The shape of Santa Clara
The Old Quad is the part visitors notice: 1890s Queen Annes and Craftsman cottages on Fremont and Market, many of them cut into flats for students. Those houses have original wood floors that dent, transom windows, and stairs with a turn in them. Cleaning one is slower per square foot than anything else in the city, and June and September bring a wave of move-out work as leases turn over.
West and south of there the city flattens into 1950s and 1960s ranch tracts — modest, well-kept, and remarkably consistent, which makes them quick. North of 101 it changes again. Rivermark and the streets near Levi’s Stadium are townhomes and condos with attached garages, three levels, and an association that may want a vendor insurance certificate on file. We keep one current.
Inside a typical Santa Clara home
The dominant house here is a single-level stucco ranch of 1,100 to 1,500 square feet, built for the electronics boom, usually with an added-on family room at the back. Flooring is a patchwork: original oak in the bedrooms, laminate in the hall, tile in a remodeled kitchen. Then there is everything north of the freeway, where a townhome puts the garage on level one, living on level two, and bedrooms on level three, which triples the stair count on a normal visit.