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san francisco neighborhood guide · property nerds® at compass
Parkside, San Francisco Homes for sale, recent sales and a Property Nerd’s guide
The southern Sunset from 14th Avenue to the ocean between Ortega Street and Sloat Boulevard: L Taraval blocks of 1920s-1940s houses over garages, with Stern Grove, Pine Lake and Sunset Dunes on its edges.
Parkside by the numbers
parkside by the numbers · live from the mls
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Calculated in your browser from MLS data for Parkside (approximate outline traced from the boundary streets). Sales are single-family homes, townhomes and condos.
homes in parkside · live from the mls
Homes for sale, for rent and recently sold in Parkside
Every active listing, rental and closed sale in Parkside from the MLS, updated automatically, with a map of the neighborhood outline.
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Listings come from MLSListings and other MLSs through IDX and show their listing brokerage; confirm details with the listing agent. The map outline is the neighborhood boundary used by our listing search (Parkside (approximate outline traced from the boundary streets)); it may not match every local definition.
the story
How Parkside came to be
The Parkside began as a land company's bet on empty dunes. The Parkside Realty Company announced its tract in July 1905, and after its streetcar franchise was caught up in the city's graft trials, a single-track line opened in June 1908, down 20th Avenue from H Street (now Lincoln Way) to T Street (now Taraval) and on toward Sloat Boulevard. That year the company built 62 cottages along the old Central Ocean Road, from 26th Avenue and Ulloa Street to 32nd Avenue and Vicente Street: about 800 square feet, two bedrooms and one bath, in six facade styles. A 2007 survey found all but one still standing, nearly all with garages added.
Growth stayed slow until the Twin Peaks Tunnel opened on February 3, 1918. The municipal L Taraval reached 20th Avenue that September, 33rd Avenue in April 1919 and 48th Avenue in January 1923, and the builders followed: Lang Realty put up about 200 California bungalows in 1926-1927, then Henry Doelger, Ray Galli, the Gellert brothers' Standard Building Company, the Stoneson brothers and Chris McKeon filled the avenues with houses over garages through the 1930s and 1940s. McKeon even named his 1936 tract around 29th Avenue and Rivera Street 'Rivera Heights.'
The south edge has its own story. The wooded gully around Pine Lake (once Laguna Puerca) held the Trocadero, an 1892 roadhouse; the land went to the city in 1931, and Sigmund Stern Recreation Grove, named for Sigmund Stern, opened on June 4, 1932. West of it, the Parkside Realty Company broke ground on its Pinelake Park tract in 1927, with a few larger houses on Crestlake Drive above the lake, and Standard Building Company filled it in during the late 1940s with 'Sunstream' ranch-style houses.
streets and homes
The streets and the houses
The street grid continues the Sunset's: Ortega, Pacheco, Quintara, Rivera, Santiago, Taraval, Ulloa, Vicente and Wawona run east-west, crossed by 15th through 48th Avenues and Sunset Boulevard, with curving exceptions such as Crestlake Drive, Vale Avenue and Escolta Way near Pine Lake. The Assessor's 2025 roll counts about 11,350 single-family dwellings inside this guide's outline, about 93% of residential parcels; flats (about 330 parcels) and condos (about 160) cluster near Taraval Street. The median house was built in 1941 and has about 1,430 square feet.
The 2008 Parkside context statement describes the typical house as one story over a garage with five to six rooms; 1930s 'patio style' houses add a light well in the middle, and postwar houses keep the form with plainer modern or ranch fronts. Craftsman houses from the 1910s and early 1920s can sit 8 to 15 feet back, and some lots between Taraval and Ulloa Streets from 19th to 22nd Avenues were platted 33 feet wide instead of 25. Pine Lake Park is the outlier: a median lot near 4,000 square feet, much of it zoned RH-1(D), the detached-house district.
Several tracts are on Planning's survey lists as California Register-eligible: Rivera Heights (1936-1940, around 29th and 30th Avenues near Rivera Street), a 1931 Stoneson brothers group on Vicente Street near 32nd Avenue, and parts of the Mediterranean Revival and Picturesque Period Revival tracts districts on Rivera and Santiago Streets between 29th and 34th Avenues. By parcel the guide is about 79% RH-1; RTO-C, the corridor district created by the Family Zoning Plan in January 2026, now covers about 8%, mainly along 19th Avenue, Taraval Street and parts of Vicente Street and Sloat Boulevard.
streets in parkside
- Ortega St
- Pacheco St
- Quintara St
- Rivera St
- Santiago St
- Taraval St
- Ulloa St
- Vicente St
- Wawona St
- Sloat Blvd
- Sunset Blvd
- 19th Ave
- 20th Ave
- 22nd Ave
- 24th Ave
- 26th Ave
- 28th Ave
- 29th Ave
- 30th Ave
- 32nd Ave
- 34th Ave
- 40th Ave
- 46th Ave
- 47th Ave
- 48th Ave
- Crestlake Dr
- Vale Ave
- Escolta Way
- Yorba St
- Cutler Ave
parks and places
Parks, shops and landmarks near Parkside
- park
Sigmund Stern Recreation Grove
About 35 acres at 19th Avenue and Sloat Boulevard with a concert meadow (home of the free summer Stern Grove Festival), tennis, a playground and a dog play area along Wawona Street. The 1892 Trocadero Clubhouse, a city landmark, reopened April 1, 2025 after storm repairs.
- park
Pine Lake Park
About 31 acres west of Stern Grove. The parks department describes Pine Lake as a natural lake fed by the same aquifer as Lake Merced.
- park
McCoppin Square, Parkside Square and Carl Larsen Park
Three neighborhood parks of about 7 to 9 acres each: McCoppin Square (2354 24th Ave, by Taraval St) and Parkside Square (2680 28th Ave), both set aside as parkland in the 1860s Outside Lands settlement, and Carl Larsen Park, named for Carl Larsen, at 19th-20th Aves between Ulloa and Wawona Sts.
- park
West Sunset Playground and South Sunset Playground
West Sunset Playground covers about 18 acres at 3223 Ortega Street, the same address as the Ortega Branch Library. South Sunset Playground (about 4 acres, 2601 40th Ave) is part of an eligible citywide historic district of 1947 recreation-bond projects.
- shopping
Taraval Street
The Parkside's main street since the 1920s, zoned as neighborhood commercial along much of its length west of 15th Avenue, with the Parkside Branch Library at 1200 Taraval (22nd Ave). The Lakeshore Plaza and Stonestown shopping centers are south of Sloat Boulevard.
- landmark
Sunset Dunes and the SF Zoo
Sunset Dunes, the car-free former Upper Great Highway, ends at Sloat Boulevard; across Sloat sits the 131-acre San Francisco Zoo, the end of the L Taraval line.
schools and commute
School districts and getting around
School districts
San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) serves every address here and assigns seats by application and lottery with tiebreakers, so an address's attendance-area school is a tiebreaker, not a guarantee. Public schools inside the area include Dianne Feinstein Elementary (2550 25th Ave), Robert Louis Stevenson Elementary (2051 34th Ave), Sunset Elementary (1920 41st Ave), Ulloa Elementary (2650 42nd Ave), A.P. Giannini Middle School (3151 Ortega St) and Abraham Lincoln High School (2162 24th Ave); Herbert Hoover Middle School sits on the 14th Avenue edge. SFUSD's planned zone-based elementary system has been rescheduled more than once, so check the exact address and current rules with SFUSD's Enrollment Center.
Getting around
- L Taraval Muni Metro: stops along Taraval St from 15th to 46th Aves, then down 46th Ave to Wawona St at the SF Zoo; east through West Portal and the Twin Peaks Tunnel to downtown. Taraval & Sunset Blvd is about 0.3 mile straight-line from the middle of the guide. Rail service returned after the L Taraval Improvement Project wrapped up in 2024.
- West Portal station (K, L, M) is about 1.3 miles straight-line from the middle; St. Francis Circle (K and M) about 1.1 miles; the M continues south on 19th Ave to Stonestown and SF State.
- 19th Avenue is State Route 1: north through Golden Gate Park toward the Golden Gate Bridge, south via Junipero Serra Blvd to I-280. Caltrans repaved 19th Ave from Lincoln Way to Holloway Ave in 2026.
- Buses: the 28 19th Avenue on 19th Ave and the 29 Sunset on Sunset Blvd, which continues to Balboa Park BART (about 2.7 miles straight-line from the middle).
- Sloat Blvd is the main west-east route to the beach. The Upper Great Highway north of Sloat is now Sunset Dunes park, and the SFPUC plans to close the Great Highway south of Sloat to cars for its Ocean Beach climate project, with major construction now expected to start in late 2029.
nerd notes
Buying or selling in Parkside: what we check
Buying here
- Near the beach, check the hazard maps: about 220 parcels on the 47th and 48th Avenue / Great Highway blocks between Ortega and Wawona Streets sit in a mapped state liquefaction zone, and many of the same blocks, plus a pocket on 15th-16th Aves between Vicente and Wawona Sts, are in the SFPUC's 100-Year Storm Flood Risk Zone, which sellers must disclose. About 15 parcels on the edges of Stern Grove and Pine Lake (Wawona St near 26th Ave, Crestlake Dr) are in a mapped landslide zone.
- Original 1908 cottages and 1910s Craftsman houses are rare among the stucco rows; nearly all the cottages had garages added later, so check the permit history and the historic status on the Property Information Map.
- Pine Lake Park is mostly RH-1(D): detached houses with side yards, where additions face different setback rules than the attached rows elsewhere.
- If the ground floor behind the garage has been finished as a room or a unit, ask for the permits; unpermitted space can affect financing and insurance.
- Taraval Street and 19th Avenue frontages now allow mid-rise housing under RTO-C; if you are buying on or next to them, look up neighboring parcels too. The city's soft-story list includes about 45 buildings inside this outline, nearly all marked work complete.
Selling here
- Name the tract when it is a known one (Rivera Heights, Pine Lake Park, an original Parkside cottage) and show the original details buyers look for.
- Order the natural hazard disclosure early west of about 46th Avenue and around Pine Lake.
- Have permits ready for garage-level rooms, rear additions and decks.
- Give straight-line distances to the nearest L Taraval stop, Stern Grove and Sunset Dunes.
nerd noteCommissions are always negotiable, and we offer bundled services, so ask us what's included.
faq
Parkside questions, answered
Where exactly is the Parkside?
Definitions vary; in 1908 the Parkside District Improvement Club claimed Santiago Street to Sloat Boulevard and 12th to 47th Avenues. This guide uses the Realtor map's Parkside, Outer Parkside and Inner Parkside plus the Pine Lake Park tract: Ortega Street to Sloat Boulevard, about 14th Avenue to the ocean.
Are Stern Grove and Pine Lake in the Parkside?
In this guide, yes: the outline runs to Sloat Boulevard and includes the Pine Lake Park tract. The Lakeside, Merced Manor and Lakeshore areas south of Sloat are not included.
What were the original Parkside cottages?
Sixty-two small houses the Parkside Realty Company built in 1908 between 26th and 32nd Avenues near Ulloa and Vicente Streets. A 2007 survey found all but one still standing, nearly all raised or dug out for a garage.
Is the L Taraval running?
Yes. SFMTA lists the L as active rail service between the SF Zoo and Embarcadero after the L Taraval Improvement Project finished in 2024.
Is the Parkside in a flood zone?
Most of it is not. The exceptions are near the beach, where a mapped liquefaction zone and the city's storm flood risk zone cover parts of the 47th and 48th Avenue blocks, plus a small storm-flood pocket near 15th and 16th Avenues by Wawona Street. FEMA puts the coastal high-hazard zone on the beach.
next door
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