Best-Value Neighborhoods in Davis, CA

The Downtown Core is where Davis actually behaves like a small city instead of a college town in a field. It is the lettered-and-numbered grid, A through H, First through Fifth, where the farmers market, the Amtrak depot, the bars and restaurants of G Street, and the bulk of the city's civic life all sit within a few blocks of each other. ... See Full Page

University Avenue is a short, three-block residential street running from Second to Fifth between A and B, right at the seam where downtown meets the campus edge. Despite its size it has quietly become one of the more desirable older addresses in town, a run of well-kept homes a stone's throw from both UC Davis and G Street. ... See Full Page

Mace Ranch is the big East Davis subdivision that filled in the eastern edge of town starting in the 1980s, spread across the old Chiles and Mace ranch land between East Covell, Mace Boulevard, and Second Street. It is suburban Davis at its most planned: wide streets, a deep greenbelt and bike-path system, and homes from the 1990s and 2000s. ... See Full Page

Aspen sits in West Davis, the slice of town west of Highway 113 that locals only half-jokingly call 'Best Davis.' It is residential to the core, built around the Aspen Greenbelt, one of the shaded pedestrian and bike corridors that let you cross this side of town without ever fighting traffic. ... See Full Page

Bermuda is part of the maritime-named cluster of West Davis, where streets like Bermuda Avenue, Oyster Bay, and Chesapeake Bay borrow their names from the water to play up their proximity to Stonegate Lake and the Stonegate Country Club. It is a planned, suburban stretch on the west side of Highway 113. ... See Full Page

Covell Farms is a North Davis neighborhood strung along the north side of Covell Boulevard, small enough that it reads as a single connected pocket rather than a sprawling tract. Its housing tells the city's growth story in one place: modest ranch and bi-level homes from the 1970s, with a later wave of Spanish Revival and Craftsman builds filling in through the 2000s. ... See Full Page

Covell Park takes its name from the North Davis park at its center, the one with the climbing structures and a stand of tall maples that actually throw shade in a Valley summer. The neighborhood is residential and established, the kind of North Davis block where the park does a lot of the social work. ... See Full Page

Davis Manor is one of East Davis's original postwar subdivisions, the established stretch east of the railroad tracks where the streets carry college names from the eastern-schools theme. It has the settled feel of a neighborhood that has been lived in for decades, with mature trees and single-story homes on real lots. ... See Full Page

Dos Pinos is not a tract or a street grid, it is a housing cooperative in North Davis near the Sycamore Lane corridor, and that changes everything about how it works. Residents own a share in the co-op rather than a deeded house, which keeps prices below the Davis norm and builds in a level of shared governance most neighborhoods do not have. ... See Full Page

Evergreen Meadows sits in West Davis near the Evergreen Greenbelt, a residential pocket that shares the calm, green character of this side of Highway 113. It is the kind of neighborhood where the greenbelt path matters more to daily life than any single street. ... See Full Page

Evergreen is a West Davis residential neighborhood organized around the Evergreen Greenbelt, the linear park-and-path that gives this side of town its car-free spine. It is calm, green, and built for the bike-first rhythm Davis is known for. ... See Full Page

Green Meadows is the East Davis development north of Covell and east of Pole Line where the streets are named for painters, Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh, Renoir, a little art-history quiz you can take from the driver's seat. It went up mostly in the late 1970s and has the settled, leafy character that era produced. ... See Full Page

Ivy Town North is a denser, apartment-leaning corner of Davis, the kind of address that functions more as practical rental and starter housing than as a marquee single-family neighborhood. Homes here run toward the compact end of the Davis range. ... See Full Page

La Buena Vida is a condominium community in East Davis, set in a circular layout next to the Wildhorse area off Pole Line Road. Built in the early 1970s, it runs about 272 units in small four-plex buildings, a distinct form from the single-family blocks around it. ... See Full Page

Oeste Manor is a West Davis residential pocket whose name traces back to Oeste Drive, itself named for Jacob Oeste, who farmed the West Plainfield land out this way. It is an older, settled part of West Davis with a noticeable share of duplexes alongside single-family homes. ... See Full Page

Old East Davis is the historic strip just east of the railroad tracks, running from Second Street to a bit north of Fifth and over to L Street. It is one of the city's preserved older neighborhoods, with homes on the historic registry, landmark trees, and an active neighborhood association that has fought to keep its scale intact. ... See Full Page

Old North Davis is the Bowers Addition, the older grid of homes just north of downtown between roughly Fifth and Eighth that predates the city's postwar sprawl. Despite the 'North' name it sits in what locals now think of as central Davis, and it has its own neighborhood association and identity. ... See Full Page

Senda Nueva sits in North Davis within the broader North Davis Farms area, north of Covell, and its name (Spanish for 'new path') fits a neighborhood built around the greenbelt. Streets here run to quiet cul-de-sacs lined with pines and elms, near one of the entry points to the North Davis greenbelt system. ... See Full Page

Stonegate is the West Davis neighborhood built around Stonegate Lake and the Stonegate Country Club, the closest thing this side of town has to a resort-style setup. The maritime street names and the lake give it a distinct identity, and the country club, with its pools, tennis, and clubhouse, anchors the community. ... See Full Page

Sycamore Lane is less a single subdivision than the residential corridor along the street of the same name, straddling the North and Central Davis line near Sycamore Park. It is a busier, more mixed stretch than the tucked-away tracts, with single-family homes giving way to apartment clusters as you move toward campus. ... See Full Page

UC Davis is the campus itself, and living here means university housing rather than the for-sale market, but it shapes the whole city and is a neighborhood in its own right. It is enormous, flat, and famously bike-first, with the car kept to the perimeter and the Arboretum running like a green ribbon along Putah Creek through the heart of it. ... See Full Page

University Meadows is a campus-adjacent pocket of Davis that leans toward rental and multifamily housing serving the university crowd. It is valued more for access than for looks, given how close it puts you to UC Davis and downtown. ... See Full Page

Veranda is one of the newer residential developments on the east side of Davis, in the band of recent construction around the Mace and Wildhorse corridor. As a more recent build, it brings updated homes and a planned layout to a part of town that had not seen much new housing in years. ... See Full Page

Village Homes is the most famous neighborhood in Davis and one of the best-known planned communities in the country, a 60-acre West Davis development the Corbetts started building in the 1970s around solar design, edible landscaping, and shared green space. Roughly 220 homes sit among community gardens, vineyards, orchards, and a network of bike and pedestrian paths that run behind largely fenceless backyards. ... See Full Page

West Davis Manor, the West Manor subdivision, sits west of Highway 113 between Village Homes, Russell, and Lake Boulevard, with streets named for rivers, Danube, Hudson, Ganges, Rubicon, from its late-1970s build by the Stanley Davis Company. It is settled, leafy, and quintessentially West Davis. ... See Full Page

Woods Circle sits in the Stonegate part of West Davis, off Highway 113, with the unusual perk of facing an open-space preserve, so some homes look out on protected land rather than another rooftop. It is a small, quiet loop within the broader Stonegate community. ... See Full Page

Binning Tract is one of those small Davis neighborhoods that most people drive past without naming, tucked near the Olive Drive corridor at the south edge of the central city. It is compact, and a good share of its housing is newer infill, single homes and duplexes that went up after 2000 on a tight footprint. ... See Full Page

Cottages at Atlantis is a condominium-style community on the South Davis side of Interstate 80, in the band of town built around Cowell Boulevard and the research-park edge. It is a denser, lower-maintenance form of Davis living rather than a single-family subdivision. ... See Full Page

El Macero Estates reads as the Davis-side companion to the El Macero name, a smaller residential enclave near the southeast edge of town by the El Macero shopping center and Mace Boulevard. The branding borrows the polish of the country-club community next door. ... See Full Page

El Macero is the country-club enclave just east of Davis, and a technicality worth knowing up front: it is an unincorporated Yolo County community, not inside the city limits, even though the mailing address says Davis. It was laid out around the El Macero Country Club, founded in 1961, and the golf course is the spine the whole place is built on. ... See Full Page

Kaufman & Broad is a builder-named tract, one of the production subdivisions the company put up during East Davis's growth years, and the name has stuck as a neighborhood label the way builder tracts often do in Davis. Expect a cohesive run of homes from a single era and a small palette of floor plans. ... See Full Page

Mace Cottages is a compact development near Mace Ranch in East Davis, close to the Korematsu Elementary side of the Mace Boulevard corridor. As the name suggests, it leans toward smaller, lower-maintenance homes rather than big lots. ... See Full Page

Mace Ranch Estates is the step-up enclave inside the larger Mace Ranch story, the part of East Davis where the lots widen and the homes get bigger and more individualized than the standard tract around them. It shares Mace Ranch's planned bones but at a more upscale scale. ... See Full Page

North Davis Farms is one of the established residential tracts on the north side of town, west of F Street and north of Covell, and it is big enough to contain its own smaller pockets and cul-de-sacs. The 'Farms' name nods to the ag land it replaced as Davis grew northward. ... See Full Page

Northstar is the North Davis neighborhood with the bird-named streets, Avocet, Mockingbird, Sandpiper, built around Northstar Park and the Julie Partansky Pond at F Street and Anderson. The ponds are the standout: a genuine wildlife habitat with observation docks where the Friends of North Davis Ponds run monthly bird strolls. ... See Full Page

Olive Drive is the narrow corridor wedged between the railroad tracks and Interstate 80 just south of downtown, and it is one of the most distinctly un-Davis parts of Davis. The housing is an eclectic mix of older homes, apartments, and small businesses strung along a street that dead-ends rather than connects, which gives it a slightly tucked-away, do-its-own-thing feel. ... See Full Page

Rancho Yolo is a senior mobile-home community in East Davis, south of the Davis Cemetery off Pole Line Road, and it is unlike any other neighborhood on this list. It is an age-restricted, 55-and-over park, originally laid out with a quirky set of circular streets, Inner Circle, Outer Circle, Broken Circle, that still partly survive. ... See Full Page

Richmond American Homes is another of the builder-named tracts that Davis labels by its developer, a cohesive run of production homes the company built during the city's East Davis expansion. As with similar tracts, expect a tight set of floor plans from one construction era. ... See Full Page

This pocket pairs the Slide Hill Park area with the adjacent Sunrise streets in East Davis, two linked residential blocks that share the same park as their center of gravity. Treating them together makes sense on the ground, since the greenbelt and the park stitch them into one walkable unit. ... See Full Page

Slide Hill Park is the East Davis neighborhood named for its park, a genuinely well-equipped one with a seasonal community pool, tennis and basketball courts, softball fields, and the playground that gives the place its name. The park is the social engine of the surrounding residential streets. ... See Full Page

Sunrise is an East Davis residential neighborhood near the Slide Hill Park area, the kind of settled interior pocket that organizes itself around a central green and the greenbelt rather than a commercial street. The name traces back to the old Sunrise Farm and the Simmons family who worked this part of the valley. ... See Full Page

Verona is among the newest residential additions in East Davis, marketed as Verona Terrace at Mace Ranch and notable as the first new home community built in the Mace Ranch area in over a decade. The mix skews toward attached and smaller-footprint homes, including affordable units and compact plans with single-car garages. ... See Full Page

Willowcreek is a South Davis neighborhood centered on Willowcreek Park, in the band of town south of Interstate 80 where tree-named streets, Tallow, Hackberry, Dogwood, mark the old Ricci Farm land. It is a settled, residential pocket with the park as its green heart. ... See Full Page

Allegro is one of the harder Davis names to pin to a single block, and the honest version is that it reads as a smaller, newer residential pocket rather than one of the city's landmark neighborhoods. The bones are typical of recent Davis infill: compact lots, attached and detached homes, and the kind of layout that leans on shared greenbelt paths rather than big private yards. ... See Full Page

Green Terrace is a small, low-profile Davis residential street-community, the kind of address that shows up in listings more than in neighborhood lore. The verifiable picture is modest: a compact cluster of homes that runs on the same Davis fundamentals as the rest of town. ... See Full Page

Interland and the University Research Park make up the office-and-innovation corner of South Davis, the cluster of R&D space, labs, and adjacent housing built south of Interstate 80 around Drew Circle and Research Park Drive. It is the part of Davis that works for a living. ... See Full Page

Lake Alhambra Estates is the East Davis enclave built around a private lake near the Mace and Alhambra corridor, and it is one of the few Davis neighborhoods where the housing genuinely steps up in scale. The custom homes here date mostly to the late 1990s and early 2000s and run large, often 3,000 to 5,000 square feet, in Tudor, Spanish Revival, and other dressed-up styles. ... See Full Page

Oakshade is a South Davis neighborhood tied to the Oakshade Town Center, the shopping anchor that puts a Nugget Market and a run of services within walking and biking distance, a real convenience on the south side of Interstate 80. It is one of the more self-sufficient South Davis pockets for daily errands. ... See Full Page

Old Willowbank sits at the south edge of Davis near the Willowbank area, a quieter, semi-rural pocket where lots run larger and the feel shifts away from the tight grids of the rest of town. It carries the older, more countrified character that the 'Old' in the name implies. ... See Full Page

Pacifico is a student housing cooperative in South Davis off Drew Circle, near the research-park edge, and it operates on a different model than the neighborhoods around it. It is affordable, co-op-run housing rather than for-sale homes, with shared spaces and a resident-driven community structure. ... See Full Page

Rosecreek is a South Davis neighborhood organized around the Rosecreek greenbelt and parkway, a planned residential pocket south of Interstate 80 with the kind of path-and-park spine that lets you move through it on foot or by bike. The homes are well-kept single-family stock on regular Davis lots. ... See Full Page

Royal Oaks is a mobile-home community in South Davis, off the Cowell Boulevard side of town, and like Rancho Yolo across the freeway it offers one of the few genuinely lower-cost ways to live in an expensive city. It is a manufactured-housing park, compact and self-contained. ... See Full Page

Sharps and Flats is an apartment community in South Davis off Drew Circle, part of the music-themed corner of town and one of the area's income-restricted affordable housing developments. It is rental, multifamily living rather than a for-sale neighborhood. ... See Full Page

South Cape is one of the quieter pockets of South Davis, on the south side of Interstate 80 where the lots run a little larger and the pace drops off. It has the calmer, more spread-out character that South Davis is known for, away from the denser parts of town. ... See Full Page

Wildhorse is the East Davis subdivision built around its own golf course, east of Pole Line and north of Covell, and it is the closest Davis gets to a manicured, golf-community look. Laid out in the late 1990s and early 2000s with a web of roundabouts that newcomers reliably get lost in, it pairs the course and greenbelt with some of the more polished newer homes in town. ... See Full Page

Willowbank is the semi-rural pocket on the south edge of Davis, partly unincorporated, where the city grid loosens into larger lots, mature trees, and even the occasional horse property. It feels distinctly different from the rest of town, more countryside than subdivision. ... See Full Page

Woodbridge is an established North Davis subdivision in the band north of Covell, a quiet residential tract knit into the north-side park and greenbelt system. It has the settled, low-key character of a neighborhood that has been lived in for a while. ... See Full Page