Go Inside 3 Burlingame Homes
Burlingame is one of the most expensive places to live, not only in San Mateo County but in the entire Bay Area. In this video, I'm going to show you three different homes in three different neighborhoods at different price points and give you a good idea of what your dollar can get you out there.
Burlingame Grove neighborhood
Let's take a look inside this house. This is a two bedroom, two bath home. I'm excited to show it to you because most lots in Burlingame are 5,000 or 6,000 square feet. This is a 4,200-square-foot lot, so this would be more of an entry price point in Burlingame. Certainly, not an entry price point price, but this is what you can expect. Even though the home is a little under 1,200 square feet, we have a formal living room and a formal dining room. The kitchen is over here and we have two bedrooms At this square footage, a little under 1,200 square feet, unfortunately, you don't get a primary bathroom. But if you have 1,400 or 1500 square feet, you would get that attached. We have a good-sized bedroom and then the street’s on the other side and we have the bathroom and, again, this is the second bedroom with a simple closet. In Burlingame, the setbacks between the houses, you typically get about a five-foot setback between your property line and the neighbor on both sides.
What's cool about this kitchen for the square footage, it's efficient and in good condition. If I were going to remodel this house, I'd want to take out this wall here and open it up to the dining room. I’d work with a structural engineer, to figure out how to support the load if it is a load-bearing wall. I think adding an island, countertop, or peninsula would be a nice touch. The other thing that's a little unusual about this house is it has a second bathroom off the kitchen. It's not something you see every day, but it is functional.
The flow to the backyard is nice. A lot of homes at higher price points will have double doors to the yard. This has a single door, which is fine. Again, for a 4200-square-foot lot, it's not massive. But you don't have a McMansion looking into your backyard. You do have some nice privacy over here, a green screen. You could easily plant a green screen over here in the back. And there's a park back which has a couple of tennis courts.
The other thing that affects value in Burlingame is if you can walk directly from the kitchen into the backyard. And that's why this home is at the price point where it is. You do have a deck here, but that could be addressed if someone wanted to do a big project.
We have a one-car garage, which is typical for most of Burlingame. With an attached garage, though, you have a long driveway and most people dream of parking in their driveway, which is nice, especially for people moving down from San Francisco. But the reality is there's plenty of parking on the street and usually people will park there. And if you have an electric car and you want to charge, you can park in the driveway. The other cool thing about this house is the little office off the garage. With so many people working from home nowadays, you can use this space for work or your Peloton and use it as a gym space. I think this is pretty cool.
You might be pleasantly surprised to hear that this two-bedroom, two-bath home walking distance to Broadway, is only $1.7 million, which I think is a really good buy. It's very affordable for Burlingame.
Burlingame Grove and the Burlingame Gate neighborhood are just north of Broadway, south of the most northern part of Burlingame, east of El Camino, and west of California Drive. It's a pretty small neighborhood, but I love it because it's flat and walkable. You're within striking distance of Broadway. There’s a cute little park... and you see some nice homes. It's on the lower price point for Burlingame, not because of its desirability, but because the typical home is a little bit smaller.
Right now we're in the Easton Addition neighborhood. Easton Addition is one of the two most expensive neighborhoods in Burlingame for good reason. It's beautiful. All the streets are neatly arranged in grid format. You have beautiful tree density that I like. The best trick-or-treating spot in Burlingame is in Easton Addition, and you have a diversity of architecture here. You have homes that are Craftsman, Victorian, a whole gamut of things. Even like a couple of modern homes. Which we’re starting to see a little bit more of, but less traditional here in Burlingame. Easton Addition itself represents one out of every four sales in Burlingame. It's pretty big geographically speaking. And you can see homes in here that are new construction homes for $5 to $6 million, all the way at the lower end of the market for a cute little two-bedroom home. There are not too many two bedrooms here, but a lot of three bedrooms are going to be in the two to high $2 million price range. You can also find some homes on larger lot sizes. Again, in Burlingame, most are 5 to 6000-square-foot lots. But here you tend to see some rare double lots, some that are 9000 square feet. But it's just super hard to find those. Overall, in Burlingame, we're only seeing about a dozen, to a dozen and a half sales per month. For someone who is looking to be in any of the three neighborhoods that we're checking out today, you have to be patient. Not only that, look at the data to get a good sense of what can my dollar get me so that way I can be realistic. And rather than just being patient, you have a good idea of what you're going to get.
Burlingame Hills neighborhood
We’re just about to pull up to the property, which is on the edge of Burlingame Hills in Easton Addition. Behind me is Hoover Elementary School. Burlingame has six public elementary schools and most of them are walking distance from a neighborhood, which I think is pretty awesome.
We're here in the Burlingame Hills neighborhood, just adjacent to Easton Addition, and I'm going to show you a three-bedroom home, about 3000 square feet. This is about the biggest that you'll ever see in Burlingame. What's nice about this lot in the Burlingame Hills is this is about a 13,000 square-foot lot, which is double the typical size of a lot in Burlingame. You have a huge front area, a really large back area and it's very lush. I've been in hundreds, if not thousands, of homes in Burlingame, and this ranks among the best a nice garden. And compared to the last home we're at, this is only about a four or five-minute drive from there. The terrain is completely different and just as beautiful.
When you think about big old historic homes that have great bones, this checks that box. This home is a little over 100 years old and has been wonderfully restored and renovated by the previous owner. My clients have done a lot of work as well. You have a huge living space in the living room, you have a formal dining room, and a kitchen. For someone who is looking for a home with a lot of space at this price point, it’s hard to get this much space on this kind of lot. One thing that people in Burlingame really love is having a good flow to the backyard and being surrounded by greenery. And here you have tons of privacy. So even though the road is maybe only 30 or 40 feet outside, it feels like you're in the middle of a forest back because there's greenery everywhere. Because we are in the Burlingame Hills, there's a lot more separation between the two homes. Versus Easton Addition and Burlingame Grove, where we were, you typically have like a five-foot setback. Here there is a ton of space.
This is a pretty traditional floor plan. You have a living room, you have a dining room, and then you have a kitchen with kind of two doors opening, which is how things were built over 100 years ago. Now, many people like to have an open floor plan. That open floor plan with this exact same square footage would easily add seven figures or more to the list price of this house.
Most homes that are 3000 square feet are typically two levels. This home, of course, is two levels, but also has a large basement area. Here we have two bedrooms on the main level, which is really nice. If you have some family, stay with you or guests. You also have a perfect work-from-home option, which I think is a great surprise about this house. Now you've seen some of the main features of this part of the house, we're going to go ahead and pop up and take a look at the best surprise, which is the primary suite upstairs. My experience for those looking to buy in Burlingame, people usually either like to have all the bedrooms together or they like to have one bedroom down and several up. That checks the box in this house. You have the primary suite, which is separate from the rest of the house, which is nice. If you want to have your kids in a different part or in-laws or family members in a separate guestroom, This is a pretty big primary suite. This is about as big as I've seen, regardless of the price point in Burlingame. Sometimes you'd see maybe a larger closet or a larger bathroom, but this is still pretty awesome, especially at this price.
Having a basement in the Bay Area is not that common. I mean, if you're watching this and you're from the Midwest, you might say, “hey, this is no big deal, Raziel”, I already have a basement. But here, it's just expensive to have a basement and they're pretty nice. This has some good storage area, an area to park the cars. I think that's nice! We have two levels of the house above us and we have this basement space. Of course, it's not finished with the floor, but that's fine. You can just put down a yoga mat or a Peloton or work from home.
In addition to the private space that we saw in the front, you can also easily access the backyard just right off the kitchen through this deck. And check this out. I mean, look how private this is. A ton of space, beautiful Japanese maple over there, and then a ton of space down here with the creek kind of at the bottom. For a home like this in the Burlingame Hills, that's about 3000 square feet, you're going to get a lower price per square foot than you will in say Easton Addition, which is just a few blocks away. That's a lot more trick-or-treat-able where I would say Burlingame Hills is a lot more private because you have so much lush landscaping. You get bigger lots, you get a lower price per square foot. And for context, in a home like this, you could expect to land in the low to mid $3 million range.
Easton Addition neighborhood
Of the three homes that I'm showing you today, this is the most expensive of the three. This is in the heart of Easton Addition, on one of the best blocks. It's a five-bedroom house, with four baths, almost 2,800 square feet on a 5,400 square foot lot. Most lots in Easton Addition are about 6,000 square feet. This is a little bit smaller, but I don't think you'll be able to tell the difference. What I love about this floor plan is you have a super open space over here. And then just right when you walk in, you have a ground-floor bedroom. This is super sought-after for a couple of reasons. Some people have au pairs, or they like to use them as an office space, or for family coming to visit. And that's at the top of a lot of people's lists. I also really like this open dining area and sitting area. For a lot of homes at this square footage, you'll see a wall here and that'll make this a little bit more formal. But I personally really like this. I think most of my buyers find it valuable to have this open space where the flow is right to the kitchen. You could say it's a little bit of a downside if you want to have a lot of closed doors and more privacy. But I think most people enjoy living to have a really good flow here.
What's nice about having this square footage at a home in Burlingame is it allows you to have a few more nice touches. Here we have a built-in area. You can put a MacBook, you could take this out and put an iMac with a Vesa display. We have a pretty cool pantry where you can stash all your stuff and close it. You don't have to worry about the appearance. I think that's pretty nice. To give you a sense for Burlingame of what your dollar can get you, this is a pretty good size kitchen. If you were to max out the square footage of the house on a 6000 square foot lot, you'd get another couple of hundred square feet, so the kitchen would be even bigger. But again, this is a fantastic kitchen. You have everything that you need. I like that you have the stove back over here with the hood. Sometimes you'll see that here on the island, but I'm less of a fan of that because it just blocks your field of view.
There's also a really good flow to the yard from two different access points. And, of course, you can put a TV up here. For staging, we typically don't put TVs. But again, it's just a nice sitting area. Overall, if I were to rate this floor plan, I would give this 90-plus percentile for a home in Burlingame at this size.
Now I'm going to take you upstairs and check out the four bedrooms. Right now I'm in the front-facing bedroom here, and this is not a huge bedroom, but it's fine. It's great for a kid or an office. You have another bedroom over here. We have the bathroom here, and then we have one other bedroom over here, which is again, a really good size. You have a nice view. And then now I'm going to take you into the primary suite here, which is cool. You have this closet area, which is a pretty clever use of the space with all these cool built-ins. And then in the bedroom itself, you have a nice high ceiling. We have a high wall unit up here, which is a heat pump. So that gives you cool air and heat throughout the year, although this house does have radiant heat with, I think eight zones, which is super awesome. Sometimes in Easton Addition, you can have a bunch of two-story homes that are all close to each other so you get a little bit less privacy in the backyard, which is why it's nice if you can plant to create a green screen for privacy throughout the backyard. That's what I would do if I had a neighbor next to me who had a two-story home. That's kind of what I would do if I had a neighbor next to me with a second story.
This backyard is a pretty typical backyard for Easton Addition for this lot size. I think it's fantastic. Now, the main thing to keep in mind for Burlingame is whether you have an attached garage or a detached garage. Here, we have a detached two-car garage, which is very normal. I wouldn't say that it's better or worse than having a one-car. Obviously, with a two-car, you get a ton more space versus a one-car. It's a little bit smaller. But what we're starting to see is even though this is a regular garage, a lot of people are adding ADUs now. An ADU is an accessory dwelling unit, which is like a guest cottage in your backyard. In January 2020, it became legal to do this in California. I personally think it's a huge pro for anyone who's thinking about buying a home in Burlingame, whether it has it or not. Because it's such a new rule, we've only seen a few houses come on the market with ADUs, but we're starting to see a lot of people, including me. At my house, my wife and I did an ADU and we love it. We have a Peloton back there, we have some flex space, and there's a full bathroom. It's great if people are coming to visit. If I were buying this house and I wanted to do something a little bit different here, maybe I'd be happy with it as a garage, which is fine, totally great. But if I want to do something a little bit different, I would consider maybe adding some double French doors on the side to add more flow. I'd consider popping up the ceiling because right now in the garage you have a flat ceiling. I'd raise the ceilings, maybe add a skylight, maybe not. Maybe you consider doing some different types of doors in front and then you can turn this into an office or flex space or for a gym or just be able to store stuff a lot more easily. It's also nice if you want to make a little guest cottage and you have family coming to visit, they could stay out here for a week and then inside this house you have the ground floor bedroom, which could be like your office for work from home. The other thing that I'll mention about this backyard is it's pretty deep and you have some high fences, which is nice in the back. On the sides, if you want to, you can plant pretty heavily to add more privacy. This side of the yard over here, before going on the market, we added these planters, which I'm pretty excited about. We planted heavily and within a few months, these are going to get to be a few more feet higher. And that's nice if we're trying to, not necessarily obscure the neighbor, but just add a lot more privacy for both. A lot of complaints that people have in Burlingame and Easton Addition is, “Hey, you can spend three, four, or $5 million and the homes just kind of feel squished together”.
Feel free to check out my other Burlingame videos, which include my downtown Burlingame walking tour video. I also have a video about Washington Park and the new Burlingame Community Center. If there are other videos that you want to see or you want to learn more about other neighborhoods, drop a note in the comments so I can take a look there. And if you'd like to move to Burlingame, I'd love to be able to support you to make a smooth move here.
