Portola Valley is a very small town located in the state of California. With a population of 4,204 people and just one neighborhood, Portola Valley is the 545th largest community in California.
Portola Valley home prices are not only among the most expensive in California, but Portola Valley real estate also consistently ranks among the most expensive in America.
Portola Valley is a decidedly white-collar town, with fully 99.36% of the workforce employed in white-collar jobs, well above the national average. Overall, Portola Valley is a town of managers, professionals, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Portola Valley who work in management occupations (35.34%), healthcare (10.16%), and business and financial occupations (9.01%).
Also of interest is that Portola Valley has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
Of important note, Portola Valley is also a town of artists. Portola Valley has more artists, designers and people working in media than 90% of the communities in America. This concentration of artists helps shape Portola Valley’s character.
Telecommuters are a relatively large percentage of the workforce: 51.07% of people work from home. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce it is high relative to the nation. These workers are often telecommuters who work in knowledge-based, white-collar professions. For example, Silicon Valley has large numbers of people who telecommute. Other at-home workers may be self-employed people who operate small businesses out of their homes.
Because of many things, Portola Valley is a great place for families with children to consider. First of all, many other families with children live here, making Portola Valley a place where both parents and children are more likely to develop social ties with other families, as well as find family-oriented services and community. The town’s good public school district and large population of college-educated adults provide an environment conducive to academic values. With regard to real estate, Portola Valley has a high rate of owner-occupied single family homes, which tends to reflect stability in the local community. Finally, Portola Valley’s overall crime rate is lower than average for the country.
Being a small town, Portola Valley does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
Do you like to read, write and learn? If you move to Portola Valley, you'll likely find that many of your neighbors like to as well. Portola Valley is one of the more educated communities in America, with a full 82.82% of its adults having a college degree or even advanced degree, compared to a national average across all communities of 21.84%.
The per capita income in Portola Valley in 2022 was $192,605, which is wealthy relative to California and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $770,420 for a family of four.
Portola Valley is a very ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Portola Valley home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Portola Valley residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in Portola Valley include German, English, Irish, Italian, and European.
The most common language spoken in Portola Valley is English. Other important languages spoken here include Tagalog and Chinese.
The way a neighborhood looks and feels when you walk or drive around it, from its setting, its buildings, and its flavor, can make all the difference. This neighborhood has some really cool things about the way it looks and feels as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research. This might include anything from the housing stock to the types of households living here to how people get around.
Wealth makes most things in life easier, and a few things harder. If you are wealthy and enjoy keeping up with the Jones', this neighborhood will interest you. In fact, according to NeighborhoodScout's research, the neighborhood is wealthier than 99.4% of the neighborhoods in the United States. Residents here are truly in a unique situation even when compared to other Americans, based on the sheer amount of wealth concentrated here. Even in times of economic downturn, residents of this neighborhood, as a group, suffered less and recovered more quickly. This is indeed a stand-out characteristic of this neighborhood. As one would expect in a considerably wealthy neighborhood such as this, also has one of the lowest ratings of child poverty in the nation.
In addition, if you are planning to retire in California, this neighborhood should be on your must-see list. For many reasons, may be considered a retiree's dream neighborhood. According to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis and metrics, it's peaceful and quiet, has above average safety from crime compared to other neighborhoods in California, while also offering a diverse range of housing options. This, along with the vibrant mix of very educated seniors and other age groups who choose to live here, makes the neighborhood more retiree-friendly than 99.4% of neighborhoods in CA. If a California retirement is in your future, this neighborhood should be one of the places you visit. In addition to being an excellent choice for active retirees, this neighborhood is also a very good choice for urban sophisticates, families with school-aged children and highly educated executives.
Also, if knowledge is power, then imagine the cumulative power of one neighborhood where many of the adults have earned an advanced degree, such as a Masters, law degree, medical degree, or even a Ph.D. This is certainly the case in the neighborhood, where 47.8% have earned an advanced degree. Compare that to the average neighborhood in America, where just 13.7% of adults have completed a post-graduate degree, and you can see why this neighborhood is a stand out. In fact, this neighborhood has a higher rate of adults with an advanced degree than 98.8% of the neighborhoods in America.
Each year, fewer and fewer Americans make their living as farmers, foresters, or fishers. But the neighborhood truly stands out among U.S. neighborhoods. According to exclusive NeighborhoodScout analysis, this neighborhood has a greater proportion of farmers, foresters, or fishers than 99.2% of all American neighborhoods. This is truly a unique cultural characteristic of this neighborhood.
Furthermore, executives, managers and professionals make up 71.6% of the workforce in the neighborhood which, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis, is a higher proportion of such high-level people than is found in 95.9% of the neighborhoods in America. For this reason, this neighborhood really stands out as unique.
In the neighborhood, many people's commute means walking from the bedroom to the home office. NeighborhoodScout's analysis found that 38.5% of residents worked from home. This may not seem like a large number, but Scout's research shows that this is a higher percentage of people working from home than 98.7% of the neighborhoods in America. Often people who work from home are engaged in the creative or technological economy, such as is found in areas around Boston, and in Silicon Valley. Other times, people may be engaged in other businesses like trading stocks from home, or running a small beauty salon.
Also, if your dream is to be able to ride your bike to work each day, look no further than this unique neighborhood. With 5.4% of residents in the neighborhood commuting on a bicycle to and from work daily, this neighborhood has more bicycle commuters than 98.5% of all neighborhoods in the U.S., according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis.
Did you know that the neighborhood has more British and Russian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 4.6% of this neighborhood's residents have British ancestry and 4.9% have Russian ancestry.
There are two complementary measures for understanding the income of a neighborhood's residents: the average and the extremes. While a neighborhood may be relatively wealthy overall, it is equally important to understand the rate of people - particularly children - who are living at or below the federal poverty line, which is extremely low income. Some neighborhoods with a lower average income may actually have a lower childhood poverty rate than another with a higher average income, and this helps us understand the conditions and character of a neighborhood.
The neighbors in the neighborhood in Portola Valley are wealthy, making it among the 15% highest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 99.4% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 0.0% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 100.0% of America's neighborhoods.
A neighborhood is far different if it is dominated by enlisted military personnel rather than people who earn their living by farming. It is also different if most of the neighbors are clerical support or managers. What is wonderful is the sheer diversity of neighborhoods, allowing you to find the type that fits your lifestyle and aspirations.
In the neighborhood, 71.6% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is farming, forestry, or commercial fishing, with 11.0% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (9.0%), and 4.3% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The languages spoken by people in this neighborhood are diverse. These are tabulated as the languages people preferentially speak when they are at home with their families. The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 83.9% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Tagalog (the first language of the Philippine region).
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Culture is shared learned behavior. We learn it from our parents, their parents, our houses of worship, and much of our culture – our learned behavior – comes from our ancestors. That is why ancestry and ethnicity can be so interesting and important to understand: places with concentrations of people of one or more ancestries often express those shared learned behaviors and this gives each neighborhood its own culture. Even different neighborhoods in the same city can have drastically different cultures.
In the neighborhood in Portola Valley, CA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (17.1%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (14.9%), and residents who report Irish roots (13.5%), and some of the residents are also of Mexican ancestry (11.7%), along with some Italian ancestry residents (8.0%), among others. In addition, 17.8% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.
How you get to work – car, bus, train or other means – and how much of your day it takes to do so is a large quality of life and financial issue. Especially with gasoline prices rising and expected to continue doing so, the length and means of one's commute can be a financial burden. Some neighborhoods are physically located so that many residents have to drive in their own car, others are set up so many walk to work, or can take a train, bus, or bike. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (40.5% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (48.8%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also bicycle to get to work (5.4%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.
