Santa Clara

Santa Clara is one of the older places in California wearing some of the newest buildings in the country. About 133,400 people live across its 18 square miles, the median age is only 34, and the daytime population swells enormously because Intel, AMD, Nvidia and Applied Materials all keep major operations here. It is a working city rather than a scenic one, and the payoff for residents is practical: central location, flat terrain, and a municipal electric utility that has kept power bills meaningfully below what neighbors pay. For clients weighing where to land after a move, those small ongoing costs add up more than people expect.

The history here runs deeper than almost anywhere else in the valley. Mission Santa Clara de Asis was founded on January 12, 1777, the eighth of California’s twenty-one missions and the first named for a woman. Santa Clara College opened on the mission grounds in 1851 and is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state, now operating as Santa Clara University with the mission church still at the center of campus. The Battle of Santa Clara, one of the final skirmishes of the Mexican-American War in California, was fought nearby in January 1847. The city incorporated in 1852, just two years after statehood.

There is one piece of local history that explains a lot about how Santa Clara looks today. In September 1961 the city council voted to demolish the historic eight-block downtown as part of an urban renewal program, and most of the nineteenth century commercial core came down. That is why visitors expecting a walkable old main street find the Franklin Square area quiet and the real commercial life spread along El Camino Real instead. The city has spent the last decade densifying that corridor with mixed-use development, which is slowly giving Santa Clara the kind of walkable pockets it gave up sixty years ago.

What Santa Clara does have is a remarkable concentration of things to do. Levi’s Stadium hosts the 49ers and major concerts, California’s Great America sits next door, the Triton Museum of Art and the Intel Museum are both free, and the city’s visitor bureau keeps a running calendar of what is on. The signature local event is the Santa Clara Art and Wine Festival, held each September at Central Park on Kiely Boulevard, free to attend and now past its fortieth year. Central Park is also the city’s best everyday green space, with flat loops that work well for daily walking.

For older residents, the Santa Clara Senior Center on Fremont Street serves adults 50 and over with classes, meals and trips, and it is centrally located enough that most neighborhoods are a short drive away. Kaiser Permanente’s Santa Clara Medical Center on Lawrence Expressway is a full hospital inside city limits, which is a genuine advantage over Campbell, Saratoga and Sunnyvale, all of which have to send residents elsewhere. The Santa Clara City Library runs its own system separate from the county, with the Central Park branch being one of the better public buildings in the South Bay.

Schools here are simpler than in most of the county. Santa Clara Unified School District handles kindergarten through twelfth grade across nearly the entire city, so you do not have the separate elementary and high school districts that confuse buyers in Campbell, Los Gatos and Sunnyvale. A few edges of the city fall into neighboring districts because of irregular boundaries, so it is still worth confirming for a specific address.

Transportation is where Santa Clara genuinely shines. The Santa Clara Transit Center brings together Caltrain, ACE and Capitol Corridor trains, VTA buses and light rail in one place, and Lawrence Station gives you a second Caltrain stop. VTA light rail runs through the city toward both Mountain View and downtown San Jose. Highways 101, 880 and 237 all cross the city, and San Jose Mineta International Airport is minutes away, which is wonderful for travel and less wonderful if you are under a flight path in the northern neighborhoods. BART does not reach Santa Clara yet, and the extension that would bring it here is still in design with no confirmed opening date, so I would not make a housing decision based on it.

The housing stock leans heavily on 1950s through 1970s ranch tracts, which is good news for anyone who wants a single-level home on flat ground. The Old Quad near the university and downtown holds the city’s oldest houses, while Rivermark in north Santa Clara is a master-planned neighborhood from the 2000s with its own town center and a high share of townhomes and condominiums. Sunny Brae and Encanto offer the classic mid-century tract experience. Between Rivermark, the older condominium complexes along Lawrence Expressway and the new construction going up on El Camino Real, Santa Clara has more realistic downsizing inventory than most cities in the county.

On price, the median sale has been running around $1.68 million through the summer of 2026, down about one percent from a year earlier, with homes going into contract at a median of roughly 21 days. That is a normalizing market rather than a falling one, and it means a well-prepared house still sells quickly while an overpriced or deferred-maintenance house sits. My Santa Clara home prices page tracks the trend as sales close.

If you have owned a Santa Clara ranch home since the orchards came out, the equity in it is very likely the largest asset you own, and how you move it matters enormously for taxes and for your family. I built my practice around older adults and their families precisely because those decisions deserve someone who has done them hundreds of times rather than someone learning on your transaction. Book a call with me if you want a clear read on value and options, or look at my selling process if a move is already on the calendar.