Odor problems are a sensitive topic, whether you’re talking about someone just in from exercising or a whole town or neighborhood. Home for sale with a periodic stench? That won’t be listed in the MLS, and it may be down played (or absent) in the disclosures. This can be very upsetting if you learn it only after you move in.
The most common issues in Santa Clara County seem to relate to agricultural areas, food processing, or sewer and/or waste processing. Other issues can stem from standing water (bad idea as this can also breed disease bearing mosquitos) or nearby restaurants (breweries, barbecues, fried food, and coffee roasting can be stinky). Being downwind of any of these can get unpleasant.
On a much smaller scale, it’s possible to have a bad neighbor who creates an odor nuisance, making life unpleasant. I’ve had clients tell me of neighbors who “go out to their back yard and smoke pot every day”, making my client’s back yard an unpleasant place and nearly unusable. Other bad neighbor problems can be from yards with too many pets and not enough cleanup.
For folks relocating to Silicon Valley, though, it’s important to be aware of smelly or potentially smelly areas. The locals know about them – and you should, too.
Communities with well known odor problems
South County in general has more agricultural industry, so the first two spots on our list are in that area. That said, it’s also an area undergoing a rapid development with multiple new tracts being built and more farmland turning residential.
Gilroy, in the “south county” area, is well known as the Garlic Capital of the World. There’s a Garlic Festival late each July (it was canceled for a few years, but just returned in 2025). To be sure, the smell is strong when the garlic ripens in the field! I can often smell it all the way in Los Gatos on a warm summer morning! The smell is also strong when it’s getting processed at the plant along Highway 152. Gilroy has a nice downtown area and is more affordable than most of Santa Clara County. It enjoys a Caltrain stop so offers an easier commute than most places in the San Jose area.
Morgan Hill, just a little north of Gilroy, but also in south county, has a mushroom festival (the Mushroom Mardi Gras in late May each year). Mushrooms are a super food but mushroom farms can smell pretty awful. Currently, there are 2 mushroom farms in northern Morgan Hill. Buying in that beautiful city? We’d recommend visiting the area many times, at different times of the day and week. Talk to neighbors and see if you can find out if this is an issue for them – I want to note that it is not a problem everywhere in the city.
Morgan Hill is also more affordable than most of the San Francisco Bay Area, has pleasant downtown (with a great farmer’s market), and features a Caltrain stop too. (I’m told that Google and Apple buses have stops there as well.) There are many younger built homes as well, and some lovely luxury neighborhoods.
Milpitas, on the northeast end of the county, sometimes has problems from the wind carrying smells from a landfill near the bay on the east side of Alviso. There’s also a sewer processing plant in the same general area that may be contributing to the ambiance. It’s bad enough that there’s a whole website dedicated to this problem: http://milpitas-odor.info/ This smell is not confined to just Milpitas but may be experienced in adjacent areas such as Alviso, north San Jose, northern Santa Clara, and southern Fremont, but Milpitas appears to get the brunt of it.
Milpitas has really strong public schools, is “close in” and convenient for many commuters, and is not as expensive as communities on the west side of the valley with similarly high scoring schools. It’s a very good “bang for your buck” in terms of the amount of home / school you get for your money. But the odor problems have been enormous ones over the years.
Past sources of smells
The Shoreline park in Mountain View was a landfill at one time, and years ago was well known to have issues with smells and also with spontaneous combustion fires that began as the gas from composting materials somehow lit. That was almost 20 years ago and the situation has been corrected for many years now. (You can read more on that here.)
There’s a landfill in the Almaden area of San Jose near the Los Gatos border, the Guadalupe Landfill (that area was originally a mercury mine). I have been told by someone in Almaden near Los Gatos that there that there used to be a smell once or twice a year on verry hot summer days, but that they haven’t whiffed it in years. I’m not aware of odor problems coming from this one. Back in late 2017, due to Milpitas’s ongoing nightmare with bad smells, some of the waste that might have gone to the Newby Island landfill started to be directed to Guadalupe, though I don’t know if that’s still the case today.
What can a newby to Silicon Valley do to avoid bad odors?
First, read the disclosures very, very carefully. Often home buyers breeze through them and don’t ask probing questions on what something means. A seller may write “occasional agricultural odors” and that doesn’t sound too bad. What if that means half the time, you cannot ignore the mushroom farm? Or that every morning you get hit with the scent of manure? Ask questions to get more details on the disclosure items. And talk to neighbors as well as local real estate agents.
Second, learn where potential sources of smells are located, if local: food processing plants, water processing plants, landfills, farms, ranches, homes with farm animals (if any). You might be surprised that in Silicon Valley you could have a 4-H neighbor who’s raising a goat or some other type of animal – it may smell or be noisy! In my east Los Gatos neighborhood, I was surprised that a neighbor about 5 houses away had goats for 4-H, and a little farther out are horse properties – you wouldn’t have guessed it if you just drove down my block!
