Palo Alto Neighborhoods

Palo Alto is an amazing community that you will love to become part of.  I have spent over a decade in Palo Alto and can attest that it offers a great quality of life at all stages of your life. Before I had children, my wife and I would walk to the downtown area for excellent restaurants and window shopping.  Now, we take our three children to the many classes and activities that the City of Palo Alto offers for young children including swimming, ballet, language, gym, and music classes.  We soon look forward to walking our children to the excellent Palo Alto public schools.  Palo Alto offers an amazing combination of natural beauty, great weather, educated citizens, and excellent job opportunities that normally can only be found in large cities.  I anticipate that you too would enjoy being part of the vibrant community of Palo Alto.

Palo Alto History

Palo Alto is named for an ancient redwood tree (“El Palo Alto,” meaning high tree) that Spanish explorers camped under in the late-1700s.  Palo Alto was not much of a city until the formation of Stanford in 1891.  Upon Stanford’s formation professors starting moving into North Palo Alto, and the downtown of University Avenue was created.  The budding city was incorporated in 1894.

The city’s rich history has been followed by an even richer present, for now Palo Alto commands some of the highest priced real estate in America with median home prices over $1,550,000.  However the reasons for these high prices, which will only continue to climb, are the many attributes that Palo Alto offers.  These attributes create high demand for a very finite supply of homes.

Even though Palo Alto is a city of only 60,000, it is world famous for many reasons.  These include being home to Stanford University and many Silicon Valley companies.  Stanford was recently ranked as the second best university in the world (behind Harvard) and has excellence in almost all fields.  Palo Alto is located in the heart of Silicon Valley and is home to companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, Facebook and VMware and the law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.