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Eastern Addition & Downtown San Mateo, CA

Downtown San Mateo and the historic Eastern Addition, mostly condos plus older single-family homes.

About the neighborhood

Living in Eastern Addition & Downtown

Eastern Addition & Downtown covers downtown San Mateo and the older neighborhood around it, with homes from many eras. It has a Hollywood footnote: in the silent-film era, Pacific Studios built a state-of-the-art studio here and made a half-dozen films in seven years before talkies made it obsolete, and its original office building still stands at 430 Peninsula Avenue. Today it's a mix of older single-family homes and a much larger number of condos. Single-family homes have a 12-month median around $1.62M, while condos have ranged widely, from a 2025 median around $585K to a 2026 median so far around $828K.

Parking & walkability: Older homes often have a single-car or detached garage, and condo buildings include assigned or garage parking; street parking downtown is busy and partly metered. This is San Mateo's most walkable area: downtown's restaurants and shops, Central Park and the San Mateo Caltrain station are all steps away.

Eastern Addition & Downtown market snapshot

What homes in Eastern Addition & Downtown are doing

12-mo median (single-family)$1.62M16 sales, last 12 months
Median change, 2015–16 to 2024–25+43%San Mateo overall: +63%
Price per sq ft (2025)$920
Days on market (2025)12median of the year's sales
Sale-to-list (2025)104.5%above 100% = over asking

Single-family homes in Eastern Addition & Downtown sold for a median of about $973K in 2015–16 and $1.4M in 2024–25, a 43% increase, behind San Mateo as a whole (+63%). In 2025, homes here sold quickly (median 12 days on market) and usually above asking (104.5% of list price on average). So far in 2026 (10 sales through September), the median is $1.75M.

Where it is

Eastern Addition & Downtown on the map

Borders are built lot by lot from the county's property lines and where homes have been listed (MLS neighborhood codes), and stay inside official city limits (dashed), so a home or two along an edge may differ from official MLS lines.

Other San Mateo neighborhoods

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Source: MLSListings, Inc. closed sales, 2015–September 2026, summarized by Drew Lehr. Neighborhood figures combine the MLS area(s) that make up Eastern Addition & Downtown; where there are several, yearly figures are sales-weighted. Information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.