A working harbour, a Victorian seaside town next door, and the most varied housing market on the Peninsula.

What it is

Monterey was the capital of Alta California and still has the adobes to prove it, along with a fishing harbour that never stopped working, Cannery Row, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It is the Peninsula’s practical centre — hospitals, offices, the airport, and the shops everyone else drives to.

Pacific Grove, around the point, is quieter and more residential: Victorian houses in tight streets, the shoreline path at Lovers Point, Asilomar’s dunes on the ocean side, and the monarch butterflies that overwinter there each year and give the town its nickname.

This area also takes in Seaside and Marina on the bay’s north shore. Both are considerably more affordable, both are changing quickly, and both are built partly on former Fort Ord land — now home to California State University, Monterey Bay.

The housing stock

The broadest range on the Peninsula. Pacific Grove’s Victorians and beach cottages, Monterey’s mix of period houses and post-war suburbs, condominiums near the harbour, and newer developments in Seaside and Marina. This is where the Peninsula’s ordinary housing market lives, and the median here is meaningfully below Carmel’s.

What to know before you buy

• Older housing stock means older systems. Pacific Grove has a great many houses of real age and charm; some have the wiring and foundations to match.
• Some Pacific Grove properties carry historic designation, which constrains what you may change. Check before you plan a renovation.
• Fog sits heaviest here of anywhere on this list — Pacific Grove and the bay shore rarely see a clear summer morning.
• Seaside and Marina are the value play, with the usual caveat: buy the street, not just the house.