Original Daly City, Vista Grande & Top of the Hill Homes for sale, recent sales and a Property Nerd’s guide

South of John Daly Boulevard the streets form a tight grid. Niantic Avenue, Willits Street, Woodrow Street, San Diego Avenue and Miriam Street run north-south, crossed by Knowles Avenue, Vista Grande Avenue, North and South Parkview avenues, Westlake Avenue and Citrus Avenue. North of John Daly the grid tilts toward the county line, with Los Olivos and Los Banos avenues, Hillcrest Drive, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz and Guadalupe avenues and De Long Street, and the wedge between Mission Street and the line holds Bepler, Shakespeare, Rhine, Flournoy, Goethe, Wilson and Rice streets and San Jose Avenue. The south end around Jefferson High is another grid: School Street, Station, Werner, Mateo and Bruno avenues, and West Moltke, West Cavour and West Market streets, ending at San Pedro Road and Hill Street.

Lots are small. County use codes count about 1,720 single-family parcels, and the city parcel map puts the median lot at about 2,690 square feet, with the middle half between about 2,490 and 2,950; north of John Daly Boulevard the median drops to about 2,490. The General Plan describes the north end's narrow streets and steep lots, with houses of one story over a small garage and some bungalows with no garage at all. Mixed in are about 225 parcels with two to four units and a few dozen small apartment buildings, scattered through the grid rather than grouped.

Zoning follows the old tract lines. About 1,020 parcels in Vista Grande No. 1, the Myrtle Tract and the Metropolis Homestead Tract are zoned R-1A, which the city's zoning layer labels single-family/duplex; most of the north end and the Jefferson High blocks are R-1 single-family. The Mission Street frontage is zoned C-MU (commercial mixed-use), where county records show about 50 mixed-use parcels that include a residence, and the blocks by the Colma BART station fall under the city's BART specific plan zoning.