Blossom Manor Los Gatos: County or Town?
One of the oddities about Silicon Valley is that the mailing address doesn’t always line up with the jurisdiction (and also doesn’t always correlate to the school district either). You can be in the city of San Jose with a Los Gatos mailing address. You can be in Los Gatos with a San Jose mailing address. Additionally, a property can have a Los Gatos address but not actually be part of the town, but rather in an unincorporated county “pocket”.
Most of The Manor is a county pocket.
Those homes which were originally developed “in the town” have sidewalks, hard curbs and gutters. (They are generally “tree lined” too.) The rest of the neighborhood has no sidewalks, soft curbs and no gutters. Those are the areas which are county pockets or at least began that way.
The difference between one area and the other could be the subject of a long article, but in short if you’re in the county the remodeling restrictions tend to be a lot looser. As a downside, you cannot park at Oak Meadow Park for free (not a big expense). And you may have the sheriff police your area rather than the Los Gatos Monte Sereno Police Department – that “depends”.
Many county pockets are getting pulled into their nearby cities one way or another. The most common way is when a property owner in the county wants to substantially remodel or rebuild and is already adjacent to the town area. A forced annexation may happen, which is costly but also changes the rules for what can happen with the remodel (as the town of Los Gatos is more strict than Santa Clara County on several issues).
The area known as Blossom Hill Manor on the maps (but not called that by locals) is bordered by Blossom Hill Road, Los Gatos Blvd, Los Gatos-Almaden Rd and Longwood. Most of the properties in the Manor are single family homes, but there are some duplexes along Blossom Hill Road and Camelia Terrace behind Whole Foods.