Real estate appraisals in Burlingame

The market

Burlingame is a built-out Peninsula city of about 4.4 square miles of land (6.0 square miles including bay waters), incorporated June 6, 1908, sitting south of San Francisco International Airport with Millbrae between the two, north of San Mateo, with Hillsborough on its west side and San Francisco Bay on its east. Its residential core is early- twentieth-century subdivision fabric: Burlingame Park, Easton Addition and similar tracts platted from about 1905 onward, whose lots sold off rapidly in the population surge that followed the 1906 earthquake. Under a street tree canopy the City's public tree inventory numbers at more than 18,000 trees; confirm the current count and its date with the City before republishing the figure. Two things separate it from a generic Peninsula suburb for valuation purposes: a voter-adopted 1987 ordinance that bars the city from enacting rent control, and a Bayfront district east of Highway 101 that is a hotel and office market on low-lying fill, not a residential one.

What is built here

Predominantly detached single-family on modest, regular urban lots laid out in pre-WWII subdivisions west of El Camino Real and downtown (Burlingame Park, Easton Addition and neighbors), with early-twentieth-century and interwar period-revival housing that has been heavily remodeled and expanded over the past three decades. Flatter tracts toward the bay , Lyon-Hoag, Burlingame Gardens, Burlingame Estates, skew to smaller mid-century stock. Multifamily is a comparatively thin band of small-to-mid-size apartment buildings concentrated near downtown, the Caltrain corridor and El Camino Real, much of it pre-1995 . That is, the vintage that would be subject to local rent stabilization in cities that have it, since the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act (Civ. Code § 1954.52) exempts units first certified for occupancy after February 1, 1995 (or an earlier local cutoff) from local rent control. Burlingame has no local ordinance, so only the statewide Tenant Protection Act reaches this stock. The Bayfront (Old Bayshore Highway, Airport Boulevard, Anza Boulevard) and the Rollins Road / Mitten Road corridor contain no meaningful residential stock; they are hotel, office/R&D and light-industrial. Note that "Burlingame Hills," west of the city, is a separate unincorporated area addressed as Burlingame, confirm jurisdiction from the parcel, not the mailing address, before applying city zoning or permit assumptions.

What changes a valuation in Burlingame

Specific to this submarket. Every regulatory conclusion below still has to be re-verified by parcel and as of the effective date of value.

A 1987 voter-adopted ordinance bars local rent control, and later rent stabilization measures were defeated

Burlingame has an affirmative voter-adopted prohibition on rent regulation, adopted by ordinance in 1987; confirm the ordinance number and adoption date against the City Clerk's ordinance index before citing either. Rent stabilization initiatives were placed before Burlingame voters in November 2016 and again in November 2018 and were defeated both times; take the vote shares from the San Mateo County certified statement of vote for each election rather than from secondary reporting. For income-approach work this is decisive: there is no local rent cap, no local just-cause regime, and no rent-controlled-tenancy discount to apply to in-place rents. The statewide Tenant Protection Act (AB 1482) is the only rent regulation reaching Burlingame multifamily, and it does not reach all of it, housing with a certificate of occupancy issued within the previous 15 years is exempt on a rolling basis, as are separately alienable single-family homes and condominiums where the owner is not a corporation, REIT or LLC with a corporate member and the required notice has been given, along with owner-occupied duplexes and other statutory carve-outs. The annual cap is 5% plus the change in the regional consumer price index, not to exceed 10%, and it resets each year; the statute also carries a sunset. Verify the cap and the sunset in effect on the appraisal's effective date. Do not port capitalization assumptions or below-market-rent adjustments from rent-controlled comparables in San Francisco, Oakland, East Palo Alto or Mountain View into a Burlingame apartment analysis, the achievable-rent ceiling is fundamentally different.

Discretionary Planning Commission design review on essentially all new houses and most second-story additions

The city requires a design review application for all new houses, most second-story additions and, conditionally, some single-story additions, judged against a Residential Design Guidebook that asks for compatibility with the existing house's style and the surrounding neighborhood, plus R-1 standards including a declining height envelope. Burlingame routes these applications through more than one review track depending on the project, so confirm the applicable track, the current Zoning Code section and the edition of the Residential Design Guidebook with Planning, the entitlement-time discount depends on which track a project lands in and on the timelines that track actually runs. Expansion or scrape-and-rebuild potential is therefore a discretionary entitlement, not a by-right calculation. Highest-and-best-use conclusions on underimproved lots need an entitlement- risk and time discount, and paired sales of expanded versus unexpanded houses reflect the cost of getting through that process, not just construction cost.

Private protected tree ordinance applies to any species at 44-inch circumference

Per the City's private protected tree materials, a private protected tree is any tree with a trunk circumference of 44 inches (about 14 inches in diameter) or more measured 54 inches above ground, regardless of species; removal requires a City Arborist permit, and replacement trees themselves become protected. Confirm the current threshold, the measuring height, any additional trigger on subdivided or new-construction lots, and the current code citation with the City Arborist as of the effective date of value. On Burlingame's compact lots: under a canopy the City's public tree inventory numbers at more than 18,000 street trees, with legacy eucalyptus among them, mature trees frequently sit where an addition, ADU or new footprint would go. Site value on a teardown or expansion candidate should not assume a clear pad; verify protected trees and permit status before concluding buildable area.

Bayfront: 2021 Bayfront Commercial District zoning conditions development on demonstrated sea level rise resilience

The land between Highway 101 and the Bay is low-lying, protected only by riprap floodwalls the city itself describes as minimal, and the city's 2021 Bayfront Commercial District zoning update requires new development to demonstrate resilience to sea level rise (following the Sea Change Burlingame study). Bay-adjacent parcels also fall within BCDC's permit jurisdiction under the McAteer-Petris Act, which covers the Bay itself plus a 100-foot shoreline band measured inland from the mean high tide line or the outermost edge of marsh vegetation, and which carries public-access exactions within that band; parcel- level jurisdiction must be confirmed from BCDC's maps rather than assumed from proximity to the shoreline. For the hotel row along Old Bayshore Highway and Airport Boulevard and for the office/R&D pipeline including Burlingame Point, this loads the cost approach with flood-proofing and grade-raising, extends entitlement timelines, and pushes insurance and adaptation-assessment expense into the operating pro forma, none of which applies to comparable hotel or office product west of 101.

SFO aircraft noise is narrowly, not broadly, applicable here

Burlingame is among the closest cities to SFO, which invites a blanket airport-noise adjustment, but the city's General Plan environmental review places only a small part of the industrial area near Rollins Road and Mitten Road inside the 65 CNEL contour. Cite the specific contour source. The adopted SFO Airport Land Use Compatibility Plan with its adoption or amendment year, or the named General Plan EIR exhibit, and check the subject parcel against that map by year, because CNEL contours are amended over time. Airport Land Use Commission review (C/CAG of San Mateo County acts as ALUC for SFO) attaches to that limited footprint, not to the residential neighborhoods west of El Camino Real. An across- the-board noise adjustment on Burlingame residential is unsupported; the adjustment, where it applies, applies to specific parcels and should be sourced to the contour map.

Broadway grade separation construction on a working retail corridor

Caltrain and the city are grade-separating the Caltrain tracks and Broadway to eliminate the at-grade crossing and the station's hold-out rule. Confirm the current vertical design (how much of the separation is achieved by raising the tracks versus lowering the roadway), the funding total and the construction window against the Caltrain and San Mateo County Transportation Authority project pages as of the effective date of value: funding reported as of mid-2026 exceeded $340 million including Measure A funds from the Transportation Authority, but both the budget and the schedule have been revised repeatedly, so re-check on a set cadence rather than treating the figure as fixed. For retail and mixed-use property on and near Broadway, this is a live, dated condition: construction-period access disruption and vacancy risk during the build, against improved circulation and reduced horn noise afterward. An effective date before, during or after construction materially changes both the income projection and the market-conditions adjustment for Broadway-corridor comparables, and the Broadway district should not be treated as interchangeable with the Burlingame Avenue district.

Commercial and income property

Burlingame has a substantial non-residential base for its size, in four distinct submarkets that should not be blended. (1) The Bayfront hotel cluster along Old Bayshore Highway, Airport Boulevard and Anza Boulevard is a concentration of SFO-serving lodging, RevPAR here tracks airport and convention demand, not local retail demand, and the sea level rise and BCDC constraints above bear directly on it; state hotel and room counts from a named source and year rather than ranking the cluster against other Peninsula submarkets. (2) Bayfront office and R&D: the built and leased Burlingame Point campus, plus biotech/R&D projects at various stages of entitlement and a Topgolf project at 250 Anza Boulevard. Separate built from entitled from proposed, and date each item, approvals, litigation and abandonment change pipeline status, and an undated pipeline description reads as current fact long after it is not. (3) Two separate downtown retail corridors. Burlingame Avenue, a pedestrian-oriented high street with national credit tenancy, and Broadway, a smaller neighborhood-serving strip currently exposed to grade- separation construction. (4) The Rollins Road / Mitten Road light-industrial and service corridor between the rail line and 101, part of which sits inside SFO's 65 CNEL contour. Land-use policy in the Bayfront and along El Camino Real has been in active revision through the city's General Plan and specific-plan work, so entitlement assumptions should be verified against the ordinance in effect on the appraisal's effective date rather than the current code.

Assessment, appeals, and venue

Property tax appeals are heard by the San Mateo County Assessment Appeals Board, administered by the Clerk of the Board of Supervisors at 400 County Center, Redwood City. Assessment records, ownership transfers and exemptions come from the Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder at 555 County Center, 3rd Floor, Redwood City (assessor line 650-363-4500). Litigation, eminent domain, partition, dissolution, probate and trust matters, is filed in the Superior Court of California, County of San Mateo, whose civil and probate operations center on the Hall of Justice at 400 County Center, Redwood City. Planning, zoning, design review and building records are held by the City of Burlingame at 501 Primrose Road, Burlingame 94010 (650-558-7200); tree permits run through the City Arborist. Airport land use compatibility questions go to C/CAG of San Mateo County, which serves as the Airport Land Use Commission for SFO. Bayfront shoreline-band permits go to BCDC.

Sources

Checked by a reviewer who did not write the research. Where a claim could not be confirmed against a primary source it was removed rather than softened.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burlingame,_California
2. https://www.burlingame.org/
3. https://www.burlingame.org/233/Residential
4. https://www.burlingame.org/472/Private-Protected-Tree-FAQ
5. https://www.burlingame.org/DocumentCenter/View/5774/Guidelines-for-the-Private-Protected- Tree-Permit
6. https://www.burlingame.org/637/Sea-Level-Rise
7. https://www.burlingame.org/975/Broadway-Grade-Separation
8. https://www.burlingame.org/DocumentCenter/View/652/Final-Environmental-Impact-Report-FEIR- PDF
9. https://www.burlingame.org/DocumentCenter/View/393/Measure-R---Rent-Stabilization- Initiative-Text-PDF
10. https://ballotpedia.org/Burlingame,_California,_Rent_Control,_Measure_R_(November_2016)
11. https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/san-mateo-county-fails-in-efforts-to-pass-rent-control- despite-other-wins
12. https://www.tenantstogether.org/updates/city-looking-housing-options-burlingame-leaning- away-rent-control-measures
13. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=CIV&sectionNum =1954.52
14. https://www.smcacre.gov/assessor
15. https://ccag.ca.gov/committees/airport-land-use-committee/
16. https://fly.sfo.gov/about/community-noise/noise-faqs
17. https://www.caltrain.com/projects/burlingame-broadway-grade-separation-project
18. https://localnewsmatters.org/2026/06/09/burlingame-caltrain-grade-separation-project- secures-340m-boost-from-measure-a-funding/
19. https://bcdc.ca.gov/
20. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burlingame_station
21. https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/burlingame-bayfront-office-developments-advance/