Small (the population is about 14,000), quiet and notably lacking in diversity, Mill Valley is sometimes disparaged as “Mill Valium.” But the town’s widespread charms and excellent schools keep many residents rooted.
The commercial district concentrated along Throckmorton Avenue between Madrona Street and Blithedale Avenue has boutiques, galleries, restaurants and entertainment places, some bankrolled by local celebrities. Bob Weir, the Grateful Dead guitarist, helped to revive Sweetwater, a bar where local musicians, including Jerry Garcia and Bonnie Raitt, performed from 1972 to 2007. In 2012, it reopened as Sweetwater Music Hall in the town’s 113-year-old Masonic Lodge at 19 Corte Madera Avenue. Sammy Hagar, the former lead singer of Van Halen, owns El Paseo, a steakhouse at 17 Throckmorton Avenue.
What You’ll Find
Mill Valley is in southern Marin County, about 11 miles north of San Francisco via Route 101, past Sausalito. Jane Manning, who has sold real estate in the area since 1986, said that most homes are undistinguished midcentury bungalows and, to a lesser extent, Victorian or early-20th-century houses and are typically 1,200 to 1,500 square feet, with few exceeding 5,000 square feet.
“People are not living large,” she said. “They’re living there because they want to be there.”
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The New York Times
Because strict preservation laws discourage tear-downs, and a lack of buildable land drastically limits new construction, Mill Valley’s inventory is low. “There are multiple offers on every house,” Ms. Manning said, adding that such scarcity is common throughout Marin County and drives up prices.
For people seeking alternatives to a single-family house, Mill Valley is not obliging, she said. The condo market is small, and units are often built in townhouses with stairs, making them unfeasible for older residents looking to downsize. However, there are efforts statewide and locally to refine policies for creating and renting out accessory units, assisting both the people who have more house than they need and those looking for reasonably priced accommodations. And a new Landlord Partnership Program in Marin County offers incentives for landlords to create affordable housing for low-income residents.
What You’ll Pay
According to the real estate information website Homesnap, as of Dec. 12, the median sales price of single-family homes in Mill Valley was $1.58 million, a year-on-year increase of 8.6 percent. The median price of condos was $728,000, a year-on-year decrease of 36.4 percent (because there are relatively few condos available, median sales prices can fluctuate wildly from year to year).
As of Dec. 19, 44 homes were listed on the website of Decker Bullock Sotheby’s International Realty, drawn from multiple sources. Single-family house listings ranged in price from $910,000, for a 1970 three-bedroom, one-bath house at 304 Dolan Avenue, to $6,950,000, for a four-bedroom, four-bath 2007 house with a pool on 13.4 acres at 114 Inez Place.
Condos ranged from $469,000, for a one-bedroom, one-bath 696-square-foot unit at 554 Seaver Drive, to $727,000, for a two-bedroom, two-bath 1,054-square-foot unit at 1109 Shelter Bay Avenue.
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Peter DaSilva for The New York Times
The Vibe
Lara Hedberg Deam, the founder of Dwell magazine, could be considered made for Mill Valley. In 1994, she moved there from Washington, D.C., buying a dilapidated shotgun house that she shared with the surfer she was dating and the dog she had smuggled out of Mexico. (They parked their R.V. out front.) After substantially renovating the place — an effort that drove her to learn more about design and ultimately start her own publication — she continues to live in the house with her husband, the architect and designer Christopher Deam, and their teenage twins.
The house is downtown. (“When I was in my 20s, I couldn’t imagine driving for coffee,” Ms. Deam said.) Even so, a favorite hiking path starts a short walking distance from her house. “The mountain is really the thing that keeps me and a lot of us here,” she said, referring to Mount Tamalpais.
Despite the easygoing environment, some longtime residents say that the influx of new money has made Mill Valley less friendly. Real estate is more expensive than in San Francisco, where the median price of a single-family home as of November was $1.36 million There are complaints of arrogant drivers in fancy vehicles clogging up the roads.
“Some people like to blame it on Airbnb,” Ms. Deam said of the congestion, which she attributes to support staff employed by increasingly affluent homeowners. “The overarching struggle is that people want Mill Valley to stay how it was when they came,” she said. “My opinion is that things are always changing, and that’s just how it is.”
The Schools
Mill Valley is served by five public elementary schools, including Old Mill Elementary School, at 352 Throckmorton Avenue, which has about 320 students, kindergarten through fifth grade. On 2014-15 state tests, the last for which figures were offered, 82 percent of students met standards in English versus 49 percent statewide; 83 percent met standards in math versus 37 percent statewide.
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Peter DaSilva for The New York Times
Edna Maguire Elementary School, a public school at 80 Lomita Drive, has about 570 students, kindergarten through fifth grade. On 2014-15 state tests, 83 percent of students met standards in English; 74 percent met standards in math.
Mill Valley Middle School, a public school at 425 Sycamore Avenue, has about 1,055 students, sixth through eighth grades. On 2014-15 state tests, 83 percent of students met standards in English versus 48 percent statewide; 74 percent met standards in math versus 36 percent statewide.
Tamalpais High School, a public school at 700 Miller Avenue, has about 1,525 students, 10th through 12th grades. The 2015 average combined SAT score was 1,725 out of a possible 2,400, versus 1,473 statewide; the average ACT score was 26, versus 22 statewide.
The Commute
Mill Valley is not served by Bay Area Rapid Transit. The drive from downtown to Market Street in San Francisco, via Route 101, takes about a half-hour. The Golden Gate Bridge toll is $7.50, or $6.50 with a Bay Area FasTrak tag.
Golden Gate Transit offers a commuter bus between Mill Valley and San Francisco, Mondays through Fridays, except holidays. The trip from the Mill Valley depot at Miller Avenue and Sunnyside Avenue to San Francisco’s financial district takes about 45 minutes and costs $5.50.
The History
Mill Valley was named by John Thomas Reed, an Irishman who was one of the region’s first European settlers and built a sawmill in the 1830s on Cascade Creek, in what is now Old Mill Park. A train station that opened in 1889 helped turn the area into a summer resort. Early-20th-century visitors would travel up Mount Tamalpais for hiking excursions on what was described as the crookedest railroad in the world (281 curves in slightly more than eight miles of track), returning downhill in cars propelled by gravity. Mill Valley’s annual 7.4-mile Dipsea Race, which is run from the center of town over hills and canyons, ending at Stinson Beach, began in 1905.
