local suburban eats go.

Close to Avenida de las Pulgas, there are a number of apartment buildings and creeping up the hill are a number of apartment buildings dating largely from the 1970’s. These are run of the mill apartments that happen to be located in a pretty good spot. They are a bit too boxy to really be too attractive, but given the nice wide streets and the hillside feel, they seem a lot nicer to me than might otherwise be the case.

In terms of Peninsula prices, rents are really affordable, running between $800 on the low end for a studio and $2500 for a two-bedroom.

A bit farther up from the apartments, you find a number of Ranch homes. Homes here run in the $800 to $900 K range—largely because of the location’s appearance and great schools.

Overall, a pretty good spot for both renters and homeowners—pretty unusual in that sense.