Palo Alto · Ventura What has sold in Ventura.
Every single-family sale recorded in Ventura over the last twelve months — where each one is, what it fetched, and how it did against the price it first asked.
Ventura · Palo Alto
What this neighborhood actually did.
Closed sales of single-family homes in Ventura, Palo Alto, from September 2, 2025 to September 25, 2026. Source: MLSListings. Each sale is listed with the firm that represented the seller. Information deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Figures are medians rather than averages — one very large sale should not move a neighborhood’s number. 446 sales were recorded in this period; 10 of them carried coordinates and are drawn here. Base map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.
What this place is
The original Mayfield townsite and Palo Alto’s industrial edge — and the one neighborhood the city’s own consultants found had essentially no historic fabric, which is itself unusual here.
Mayfield came first. Founded in 1853 at California Avenue and El Camino, it had hotels, a livery stable and a brewery that ran from 1868 until Prohibition. The Stanfords wanted a temperance college town; Mayfield, which liked its saloons, refused, so they backed University Park instead. Mayfield finally voted to consolidate with Palo Alto in July 1925 — which is why Palo Alto has two downtowns.
The grid here came decades before the houses. A 1941 aerial photograph shows most of Ventura’s streets already laid out with very few houses on them; the lots filled in after the war and were largely built out by 1965. Seventeen houses on Olive Avenue date to 1946 alone.
The oldest surviving building in the area is the 1918 Bayside Canning Company at 340 Portage — founded by Thomas Foon Chew, canning asparagus and apricots. He died at forty-two and about 2,500 people came to his funeral. The building later held Fry’s Electronics, reopened in May 2026 as a net-zero commercial building, and Portage Avenue has been renamed Thomas Foon Chew Avenue.
The specifics
- Mayfield was founded in 1853 at California Avenue and El Camino Real, with a brewery that ran from 1868 until Prohibition. It voted 1,094 to 441 on July 6, 1925 to consolidate with Palo Alto.
- A 1941 aerial shows most of Ventura’s streets already laid out with few houses on them. The lots filled in after the war and were largely built out by 1965.City of Palo Alto — North Ventura historic eligibility memo
- Seventeen houses on Olive Avenue date to 1946; Pepper Avenue went earlier, with homes from 1920, 1939 and 1940.City of Palo Alto — North Ventura historic eligibility memo
- 340 Portage Avenue (1918) is the oldest surviving building in the North Ventura plan area — the Bayside Canning Company, founded by Thomas Foon Chew. The plant ran until 1949, later held Fry’s Electronics, and reopened in May 2026 as a 73,000 square foot net-zero commercial building. Portage Avenue has been renamed Thomas Foon Chew Avenue.San José Spotlight
- The city’s 2019 historic-eligibility study found none of the surveyed North Ventura properties eligible for the National or California Register, individually or as part of a district.City of Palo Alto — North Ventura historic eligibility memo
- Don Jesús Ramos, a Mexican immigrant who reached Mayfield in 1851, built a house on two acres at 727 Page Mill Road in 1883 and farmed vegetables there. Don Jesus Ramos Park opened in 1958.Palo Alto Museum
Ventura in one paragraph
10 homes sold in Ventura over the last year, at a median of $2.99M — below the Palo Alto median of $4.01M. The typical one is a 1,338 sq ft single-story house from 1951 on a 5,700 sq ft lot, at $2,080 a square foot.
Against the price sellers first asked — not the price they had been reduced to — the median sale here finished +7.5%, and 80% of sellers got at least their asking price. That is stronger than Palo Alto as a whole, where the median is +5.5%: Ventura gets bid up harder than the city average.
Every sale: what it fetched, and how it did
One dot per home. Across is the result against the price it first asked. Up is what it actually sold for. Red beat its asking price; charcoal did not.
The dashed lines are the two medians — $3.10M and +10.1%. A dot to the right of the upright line beat the price it opened at; a dot above the flat one sold for more than the typical home here. What the corners tell you is whether the top of Ventura behaves like the rest of it.
If this is your street
The map says what sold. It doesn’t say what yours would.
Two houses on the same Ventura block can be hundreds of dollars a square foot apart, and the difference is almost never the house — it is what was done to it before anyone saw it. Maggie will tell you which of those things is worth doing on yours, and which is not.