The Rent Premium for Walkability in Burlingame
August 31, 2026
3 new Burlingame apartment buildings, same 0.5-mile from Millbrae Station, the walkable one rents 15% higher. What does that premium say about Rollins Road and San Mateo County?
Three apartment buildings opened in north Burlingame in three years:
- One Adrian, 1 Adrian Court, finished in 2024. 265 units, 7 stories
- Hanover Burlingame, at 1881 Rollins Road, finished in 2025: 420 units, 5 stories
- Revery, at 1766 El Camino Real, is the newest at 311 units, 8 stories
Together that is 996 homes in a city asked to plan for 3,257 units under its 6th-cycle RHNA allocation for 2023 through 2031.
All three buildings sit between Highway 101 and El Camino Real, within a 15-minute walk of Millbrae Station, served by BART, Caltrain, SamTrans and Commute.org shuttles:
- 0.5 miles for Revery,
- 0.5 for Hanover,
- 0.7 for One Adrian
On August 29, 2026, the 47 units listed across the three properties price out like this, weighting each building's asking rent by its square footage:
Two caveats:
- These are list rents on vacant units, and vacant inventory is skewed by floor plan: One Adrian's available units run larger than the others, which always flatters the per-foot number.
- Rent concessions are not factored in the table. Hanover is running 4 weeks free plus $1,000 off, worth roughly 9%, which drops its effective rate to about $5.45 and below One Adrian's. Revery is advertising nothing. Its premium is the one that is actually being paid.
The distance to the train doesn't explain the disparities. Revery and Hanover are the same half mile from Millbrae Station and rent 15% apart.
It's the tracks. Revery fronts El Camino at Trousdale, two minutes on foot from Burlingame Plaza and Mills-Peninsula Medical Center. Those two minutes are not safe ones. In March 2025 a driver ran the red southbound on El Camino, struck and killed Arlene O'Campo in that crosswalk, and kept driving to work. Burlingame's police traffic director said afterward that the intersection isn't considered a problem intersection for the city. Revery commands its premium anyway, with a fatal crosswalk at its front door, which makes 15% a floor rather than a ceiling.
Hanover and One Adrian sit on the Rollins Road side, in the "North Rollins Road Mixed Use" district, where reaching a grocery store or a coffee shop means crossing the Caltrain and BART right-of-way or walking a 4-lane arterial that the city's own General Plan calls "not pedestrian friendly" (narrow sidewalks, buildings set far back, and few pedestrian crossings provided).
