2026 San Carlos Neighborhood Check-In: Clearfield Park

Last week, I wrote the first in a series of articles that provide a quick, data-centric check-in on each of the six San Carlos neighborhoods. This is the second in the series…

Clearfield Park

Clearfield Park is the San Carlos neighborhood that encompasses all of the residential properties that are situated east of El Camino Real to Industrial Road, as you can see on the map below:

Clearfield Park, also commonly referred to as the Greater East San Carlos (GESC) neighborhood, boasts some of the most affordable homes in San Carlos and, consequently, it's often the first step into homeownership for many San Carlos residents.

Most of the homes in Clearfield Park were originally built as smaller two and three-bedroom varieties, with the former often being smaller than 1,000 square feet and situated on flat, 5,000 square foot lots. Much of the neighborhood was developed in the 1940's as a means to house GI's and their families after the end of World War II, although there are a few homes that date back over 100 years. There's also a newer developed neighborhood on Bayport Court that features larger, two story homes that were built around 1987.

The Numbers

Since Clearfield Park is also the smallest neighborhood in San Carlos, far fewer homes sell here each year than in the other neighborhoods west of El Camino. This first graph shows the number of single-family homes that have sold in this area each year since 2021:

As with the chart I created for Cordes last week, this follows the same trend of what has happened over the past 5 years elsewhere in San Carlos and all along the Peninsula. 2021 was a banner year for new listings and home sales because home mortgage interest rates were at rock-bottom levels due to the pandemic. After rates began their rapid rise in 2022, home sales dropped accordingly.

The second chart is the average and median sales prices for these very same homes.

Except for a little dip in 2023, home values have remained relatively constant over the past five years on the east side of San Carlos. And as I mentioned above, you can see that it is indeed the most affordable neighborhood in San Carlos, and the only one where both the average and median prices are below $2,000,000.

It's always a good checkpoint when discussing pricing to look at the average price-per-square-foot of those homes that sold. That data is below.

This average price per square foot table is actually on par with most other neighborhoods in San Carlos, yet the sales prices remain significantly below the other five. As I mentioned above, Clearfield Park has smaller homes on average than the rest of San Carlos.

Let's see if that's the case:

As you can see in the graph, the average size of homes sold in Clearfield Park tends to be on the smaller side, even though some residents have been expanding their homes to add a 3rd bedroom and/or a second bathroom.

Key Takeaways on Clearfield Park:

There are a lot of great characteristics about this often-overlooked neighborhood.

• As the least expensive neighborhood in all of San Carlos, it's a great place for first-time buyers to start building equity.
• It enjoys the same high quality schools as the rest of San Carlos.
• It's actually closer to the popular downtown dining and shopping district than most other San Carlos neighborhoods. It's a quick jaunt to the northern stretch of Laurel Street, where all of the popular restaurants are.
• Caltrain and 101 are conveniently close for commuting.
• Low turnover — many residents who call Clearfield Park home have been in their homes for many years.

I hope you enjoyed this check-in. If you live in Clearfield Park, please drop a comment below about what you like (or don't like) about living in this part of San Carlos. And stay tuned next week when I do a similar check-in on a different San Carlos neighborhood!