San Mateo - Aragon
“A highly sought after, tree-lined neighborhood with a historic flair”
Aragon, along with San Mateo Park and Baywood, is one of San Mateo’s most desirable neighborhoods. Comprised of tree-lined streets, large, well-built pre-war homes and, seemingly, bicycles and basketball hoops, Aragon sets a standard for family-friendly traditional neighborhoods. It meets almost every line item on an upper-middle-class homebuyer’s punch card and adds proximity to Central Park and San Mateo’s vivacious downtown for extra credit.
All of this, naturally, comes at a cost. The homebuyer looking to upgrade from Shoreview, San Mateo Terrace or any other San Mateo’s entry-level neighborhoods may find the gulf between themselves and Aragon almost insurmountable. The good life does not come cheaply. It has some of the best floorplans for good sized homes in San Mateo, and offers excellent value for the dollar compared to its slightly more pricier neighbor, Baywood, which is just a few minutes closer to downtown. (The neighborhood is west of El Camino, east of Alameda, and north of the 92 freeway.)
As a neighborhood with decades of cache, Aragon has attracted owners unafraid to put a personal stamp on their homes. Original Aragon construction was somewhat modest; the neighborhood’s imposing homes often had only two bedrooms. Over time, most Aragon real estate has been upgraded and expanded to where most now have at least three bedrooms and more than 2,000 square feet of living space.
Aragon takes its place not only among San Mateo’s finest neighborhoods but among those of the entire county. Whatever the state of the overall housing market, Aragon will always sit atop many homebuyers’ wish lists.
To view a detailed google map of the Aragon neighborhood, click here. The MLS area is 436.
The Baywood neighborhood is surrounded by Baywood, Homestead Husing and Hayward Park.
View The Neighborhood
Favorable
- Excellent, central location
- Leafy, tree lined streets
- Homes tend to have a lot of character and a historic feel
- Homes are on the larger side for San Mateo
Adverse
- Homes are more expensive than most in San Mateo
- Slightly smaller lots than neighboring Baywood, but comparable to Burlingame
Schools in the Neighborhood
Aragon offers location, natural beauty, fine homes, a familial sense of community – and access to San Mateo’s most highly-regarded public schools. Aragon residents send their children to Baywood Elementary School, Borel High School and Aragon High School, completed in 1961 after a 20-year surge in San Mateo’s overall population. The Aragon and Baywood neighborhoods are the only two in the whole area that are within walking distance of schools K-12, a strong selling point. Often considered the most desirable of San Mateo’s high schools, Cold War-era Aragon High is rumored to have been designed for multiple uses: in times of war, it is said, the school could double as a munitions factory.
History
Like so much of San Mateo, Aragon was once the property of one person, in this case Tobin Clark. The Clark Estate began in Hillsborough and continued past what is now Aragon High School into land that was then unincorporated county land. Aragon – the subdivision laid out between Hobart Avenue (south), Notre Dame Avenue (north), Alameda de las Pulgas (west) and El Camino Real (east) — was annexed by San Mateo in 1929, right about the same time builders began constructing one- and two-story Spanish-style, Tudor and English-style homes on what would become a series of storybook, tree-lined residential streets.
Development would continue past World War II, but the bulk of Aragon real estate was completed between 1930 and 1940. The neighborhood quickly became a San Mateo favorite. Today, Aragon homes for sale command prices well over $1 million, with homes on Avila Road, Aragon Boulevard and Seville Way selling for between $1.1 and $1.6 million. A few outliers can fetch as much as $2 million, but this is not the rule. A basic three bedroom home will start around $1.1m and a three or four bedroom home that is fully renovated and move-in ready will sell in the $1.3m – $1.5m range. Lots in Aragon are usually about 6,000 square feet.