Palo Alto Down Payment Takes 50 Years as Square Pie Guys Closes Friday

A typical renter household in Palo Alto would need nearly 50 years to save enough for a down payment and closing costs on a starter home, according to calculations published Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026 by The Almanac and Mountain View Voice, while on Palo Alto's California Avenue, Detroit-style pizzeria Square Pie Guys announced it will permanently close its restaurant at 369 California Ave. after service on Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, The Almanac reported.

Palo Alto Renters Face Nearly 50 Years of Saving for a $2.88 Million Starter Home

The housing analysis, reported by Linda Taaffe, applies the methodology of a new national study by the Center for Responsible Lending and the Julian Bond Institute—"Homeownership Further Out of Reach: The Number of Years First-Time Homebuyers Need to Save for Down Payment and Closing Costs Has Doubled Since 2019"—across 10 major U.S. metropolitan areas.

The study models a first-time buyer purchasing a starter home priced at 80% of the local median sale price using a Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loan with a 3.5% minimum down payment (far below the 10% average first-time buyer down payment) plus 3.65% in closing costs, while saving 2.63% of pretax income annually:

• National Baseline: A typical U.S. renter household earning $58,000 needs 16 years to save for a starter home—double the pre-pandemic timeline in 2019. For Black renter households, the timeline reaches 21 years, an increase of 10 years since 2019, according to Center for Responsible Lending President Mike Calhoun.
• San Francisco Metro Area: Renters need 28 years to save for upfront costs, nearly double the 15 years required in 2019.
• San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara Metro Area: With a 2024 U.S. Census American Community Survey 1-year median renter income of $103,391 (compared to $164,801 across all households), a renter saving $2,719 per year needs 43 years to accumulate $117,260 in upfront costs.
• Palo Alto: Using 2020–2024 5-year Census data showing a Palo Alto median renter income of $158,266 (versus $231,101 overall) and a median gross rent of $3,484 per month, a household saving 2.63% annually sets aside $4,162 per year. With Palo Alto's Zillow median sale price at $3.6 million for June–August 2026, a starter home at 80% of median costs $2.88 million, requiring $205,920 in upfront down payment and closing costs—or 49.4 years (nearly 50 years) of savings. Housing advocacy group SV@Home notes that 40% of Palo Alto renters spend between 30% and 50% of their income on housing, and nearly 19% spend more than half.

Square Pie Guys Closing 369 California Ave. Location After Friday Service

In local retail and dining news, Square Pie Guys founder Marc Schechter announced that the pizzeria's Palo Alto outpost at 369 California Ave. (phone 650-285-2002) will serve its final pies from 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 29 and Friday, Oct. 30, 2026.

Founded by Schechter as a San Francisco pop-up in 2018 before opening its first brick-and-mortar restaurant in 2019, Square Pie Guys moved into the former Local Kitchens space on car-free California Avenue in September 2025. Despite a busy 1-year run for daytime lunch orders, corporate catering, and a popular thin-crust Bar Pie Guys pop-up in August, Schechter told reporter Adrienne Mitchel that evening dinner and weekend foot traffic along California Avenue were not sufficient to sustain the location.

Square Pie Guys continues to operate its 4 other Bay Area restaurants in San Francisco, Oakland, Campbell, and Walnut Creek, and Schechter said the company is planning a future expansion into the North Bay.