Are the Burlingame Eichlers in Burlingame Hills?

No. Burlingame Hills is a separate, unincorporated community in San Mateo County on the western side of the city, adjacent to Hillsborough and near Interstate 280. The Eichlers are in Mills Estate, on the north-western ridge, and that land has been inside the City of Burlingame since it was annexed in 1946. At least one widely used Eichler reference site files Mills Estate under Burlingame Hills, which is wrong and has real consequences — the two areas differ in jurisdiction and services.

Is Burlingame Hills part of the City of Burlingame?

Partly. San Mateo LAFCo defines the City of Burlingame's sphere of influence as its 1980 boundaries plus the unincorporated community of Burlingame Hills, which means LAFCo treats Burlingame Hills as outside the city. The neighbourhood association describes roughly 2,800 residents split about half and half between city and unincorporated addresses. The county runs a Burlingame Hills Sewer Maintenance District there, which is itself evidence of the unincorporated portion. Residents have repeatedly voted against annexation.

Disambiguation

Two hillsides, opposite ends of the city, one persistent mix-up.

If you have been reading about “Burlingame Hills Eichlers,” you have been reading about the wrong place. Burlingame Hills is unincorporated county land on the western edge, next to Hillsborough. The Eichlers are in Mills Estate, on the north-western ridge above Trousdale Drive, and that land has been inside the city since 1946.

Why it is not pedantry

City versus unincorporated changes who paves your road, who permits your remodel, who answers a call and which schools you are in. It is the same distinction that separates Mills Estate from the San Mateo Highlands, and it is one of the few structural advantages this tract has.

Side by side.

	Mills Estate	Burlingame Hills
Where	North-western ridge, above Trousdale Drive, toward Millbrae	Western edge, adjacent to Hillsborough, near I-280
Jurisdiction	City of Burlingame — annexed 1946	Unincorporated San Mateo County, inside the city's sphere of influence but outside the city
Subdivided	1954, by Trousdale, financed by Clint Murchison — called Burlingame's last subdivision of the twentieth century	Older; the neighbourhood association dates to 1959
Eichlers	About 100, built 1964–65	None that we can find
Typical streets	Alcazar, Atwater, Hunt, Mariposa Dr and Ct, Capistrano, Dolores, Frontera	Adeline Dr, Canyon Rd, Los Montes Dr, Alturas Dr, La Strada Ct
Schools	Franklin Elementary → Burlingame Intermediate → Burlingame High (San Mateo Union High School District)	Reported as Hoover Elementary → Burlingame Intermediate → Burlingame High, with some overlap toward Hillsborough schools — from brokerage sources, not the district
Annexation	Done, 1946, and litigated to the Court of Appeal — the story	Residents have repeatedly voted it down

School attendance areas are set by the districts and change. We have confirmed the districts, not a boundary map, and you should confirm any specific address with the district rather than with us or with a portal. Schools →

A second name problem, while we are at it

Mills Estate, Mills Estates, and a city line running through the middle.

The D.O. Mills estate straddled what became the Burlingame/Millbrae boundary, and the two cities settled a dispute over it by splitting the land: Burlingame took the ground south of the mansion, Millbrae the ground the mansion stood on. So there are areas called Mills Estate on both sides of the line, and they are not the same place.

One local brokerage draws the distinction sharply — “Mills Estate” for the Millbrae side, “Mills Estates” for the Burlingame neighbourhood with the Eichlers in it. Almost nobody else observes it. The major portals publish a single neighbourhood under both cities.

Our position, and why. We use Mills Estate, singular, because that is what the primary sources say. The corporation that petitioned for annexation in 1946 was Mills Estate, Incorporated. The Burlingame Historical Society records the 1954 subdivision as Mills Estate. And the Claude Oakland drawing catalogued at UC Berkeley is titled Mills Estate No. 19.

Modern usage and the MLS more often say Mills Estates. Both refer to the same Burlingame neighbourhood. If you are searching, search both.

And one more

Mills Estate Park is in Millbrae.

It is at Lake Street and Sebastian Drive, about 4.8 acres, sometimes called Sebastian Park, and it belongs to the City of Millbrae. If a listing implies that a Burlingame Eichler is walking distance from “Mills Estate Park,” check which side of the line it means.

We could not fetch the City of Burlingame's own parks list to prove a negative, so we will put it this way: we have positively identified the Millbrae park and found no Burlingame park of that name. Our corrections page →

Where this actually bites

One widely used Eichler reference site files this tract under the wrong neighbourhood.

Its Mills Estate page is headed with “Burlingame Hills” and describes the tract that way in its page description. The same page carries two plan designations we could find in no archive, journal or record, and adds a ninth street to the eight the other sources give.

We are not naming it to score a point. We are naming the pattern, because if one reference source has the neighbourhood wrong, the plan numbers and the street list on the same page deserve the same scepticism — and those are the details buyers repeat back to us.

The full list, including three of ours → · The eight streets →

Talk to us

Not sure which Burlingame you are looking at?

Send us the address and we will tell you the jurisdiction, the schools and whether it is in the Eichler tract — before you get attached to it.