Los Gatos homes, up close
The Almond Grove blocks — Tait, Bachman, Glen Ridge — are late-1800s and early-1900s houses that have mostly been restored rather than replaced. That means original fir floors, tall single-pane sash windows, picture rails and staircases with turned balusters, on a footprint running deep rather than wide. Dust settles into the mouldings and the casings, and those take real minutes a modern house of the same size never asks for.
Above Blossom Hill Road the character flips. Belwood, Surmont and the properties off Shannon and Kennedy date from the 1970s onward, built into the slope, with decks, skylights and windows facing the valley. Winter is the differentiator: houses near the creek and in the shaded canyons hold moisture, and a bathroom without a working extractor grows mildew in the grout by February. We look for it and treat it instead of waiting to be asked.
The building stock here
The building stock straddles a century. Downtown and Almond Grove run 1890 to 1930, 1,200 to 2,200 square feet, wood floors throughout and often no off-street parking beyond a single space. The hillside subdivisions run 1968 to 1995, 2,400 to 4,000 square feet, split across two or three levels with a garage entered from an uphill drive. Rainfall against the Santa Cruz Mountains beats the valley floor, which shows up as damp entry mats and mildew in shaded rooms.