San Benito & Mariposa, Los Gatos Homes for sale, recent sales and a Property Nerd’s guide

San Benito Avenue runs the length of the area, parallel to North Santa Cruz Avenue, from Los Gatos-Saratoga Road to Mariposa Avenue. County records give its 50 houses a median build year of 1924, most of them one story, on lots of about 7,200 square feet. Monterey Avenue and Montgomery Street near the highway are similar, and the cross streets, Andrews and Thurston streets, Olive Street, Ashler Avenue and San Mateo Avenue, are short blocks running east to North Santa Cruz Avenue.

Olive Street is the small-lot street: the 1926 Tobey Subdivision lots are about 3,700 square feet at the median, with one-story houses of about 1,300 square feet. Ashler Avenue's median build year is about 1925, San Mateo Avenue's houses are mostly from the 1930s to the 1950s, and Mariposa Avenue, at the north end, has about 33 houses, most of them one-story houses from the 1940s, on lots of about 9,250 square feet. Griffith Place and Fancher Court, west of San Benito Avenue, are short streets of 1960s and 1970s houses, most of them two stories, on 8,000-square-foot lots.

About 28 percent of the houses have two or more stories and the median living area is about 1,960 square feet, so the mix runs from original one-story cottages to full rebuilds. Zoning is mostly the Town's R-1D downtown single-family zone and R-1:8, with a dozen lots under the Landmark-Historic Preservation (LHP) overlay. North Santa Cruz Avenue and Los Gatos-Saratoga Road carry neighborhood-commercial and office lots, and a handful of duplexes and small apartment buildings sit on San Benito and Monterey avenues and Montgomery Street.