Westlake

Located within Daly City, Westlake is a long strip of oceanside land that spans a couple miles long. More specifically, it is nestled between Skyline Boulevard to the east and the vast Pacific Ocean to the west. Within the district’s limits offers a firmly middle-class suburban life with plain and stumpy residential homes. The community’s quarters were built during the post-World War II era and still shares some of its same monotonous characteristics of the 1960s-70s.

Westlake’s suburban aesthetics only offer monolithic middle-class housing architecture. Most homes are simple and boxy. They are closely plotted next to the curbside making for extremely shallow front yards. Residences also sit on mostly small, thin properties with just enough room for a car in their lot. The neighborhood as a whole sits on a bit of an incline and boasts views of the suburbanized landscape. A cleaner-cut image of the neighborhood is concentrated in the southern third of the district, while the further south you travel the less appealing it can be.

The neighborhood’s commercial quarters consist of only one shopping center--Westlake Shopping Center. However, the area only hosts a few shopping options, including a Trader Joe’s, a department store and a couple lessor known chain stores. A couple blocks inbound and you’ll find yourself at the Serramonte Shopping Center. The commercial quarters provides Westlake residents with the various options of a shopping mall, including a couple large department stores.

For commuters, John Daly Boulevard directs you to Interstate 280 and up the San Francisco peninsula. Others take the nearby Bart transit rail. Daly City’s bart station transports residents towards San Francisco and other popular Bay Area destinations. For recreation, you can find Lake Merced Golf Course and Olympic Golf Course, both of which are located directly north of the district. And its largest and most aesthetic attraction is Thornton Beach and the accompanying Pacific coastline. Both of which consists of steep ridges that lower into sandy beaches.

The Westlake neighborhood of Daly City is one of the best loved areas in Daly City. Largely this has to do with the really pleasant views of the ocean that you get. Because most of this neighborhood is high up on the bluffs, you get great views of the rooftops dropping down along the coast towards the far northern end of Pacifica.

The homes here are small and old, and locked into tiny lots—very reminiscent of the Sunset District on the far western end of SF. The median home price in the neighborhood is around $425 K—very reasonable for an area so close to the sea and still within pretty good commuting distance of the city. Partly this may be due to the foreclosure crisis, since you will find that 75% of homes in Westlake are on the market due to foreclosure. The range of prices in the neighborhood is very consistent as well, with no homes breaking the $700K barrier and less than 10% dropping below $350K.

The homes here basically date from the 50’s and 60’s which pretty much describes the age of 4 of 5 homes in Westlake. These are smaller squarish homes in the modernist style that was popular for middle income WWII vets coming home after the war to start the Baby-Boom.

One of the other attractions of the Westlake neighborhood are the above average schools, such as Westmoor High which is an above average school testing well on most of its test score criteria. Crime is also not too much of a worry in Daly City. It has been consistently on the decline for ten years and is significantly lower than in virtually any part of SF.

As far as other amenities such as restaurants and nightlife, Westlake (and Daly City generally) does have some options. As far as restaurants go, there are number of East Asian places in Westlake where you can get inexpensive Japanese or Chinese dishes like dim sum.

One of the central commercial features of Westlake is the Westlake Shopping center on the northern end near the border with SF. The Westlake Shopping Center is one of those open air malls with a walkable main drag where several of the smaller stores are and lots of parking lots. Here you will find all the usual suspects, from a Safeway and Walgreens to a Game Stop and Pretty in Pink clothing store.

Overall, this is one of the most affordable locations within striking distance of SF that still offers good schools and safety. It is really a pretty well-kept secret.