Peninsula guide · Tier A · Rank #10 of 28
House hacking in Millbrae (Citywide, BART + Caltrain intermodal).
A buy-the-transit-node play on the Peninsula's scarcest asset, the only BART-Caltrain cross-platform intermodal station, with ~850 entitled TOD units. A rather than S on a ~$2.02M median and an entitled-but-unbuilt pipeline.
What's actually happening in 94030
- Operational
Millbrae Intermodal Station: the only BART/Caltrain cross-platform transfer, the southern BART terminus, one stop from SFO, electrified Caltrain since 2024 and same-platform since 2021. Caltrain
- Adopted
Millbrae Station Area Specific Plan (MSASP): adopted Feb 2016, amended Oct 2022, a ~116-acre TOD envelope. City of Millbrae
- Entitled, unbuilt
Serra Station (444 apartments in two 10-story towers plus 290K sq ft office) and Gateway at Millbrae Station (~400 units plus office and hotel on BART land), both entitled. City of Millbrae
- Adopted; HSR conceptual only
Downtown and El Camino Real Specific Plan plus the Grand Boulevard PD zone (2022). A future HSR stop stays conceptual and unfunded (draft multimodal plan targeted Dec 2026). City of Millbrae
The numbers
- Median price
- ~$2.02M (Zillow ZHVI)
- Market rent
- county lower-2bd band (ZIP-level rent not found; proxy flagged in the index)
- Property tax (San Mateo County)
- 1.26% combined effective average (range 1.08–1.52% by tax-rate area; purchase resets the assessed basis to sale price)
- Per-bed rent band
- $1,200–1,700/mo per bed
- ADU rent band
- $2,600–3,200/mo
- Whole-home rent band
- $4,200–5,000/mo whole-home
- Underwriting vacancy
- 3–4% underwriting vacancy
- Appreciation scenarios
- 3.0 / 4.5 / 6.0 %/yr (conservative / base / upside)
Meadows, Mills Estate, and Green Hills carry the SFR mass. Appreciation basis: Intermodal scarcity; HSR upside is speculative and excluded from base. Rent bands are city-level medians; confirm the specific parcel before trusting any of them. Run your own scenario in the calculator.
Buildings we underwrote in 94030
1 building in 94030 carry a record. 0 beat renting and index funds; the rest did not. Every row links to its own page, with the numbers it was scored on.
| Property | At our defaults | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 332 San Jose Ave 2 units · $1,488,000 | −$1,291,352 S&P 500 | Underwritten — the index wins at our defaults |
The full board shows every region's current week; this table is every record we hold for 94030, newest basis first.
The house-hack angle
A TOD condo or apartment near the intermodal node is the sub-SFR-median entry; SFR plus ADU works on the Meadows, Mills Estate, and Green Hills mass.
What breaks it
- A ~$2.02M median; the TOD pipeline is entitled but unbuilt
- SFO/FAA airspace caps height, and the HSR stop is purely speculative
- Hillside topography on Green Hills and Highlands lots complicates ADUs