Wrapped between two golf courses and centered around Tanager Park, the Upper Birds offer a quieter, more established version of coastal-adjacent Orange County living.
If you're researching the Upper Birds neighborhood of Mesa Verde, you've likely already noticed it doesn't show up the way Newport Beach or Corona del Mar do in the glossy lifestyle magazines. That's part of the appeal. The people who live here tend to want it that way.
This is a calm, established residential pocket on the inland side of Costa Mesa, just minutes from the coast but tucked away from the tourist routes. Wider streets. Older oaks. Three-car garages. Two golf courses on the edges. A central park where neighbors actually know each other.
Here's a complete local read on the area — geography, architecture, lifestyle, logistics, and a deeper look at Longwood Greens, the small townhome enclave hidden inside the neighborhood.
The geography: Upper Birds vs. Lower Birds
In Mesa Verde, Placentia Avenue serves as the dividing line.
The Lower Birds sit west of Placentia. These are the early-1960s single-story ranch homes the original Mesa Verde tract was known for. They're charming, well-built, often on great lots, but the floor plans can feel compartmentalized to a buyer coming from a newer-construction home.
The Upper Birds sit east of Placentia, tucked between Adams Avenue, Placentia, and the private Mesa Verde Country Club. Built mostly between 1970 and 1976, these homes have a noticeably different footprint than the Lower Birds. Most are two-story, on larger lots, with the floor-plan choices that came with the second wave of Mesa Verde construction.
The streets — Tanager, Oriole, Hummingbird, Kinglet, Bunting, Bluebird, Cardinal, and the rest of the bird names — give the neighborhood its informal name.
Architecture and home footprints
If you're moving in and looking for square footage and architectural drama, the Upper Birds are where to focus.
The dominant style is two-story with sweeping vaulted ceilings, large entry foyers, architectural fireplaces in the living and family rooms, and three-car attached garages. Many homes feature a staircase visible from the entry, and a meaningful share have been remodeled in recent years to open the kitchen-to-family-room flow that buyers now expect.
Standard lot sizes range from roughly 7,500 to over 10,000 square feet. That matters. On these blocks you can comfortably fit a pool, an outdoor kitchen, mature landscaping, and still have generous outdoor space left over. A handful of properties have detached ADUs in the rear — increasingly common as the market values flexible living space.
Price reality, as of late spring 2026: fully remodeled single-family homes on the bird streets have been clearing between roughly $2.5M and $3M, with less-updated homes trading lower, generally in the $2M to $2.3M range. For a deeper read on what's been selling and what's driving the spread, see the Upper Birds market brief.
Tanager Park: the neighborhood's living room
The Upper Birds wrap entirely around Tanager Park, a 7.4-acre public park that anchors the whole community. Open grass fields, basketball courts, playground structures, quiet walking paths.
What the park really gives the neighborhood is a center of gravity. The streets surrounding it are wide, flat, and slow-paced. Neighbors walk the park after work, dogs meet other dogs, and the streets have the slower pace people often hope to find closer to the coast. The Fourth of July and Halloween bring out enough neighbors to make the streets feel like a small town again, briefly. Ask a longtime resident where they live and they'll often say "by the park" before they say "Mesa Verde." That's how central it is to the neighborhood's identity.
Two country clubs on the edges
The Upper Birds is bordered on the south by the public 36-hole Costa Mesa Country Club, and sits across the street from the member-owned Mesa Verde Country Club on the north and west.
You'll occasionally see residents with personal golf carts in their three-car garages, driving them on residential streets to the course for an early morning round or lunch at the clubhouse. The country club adjacency is a permanent neighborhood feature that other inland Costa Mesa neighborhoods don't have.
The microclimate most people don't notice
Mesa Verde sits in a particular geographic pocket that runs several degrees cooler than the inland Costa Mesa and Santa Ana neighborhoods just a few miles east.
The reason is geography. The neighborhood is positioned just above the low-lying Santa Ana River basin and only a few miles from the coast. The afternoon marine layer that develops along the shoreline sweeps across the basin and over Mesa Verde before dissipating further inland. You get the cool evening breezes that the beach towns are known for, without the salt air that quietly corrodes hardware, stucco, and fixtures in homes south of PCH.
Owners who've moved over from Newport or Corona del Mar often comment on how much less they spend on exterior maintenance after a few years here.
Logistics and daily commute
If you've ever tried to leave Newport at 8 a.m. on a Tuesday, you know that twenty-five minutes of surface streets is just the beginning. The Upper Birds neighborhood offers something different: instant access.
From the bird streets, the 405, 55, and 73 freeways are all reachable in under five minutes via Adams Avenue or Harbor Boulevard. John Wayne Airport is eight to ten minutes door-to-door for a non-rush-hour drive. South Coast Plaza is about the same.
For day-to-day errands, the Eastside 17th Street retail corridor and SOCO & The OC Mix are the local favorites, both reachable without ever touching PCH or fighting Newport Coast traffic. Premium grocers, neighborhood coffee shops, and the kind of independent restaurants that turn into regulars within a month of moving in.
Longwood Greens: the townhome enclave inside the Upper Birds
Hidden inside the Upper Birds boundary is a small, low-density townhome community called Longwood Greens. Twenty-three units on a single private cul-de-sac (Longwood Court), built in 1980 and 1981, quietly tucked between the two country clubs.
The footprint. Most units are two-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath, ranging from roughly 1,600 to 1,800 square feet. Multi-level with vaulted ceilings, oversized entry doors, and private interior patios. Attached two-car direct-access garages.
The price. Townhomes here have been listing between roughly $1.1M and $1.3M as of late spring 2026, with HOA dues currently around $520 per month. The HOA covers exterior maintenance, the private greenbelts, and a community pool and spa.
Who tends to buy here. In my experience, two distinct groups:
The first is the downsizing Mesa Verde local. Someone who's lived for years in a 3,000 square foot Upper Birds home, doesn't want the maintenance footprint anymore, but isn't ready to leave the neighborhood culture, the country club, or the friends they've built over time. Longwood Greens lets them stay in the same zip code, the same community, even the same evening dog walk, in a smaller, lock-and-leave property.
The second is the low-maintenance buyer. Someone who values the safety, climate, and access of the 92626 zip code but doesn't have the time or interest to maintain a quarter-acre yard. The HOA handles the landscape. They fly in and out of SNA for work and come home to a community pool and a quiet cul-de-sac.
Inventory here is naturally limited — there are only 23 doors total — which means listings tend to be infrequent.
My take
The Upper Birds appeal to a specific kind of buyer. Someone who values square footage, neighborhood culture, quiet streets, and the kind of community rhythms that are harder to find on the coast. The trade-off is that you're not walking to the sand. You're a short drive to the sand, with a much calmer street outside your front door.
For buyers who want a real neighborhood — not just a nice address — the bird streets do something few coastal-adjacent neighborhoods still do. They feel lived-in. People know each other by name. The park is full on Saturday mornings.
For buyers downsizing or looking for a lock-and-leave property, Longwood Greens is the unusual case where you can move down in size without leaving the community you've already built.
If you're considering the area, or considering a move out of it with a clear picture of what your current home would do today, I'd be glad to walk you through the numbers and the strategy behind them.
If you want a closer look at this micro-market
If you're considering Mesa Verde's Upper Birds, Longwood Greens, or a move out of the neighborhood, the most important thing is understanding the micro-market — not just the citywide Costa Mesa numbers.
Street, lot size, condition, layout, remodel quality, proximity to Tanager Park, and whether a home is attached or detached can all change the pricing conversation.
If you want a clear read on what your home would compete against today, or what your budget would buy in this pocket compared to Newport Beach and nearby coastal markets, I'd be happy to walk you through it.
