$10M for Dirt: What Peninsula Land Costs Per Square Foot

A 1958 house on Fairview Avenue in Atherton sold as a teardown for $10.7 million last November, or $258 per square foot of lot. On a rebuild lot in Old Palo Alto, the neighborhood between Embarcadero Road and Oregon Expressway, the same measure came to $684 this July.

The Almanac’s September 9 story on the new wave of Peninsula buyers quoted a DeLeon Realty buyer specialist who is seeing buyers spend $10 million to $11 million “for dirt,” planning to tear down or gut the house. Its two land examples, the Fairview teardown and a $25.5 million asking price for 2.5 vacant acres near the Menlo Circus Club, work out to $10.2 million to $11.2 million an acre.

The Peninsula teardown math, lot by lot

Atherton lots are larger and sell for less per square foot. Stockbridge was a 1930s French Country home on 1.16 acres, and its listing agent told The San Francisco Standard the price was “really” land value. Fourteen offers pushed it from just under $8 million to $9.5 million.

The builder who bought Stockbridge relisted the lot at $12.888 million in December 2025, per a Standard follow-up, and Compass shows that listing withdrawn on January 24, 2026.

The Real Deal reported the Fairview teardown closed at $10.7 million against a $7.8 million asking price. Its MLS record lists a 41,464-square-foot lot under a 2,340-square-foot house.

Old Palo Alto sells smaller parcels at a far higher rate. The Bryant Street lot is 31,744 square feet, holding a 1947 rancher that sold with conceptual plans for a custom home already drawn, per The Almanac. Fewer than 30 residential lots over 30,000 square feet remain in the area, the same report says.

So $10 million buys about 38,800 square feet of dirt at the Fairview rate and about 14,600 at the Bryant rate, most of an acre versus a third of one. We found no 2026 Hillsborough or Menlo Park teardown with a published lot size, so those towns sit out of the per-foot math.

What $10 million of ground costs to hold

Prop 13 sets the base at 1 percent of assessed value, and a sale resets that value to the purchase price, per the Legislative Analyst’s Office. On a $10 million lot that is $100,000 a year.

Voter-approved bonds sit on top. San Mateo County collected $3.3 billion in 1 percent general tax and $399 million in debt service in fiscal 2024-25, per the county controller. That averages about 12 cents of bond tax per dollar of base levy, or roughly $12,000 more on a $10 million basis, with actual rates varying by tax rate area.

New construction is then assessed at market value the year it is built. The Stockbridge builder floated a 14,000-square-foot home, per the same Standard report, and Ken DeLeon told The Real Deal his clients spend $2,200 to $2,600 per square foot to build. Assessed near cost, that house would add $308,000 to $364,000 a year in base tax.

Where the medians moved, and where they did not

Houseberry’s neighborhood pages show the Palo Alto and Menlo Park teardown pockets rising 11 to 27 percent across their 12-month price histories. Old Palo Alto, which scores 4.6 out of 5 overall, went from $4.68 million in September 2025 to $5.96 million in August 2026. Crescent Park, along San Francisquito Creek, rose 11 percent, and Menlo Park’s Central Menlo and Allied Arts rose 14 and 15 percent.

In the mid-market neighborhoods nearby, Belle Haven, the Menlo Park neighborhood east of Highway 101, scores 2.4 overall and went from $1.27 million in August 2025 to $1.31 million in July 2026. Palm Park in Redwood City moved about 4 percent, and East Palo Alto’s median fell from $1.05 million in September 2025 to $939,410 in August 2026.

North Fair Oaks, the unincorporated strip along Middlefield Road between Redwood City and Atherton, is the exception, up about 25 percent to $1.88 million in August 2026.

What a house median misses in a land market

West Atherton’s median went from $14.06 million in September 2025 to $14.17 million in August 2026, after touching $17.94 million in January. When sales mix teardowns with finished estates, a house median mostly tracks which kind sold that month. Hillsborough’s citywide median on our City page fell from $7.32 million in July 2025 to $5.42 million in June 2026.

Price per square foot of lot compares land sales directly, whatever house stands on the parcel. We covered the price-tier side in our look at the 39 percent jump in Bay Area luxury sales, and the Peninsula neighborhood rankings put these pockets side by side with the rest of the region.

In July 2026, all 11 new listings in Atherton and Los Altos Hills were priced at $5 million or more, and 11 of Menlo Park’s 37 new listings were, according to Compass data cited by The Almanac.

Sources

• The Almanac: New wave of buyers heads to Peninsula, some paying $10M just for “dirt” (Sept. 9, 2026), also published by Palo Alto Online
• The San Francisco Standard: Atherton teardown sale (Dec. 3, 2025) and follow-up (Jan. 14, 2026)
• The Real Deal: Teardowns in Silicon Valley’s Atherton reach $10 million (Dec. 4, 2025)
• The Almanac: Former home of famed mountaineer sells for $21.7M in Old Palo Alto (Aug. 24, 2026)
• Legislative Analyst’s Office: Understanding California’s Property Taxes
• County of San Mateo Controller: Property Tax Highlights for FY 2024-25 (Jan. 23, 2026)
• Houseberry neighborhood and City pages for Old Palo Alto, Crescent Park, Central Menlo, Allied Arts, West Atherton, Belle Haven, North Fair Oaks, Palm Park, East Palo Alto, Atherton and Hillsborough, fetched September 10, 2026