Episode 2 · Property Types & Supply Dynamics
Daly City Homes: Sizes, Age and Property Taxes
Daly City is known as a city of detached houses built after the war, and this page shows how alike they are, close in size, on lots of almost the same ground, and more than a third of them from one decade. What sets one owner's yearly cost apart from a neighbor's is the year they bought, because the tax bill tracks the purchase and not the house.
💡 Key Insights & Takeaways
- Of the 18,775 homes with a full building record, 95.5% are detached houses, and the city holds exactly 1 empty parcel out of 24,685, as of August 25, 2026.
- Half the homes, 50.7% of them, fall inside one band from 1,000 to 1,499 square feet, and the middle half of every lot fits inside a range 730 square feet wide.
- The 1950s alone account for 38.4% of the homes that carry a valid year, and 89.7% of them went up before 1980.
- The median length of ownership is 18.2 years, and 46.5% of owners have held for twenty years or more.
- The median effective tax rate is 1.315%, above the 1.10% to 1.30% band California usually runs, because bonds and special assessments ride on the same bill.
Two Daly City neighbors in the same 1950s house can be 4.5 times apart on the property tax, at $3,131 a year against $14,081, and the only difference is the year they bought. As of August 25, 2026 the middle home here measures 1,390 square feet and went up in 1958.
At a glance
These are the five figures that decide what a Daly City house costs you to own, and every one of them describes the parcels inside the city boundary, as of 2026-08-25.
| Measure | Value | Spread and sample |
|---|---|---|
| Middle year built | 1958 | 89.7% of the homes went up before 1980 · n = 18,760 |
| Middle living area | 1,390 square feet | 50.7% of the homes sit in one band, 1,000 to 1,499 square feet · n = 18,757 |
| Middle lot size | 3,366 square feet | The middle half of every lot fits inside a range 730 square feet wide · n = 18,775 |
| Middle annual property tax | $7,032 | $3,131 for owners who bought in the 1970s, $14,081 for owners who bought in the 2020s · n = 18,753 |
| Middle length of ownership | 18.2 years | 46.5% of owners have held for twenty years or more · n = 13,187 |
What kind of homes are in Daly City?
Detached houses, almost to the exclusion of everything else. A detached house is one home standing on its own ground rather than sharing a wall with a neighbor, and 95.5% of the 18,775 homes with a full building record are that, as of 2026-08-25. A further 4.4% carry a recorded accessory dwelling unit, which is a second small home on the same ground — a converted garage or a granny flat. Another 0.1% carry a below-market-rate designation. Condominiums and apartment buildings sit outside the scope of these figures.
The city holds 24,685 parcels in total. Of those, 5,910 carry a street address and nothing else. They have no building record, no year built, no living area and no value on the record, and they are 23.9% of the 24,685-parcel universe. They are left out of every size, age, value, ownership and length-of-ownership figure on this page, and they are never counted as empty ground. Counting them that way would report 5,911 empty parcels. The true count is 1 parcel, and one record is too few to build any rate on.
The two totals do different jobs and you should not swap one for the other. 24,685 is the whole parcel universe. 18,775 is the set that carries a full building record, and it is the denominator behind every physical figure below.
How big are Daly City homes and lots?
The middle home is 1,390 square feet standing on 3,366 square feet of ground, as of 2026-08-25. Half the homes in the city — 50.7% of them — fall inside a single band from 1,000 to 1,499 square feet.
These are the size figures for the 18,775 homes that carry a full building record, as of 2026-08-25.
| Measure | Value | What the spread looks like | n |
|---|---|---|---|
| Living area | 1,390 square feet | 50.7% of homes sit between 1,000 and 1,499 square feet | 18,757 |
| Lot size | 3,366 square feet | The middle half of every lot fits inside a range 730 square feet wide | 18,775 |
| Living area over lot size | 0.43 | A 1,390 square foot house on 3,366 square feet of ground | 18,757 |
The ground varies even less than the houses do. The middle half of every parcel in the city sits inside a range 730 square feet wide, which is unusually tight across more than eighteen thousand records.
Floor plans repeat as well. The most common plan is three bedrooms and two bathrooms, on 4,743 parcels. Nearly four in five homes are single-storey, at 78.9% of the 18,748 parcels that carry a storey count.
The consequence is worth saying plainly. When the houses are this alike, what separates two homes here is where they stand, what condition they are in and what ground they hold, rather than how big they are or how they are laid out.
How old are Daly City homes, and how many have been renovated?
One decade built most of this city. The 1950s alone account for 38.4% of the homes, the middle year built is 1958, and 89.7% of the homes went up before 1980 — all as of 2026-08-25, across the 18,760 parcels that carry a valid year.
This is when Daly City was built, across the 18,760 homes carrying a valid year, as of 2026-08-25.
| Period | Share of the homes carrying a valid year |
|---|---|
| Built in the 1950s | 38.4% |
| Built before 1980 | 89.7% |
| Middle year built | 1958 |
Renovation is the harder question, and the honest answer is a ceiling rather than a count. Effective year built is the field that records a major rebuild, and it is filled in on only 39.4% of the parcels with a full building record — 7,406 of 18,775, or 30.0% of the whole in-scope universe. Every renovation and redevelopment share on this page is therefore an upper bound. Among the homes where the record speaks, 60.7% show a renovation gap. Measured against all 18,775 homes instead, the figure is 23.9%.
On 11,369 homes the record does not say whether anything was ever done. That silence is not evidence that nothing was done. For you it means the age of the roof, the electrical panel, the sewer line and the earthquake bracing is a question an inspection answers and this data does not.
Why do two Daly City neighbors pay such different property taxes?
Because a California assessment is set at the last change of ownership and then rises by no more than two percent a year. The bill therefore records when a home was bought rather than what stands on the ground today. Proposition 13 sets that mechanism and Proposition 19 lets some owners carry a base-year value with them. In Daly City the result is a clean staircase.
This is the middle annual property tax by the decade the current owner bought, as of 2026-08-25.
| When the owner bought | Middle annual property tax | n |
|---|---|---|
| In the 1970s | $3,131 | 315 |
| Citywide, all owners | $7,032 | 18,753 |
| In the 2020s | $14,081 | 2,281 |
Two neighbors in the same kind of house — the same 1950s single-storey home, roughly 1,390 square feet on roughly 3,366 square feet of ground — are 4.5 times apart on the bill for no reason other than the year they bought.
Citywide, the middle assessed value is $530,103 and the middle annual tax is $7,032. Assessed value is the figure the assessment carries under Proposition 13. It is not market value, not what a home is worth, and not what a home would sell for. Comparing assessments across homes bought in different years measures the year they bought and nothing else.
The drift is measurable. The middle parcel is assessed at 1.502 times what its current owner paid for it, and 3,732 parcels sit at twice that price or more, across the 16,268 parcels that carry both figures.
One number belongs in your budget before anything else. The middle effective tax rate here is 1.315%, which sits above the 1.10% to 1.30% band California usually runs, and only 44.5% of parcels fall inside that band. Voter-approved bonds and special assessments ride on the same bill and are what lift it. If you budget on a rule of thumb of 1.10% to 1.20%, you will understate the bill in this city by roughly ten to twenty percent.
Who owns Daly City homes, and how long do they stay?
They stay a long time. The middle length of ownership is 18.2 years as of 2026-08-25, across the 13,187 parcels that carry a recorded date of buying, and 74.3% of those owners have held for a decade or more. Nearly half of them — 46.5% — have held for twenty years or more, and 20.8% have held for thirty.
Titles are held in three forms. Trusts hold 15.3% of the 18,775 parcels with a full building record and corporate or limited-liability owners hold 1.2%, with individuals holding the rest. A trust here is an estate-planning signal common among owners who have held for a long time, and it is not investor ownership. In a city where the middle owner has held for 18.2 years and 20.8% have held for thirty, a revocable living trust is the ordinary way a long-held home passes to the next generation. The investor-adjacent figure is the corporate and limited-liability share, and it is 1.2%.
One limit belongs beside all of it. We can see who holds the title, and we cannot see who lives in the house. The signal that would identify an owner-occupied main home is not carried for this city, so ownership rests on reading the owner-of-record name alone. No owner-occupancy rate exists here, and none appears on this page. The absence of that record is not evidence that a home is not owner-occupied.
A further 29.7% of the parcels with a full building record carry no recorded date of buying at all, and they are left out of every length-of-ownership figure above. Under a system where the assessment resets when a home changes hands, a silent record points toward a very long hold rather than a recent one, so the true middle hold is unlikely to be shorter than the 18.2 years measured here.
Is there room to build or add on in Daly City?
Not on empty ground. The city holds exactly 1 empty parcel out of 24,685 as of 2026-08-25, so adding space here means extending or replacing what already stands. The 5,910 address-only records are not building land and are never counted as such.
What the ground does offer is room around the house. The middle parcel is built out to 0.43 of its lot size, which is a 1,390 square foot house on 3,366 square feet of ground. That buildout figure is an estimate of how intensively lots are used here. It is not a split of value between the ground and the building, that split is not recorded for this city, and this page does not estimate one. More than half the ground under the middle home is unbuilt, which is the practical reason 4.4% of the homes already carry a recorded accessory dwelling unit.
A redevelopment screen returns 4,662 parcels, or 24.8% of the homes with a full building record, and that figure is a ceiling rather than a count. 11,369 parcels meet one of the screen's four conditions by carrying no renovation record at all, which is 60.6% of them, and roughly half the city meets a second condition on age alone. Two of four conditions are therefore met before anyone looks at the building. A low assessed value per square foot, one of the remaining conditions, is largely a signal of long ownership under a capped assessment rather than of building condition. Read 4,662 as the outer edge of a screen and never as a pipeline of teardowns.
Common questions
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