Westcliff

What Westcliff is

Westcliff is the flat ground on the Newport Beach side of the Upper Newport Bay: the midcentury ranch tracts between Irvine Avenue, Westcliff Drive, Dover Drive and the bay bluffs, north of Newport Heights and west of Dover Shores. It is one of the most liveable parts of the city and one of the hardest to search for, because Westcliff is not a single tract and the MLS has no boundary called Westcliff.

In the records, Westcliff is more than twenty separate subdivision tracts filed under a dozen different names: Baycrest North, Baycrest South, Baycrest, the Baycrest R Series, Baycrest Harbor Highlands, Harbor Highlands I, Harbor Highlands II, Westcliff East, Westcliff West, Westcliff Grove, Windward East Homes, Cherry Lake Area, Cherry Lake Estates, Bonnie Bay Highland Homes, Back Bay Custom Homes, Back Bay Anniversary Homes, Newport Glen, Upper Newport Bay, and five separate attached condominium tracts. That is why searching Westcliff on a national portal returns an incoherent mixture. There is no code to search.

On the ground it is one neighborhood. Wide, quiet streets of single-story and split-level ranch houses from the late 1950s and 1960s on lots around 9,000 square feet, with Mariners Elementary, Mariners Park and the Mariners branch library in the middle of it, the Westcliff Plaza shopping center at Irvine Avenue and Westcliff Drive at one corner, the 17th Street corridor across Irvine Avenue in Costa Mesa for dinner and coffee, and the Back Bay bluff trail at the end of the eastern streets. Ensign Intermediate and Newport Harbor High are a short ride south. Families bike to school here, cyclists and runners use the bay loop before work, and the five condominium tracts along the Westcliff Drive commercial edge give the neighborhood an entry price that nothing else on this side of the bay has.

I pulled every listing in this area over the last two years, excluding Dover Shores and Santa Ana Heights, which are separate neighborhoods. That is 111 listings, 95 of them closed sales. Homes date from 1934 to 2026. Closed sales ran $745,000 to $7,100,000 with a median of $3,580,000, at $1,412 per square foot, 2,616 square feet and a median lot of 8,900 square feet.

Who buys here, and why

Westcliff is the Newport Beach neighborhood for people who want a house and a yard more than they want a view. The first buyer is the family chasing the Mariners Elementary, Ensign and Newport Harbor High path, who wants a single-level ranch on a 9,000 square foot lot with room for a pool and a bike ride to school. They compete for the original pre-1960 and 1960s houses in Harbor Highlands and the Baycrest tracts, which is why those houses clear in under a week. The second is the downsizer or single-level buyer coming out of Dover Shores, Big Canyon or the Heights who wants one floor, no stairs, no dues and no gate, and who will pay a premium per foot for a clean original ranch rather than a two-story rebuild. The third is the builder and the build-to-suit buyer working Baycrest North and Baycrest South, where the lots are largest and the new construction at five million and up finds its small, patient buyer pool. And at the edge, the condominium buyer in Dover Village, Vista Bahia, Westcliff Villa, Newport Villas and Newport Garden Villas: first Newport buyers and downsizers who want the address and the location for about a million dollars and accept dues to get it.

What separates Westcliff from its neighbors is the lot pattern and the age. Newport Heights to the south is older, denser and on a 6,375 square foot grid, with a rebuild rate that has already reshaped whole blocks; Westcliff is a decade newer, with 50 percent more land per house and most of the original ranches still standing. Dover Shores to the east shares the bluff and the bay but adds an association, private beaches and a water-street premium that nearly doubles the price; Westcliff has the same bay at the end of the street and no dues. Eastside Costa Mesa across Irvine Avenue is the same bluff at a Costa Mesa price. Westcliff is the middle: Newport schools, Newport address, big flat lots, and a house you can live in on one level the day you close.

The finding: only the cheapest homes here have HOA dues

In almost every Newport Beach community I measure, dues rise with price. In Westcliff there is a cleaner and stranger relationship: the detached houses have no association at all, and the only homes that pay dues are the least expensive ones in the neighborhood.

Of the 99 detached listings, 91 carry no HOA fee whatsoever. Only eight carry any figure, and most of those are small.

The five attached condominium tracts, all of them clustered near the Westcliff Drive commercial edge, are the exception:

• Newport Garden Villas, median close $780,000, 1,065 square feet, dues $450 a month.
• Newport Villas, median close $810,000, 1,077 square feet, dues $475.
• Vista Bahia, median close $1,005,000, 1,521 square feet, dues $712 to $717.
• Westcliff Villa, median close $1,062,000, 1,177 square feet, dues $520 to $702.
• Dover Village, median close $1,175,000, 1,368 square feet, dues $515.

Set those against the detached side. Baycrest North closed at a median of $4,750,000 and pays nothing. Harbor Highlands II closed at $3,950,000 and pays nothing. Westcliff East closed at $3,370,000 and pays nothing.

So a buyer at $780,000 in Newport Garden Villas carries $450 a month in dues, which is 0.69 percent of the purchase price every year. A buyer at $4,750,000 in Baycrest North carries zero.

Two exceptions worth knowing. Newport Glen carries $405 a month plus $130, and Cherry Lake Estates, the newest pocket, carries $1,200 quarterly. A handful of Upper Newport Bay and Westcliff West homes carry $260 and $460 respectively while their neighbors carry none; those are small maintenance associations covering part of a street rather than the whole tract. Confirm for the specific address rather than the tract.

The tract table

Every tract with at least two recorded listings, ordered by median close. Almost all of the detached tracts have no association.

• Cherry Lake Estates, median $4,900,000, 2,358 sf, $2,078/sf, 18,210 sf lot, 61 days, built 2022. Dues $1,200 quarterly.
• Baycrest North, 16 listings, the largest tract here. Median $4,750,000, 3,231 sf, $1,547/sf, 9,435 sf lot, 8 days, median year 1963. No HOA.
• Baycrest South, 9 listings, median $4,197,500, 2,919 sf, $1,584/sf, 9,468 sf lot, 33 days, 1966. No HOA.
• Back Bay Custom Homes, 3 listings, median $4,150,000, 2,913 sf, $1,359/sf, 13,501 sf lot, 14 days, 1960. No HOA.
• Baycrest, 6 listings, median $4,050,000, 2,725 sf, $1,459/sf, 9,408 sf lot, 4 days, 1964. No HOA.
• Harbor Highlands II, 8 listings, median $3,950,000, 2,648 sf, $1,626/sf, 9,240 sf lot, 9 days, 1961. No HOA.
• Baycrest Harbor Highlands, 3 listings, median $3,695,000, 2,079 sf, $1,694/sf, 8,580 sf lot, 3 days, 1961. No HOA.
• Westcliff Grove, 4 listings, median $3,450,000, 2,917 sf, $1,197/sf, 7,530 sf lot, 49 days, 1979. No HOA.
• Westcliff East, 5 listings, median $3,370,000, 2,166 sf, $1,625/sf, 8,085 sf lot, 28 days, 1959. No HOA.
• Windward East Homes, 4 listings, median $3,335,000, 2,967 sf, $1,085/sf, 9,908 sf lot, 19 days, 1974. No HOA.
• Harbor Highlands I, 10 listings, median $3,012,500, 2,052 sf, $1,556/sf, 7,205 sf lot, 26 days, median year 1954, the oldest tract here. No HOA.
• Cherry Lake Area, 4 listings, median $2,962,500, 2,363 sf, $1,282/sf, 7,847 sf lot, 14 days, 1959. No HOA.
• Westcliff West, 3 listings, median $2,950,000, 2,681 sf, $1,100/sf, 7,480 sf lot, 87 days, 1964. Mostly no HOA, one home carries $460.
• Upper Newport Bay, 9 listings, median $2,800,000, 1,829 sf, $1,234/sf, 9,800 sf lot, 9 days, median year 2005. Mostly no HOA, some carry $260.
• Newport Glen, 3 listings, median $2,650,000, 3,460 sf, $777/sf, 7,623 sf lot, 67 days, 1979. Dues $405 plus $130.
• Bonnie Bay Highland Homes, 3 listings, median $2,421,500, 1,976 sf, $1,207/sf, 5,289 sf lot, 4 days, 1999. No HOA.
• Back Bay Anniversary Homes, 2 listings, median $2,417,500, 2,099 sf, $1,146/sf, 9,070 sf lot, 4 days, 1961. No HOA.
• Dover Village, 3 listings, median $1,175,000, 1,368 sf, $859/sf, 17 days, 1965. Dues $515.
• Westcliff Villa, 2 listings, median $1,062,000, 1,177 sf, $975/sf, 13 days, 1960. Dues $520 to $702.
• Vista Bahia, 3 listings, median $1,005,000, 1,521 sf, $661/sf, 0 days, 1963. Dues $712 to $717.
• Newport Garden Villas, 3 listings, median $780,000, 1,065 sf, $733/sf, 14 days, 1961. Dues $450.

Two things stand out. Newport Glen produces the cheapest detached square footage in Westcliff at $777 per foot on 3,460 square foot houses, less than half the $1,694 that Baycrest Harbor Highlands commands. And Baycrest, Baycrest Harbor Highlands, Bonnie Bay and Back Bay Anniversary all cleared in three to four days, which is faster than almost anything I measure anywhere in Newport Beach.

The oldest houses cost the most per foot and sell in under a week

Splitting the 86 detached closed sales by the year the house was built:

• Built before 1960: 30 sales, median $3,125,000, 2,052 square feet, $1,619 per square foot, 5.5 days on market.
• Built 1960 to 1969: 30 sales, median $3,962,500, 2,692 square feet, $1,460 per square foot, 11.5 days.
• Built 1970 to 1999: 14 sales, median $3,400,000, 2,921 square feet, $1,085 per square foot, 32 days.
• Built 2000 or later: 12 sales, median $5,031,250, 3,514 square feet, $1,387 per square foot, 40 days.

The pre-1960 houses are the smallest, the cheapest in absolute terms, the most expensive per foot, and they clear the market seven times faster than the newest houses.

That is the shape of a market with a hard supply constraint at the bottom. There is no cheap way into a detached Westcliff house, so the smallest original ranches on the best streets get bid up per foot and go in under a week, usually to the family or the single-level buyer who has been waiting for exactly that plan. The new builds at five million and up have a much smaller buyer pool and sit for six weeks.

The 1970 to 1999 band is the interesting middle. Those are the largest houses of the three older cohorts at 2,921 square feet, and they carry the lowest per foot rate in the neighborhood at $1,085. If square footage matters more to you than vintage, that is where the value is, and the 32 day median tells you the competition for it is thinner.

Westcliff is a seller's market in a way Newport Coast is not

Of the 95 closed sales, 20 closed above the asking price, 19 closed at exactly the asking price, and 56 closed below. The median outcome was 1.22 percent under ask.

That is a very different market from the coastal end of the city. In Newport Coast, 80 percent of sales closed below list at a median of 3.92 percent under. Here, 41 percent of sales closed at or above the asking price.

Speed matches. Thirteen of the 95 closed at zero days on market and 41 closed within ten days. Only nine took more than a hundred. The median is 14 days.

1812 Tradewinds Lane asked $3,695,000 and closed at $3,851,000 in eight days, $156,000 over. That is the pattern to expect on a well presented original house here, and it is why starting high and coming down is a bad strategy in this neighborhood specifically.

What renovation has been worth here

1724 Tradewinds Lane is the clearest example in the dataset. It closed at $4,250,000 in April 2025 at exactly the asking price with zero days on market, at 3,010 recorded square feet. It closed again at $6,325,000 in June 2026, also at zero days on market, at 3,231 square feet.

That is up $2,075,000 in fourteen months against 221 added square feet, and both transactions happened without the house ever sitting on the market. The money was not in the added footage. It was in taking a Baycrest ranch and finishing it to the standard the neighborhood's best resales carry: the plan opened up, the kitchen built for the way people here live and entertain, the indoor-outdoor connection to the yard, and a turnkey finish level that lets a buyer close and move in. The second buyer paid for a finished product, and paid before it ever went public.

1112 Pembroke Lane tells the same story inside the original footprint. It closed at $2,950,000 in July 2025 after 41 days, having asked $3,299,999. It came back at $4,995,000 at 2,700 square feet, essentially unchanged from the 2,681 it recorded a year earlier, and closed on September 2, 2026 at $4,875,000, a $1,925,000 gain in fourteen months. Same house, same size; the difference is a Harbor Highlands ranch brought to the finish level the pocket's buyers are already paying for.

And 1370 Hampshire, a 1966 house of 3,575 square feet, closed at $6,841,211 with zero days on market. That is within $260,000 of the highest sale in Westcliff, which was a 2024 new build that took 157 days. A sixty year old house sold instantly for what a brand new one takes five months to achieve, because a done original ranch on a big Westcliff lot is exactly what the deepest buyer pool here wants.

What is on the market right now

As of November 1, 2026: twenty one active listings, one coming soon, one in the under contract range and four pending, with actives running from $799,000 for a 767 square foot Rutland Road condominium to $11,995,000 on Galaxy Drive. Inventory here has climbed by five listings in six weeks while the number of homes in escrow has fallen from eight to five.

The two highest closed sales in the last two years were both 2024 construction: 1500 Lincoln Lane at $7,100,000 after 157 days, and 1435 Mariners at $6,950,000 after 43 days. Both took far longer than the neighborhood median of 14 days, which tells you the new build buyer pool in Westcliff is real but small.

At the other end, the lowest recorded close is $775,000 for a 677 square foot unit on Westcliff Drive. Between that and $7,100,000 there is a nine fold price range inside one neighborhood name, and almost all of it is explained by which of the twenty odd tracts the address sits in.

What I check before writing an offer in Westcliff

• Which tract the address is actually in, before I compare it to anything. Baycrest North medians $4,750,000 and Newport Garden Villas medians $780,000, and both are called Westcliff.
• Whether there is an HOA, without assuming either way. Ninety one of 99 detached homes have none, but a handful of Upper Newport Bay and Westcliff West addresses carry a fee while their neighbors do not.
• On an attached unit, the dues as a percentage of price. At $450 on a $780,000 purchase that is 0.69 percent a year, which is a real part of the payment.
• Coming in at or near ask on a good original house. Forty one percent of sales closed at or above list and the median sale took 14 days. This is not a market that rewards a low opening offer.
• The 1970 to 1999 houses if space is the priority. They are the largest of the older cohorts and the cheapest per foot at $1,085, and they take a median of 32 days rather than 5.5.
• On a new build, a slower sale in both directions. The 2000 and later houses took a median of 40 days.
• Lot size against the tract. Back Bay Custom Homes medians a 13,501 square foot lot; Bonnie Bay medians 5,289. Both are Westcliff.
• School assignment with the district directly. Boundaries are set by Newport Mesa Unified and they do change.

Frequently asked questions about Westcliff

Where is Westcliff?
The flat ground in Newport Beach between Irvine Avenue, Westcliff Drive, Dover Drive and the Upper Newport Bay bluffs, north of Newport Heights and west of Dover Shores.

Is Westcliff one neighborhood?
Not in the records. Homes here carry more than twenty different subdivision codes including Baycrest North, Baycrest South, Harbor Highlands I and II, Westcliff East, West and Grove, Windward East, Cherry Lake, Bonnie Bay, Back Bay Custom Homes and Newport Glen. There is no MLS boundary called Westcliff, which is why portal searches for it return a jumble.

Does Westcliff have an HOA?
Mostly no. Ninety one of the 99 detached homes recorded over the last two years carry no association fee at all. The five attached condominium tracts do pay dues, from $450 to about $717 a month.

Which Westcliff communities have HOA dues?
Newport Garden Villas at $450, Newport Villas at $475, Dover Village at $515, Westcliff Villa at $520 to $702, and Vista Bahia at $712 to $717. Newport Glen carries $405 plus $130, and Cherry Lake Estates carries $1,200 quarterly.

What do homes sell for in Westcliff?
Ninety five closed sales over the last two years ranged $745,000 to $7,100,000 with a median of $3,580,000. Detached houses closed at a median of $3,715,000; attached condominiums at $975,000.

What is the cheapest way into Westcliff?
The attached tracts. The lowest recorded close in two years is $775,000 for a 677 square foot unit on Westcliff Drive, and Newport Garden Villas medians $780,000.

Which Westcliff tract is most expensive?
Baycrest North at a median of $4,750,000, followed by Baycrest South at $4,197,500 and Back Bay Custom Homes at $4,150,000.

What is the price per square foot?
Median $1,412 across the neighborhood, but it varies widely by tract: $661 in Vista Bahia and $777 in Newport Glen at the low end, $1,694 in Baycrest Harbor Highlands and $2,078 in Cherry Lake Estates at the high end.

How big are the lots?
Median 8,900 square feet. By tract the medians run from 5,289 in Bonnie Bay to 13,501 in Back Bay Custom Homes and 18,210 in Cherry Lake Estates.

How old are the homes?
Recorded sales span 1934 to 2026. Harbor Highlands I medians 1954, the Baycrest tracts 1963 to 1966, Westcliff Grove and Newport Glen 1979, and Upper Newport Bay 2005.

How fast do homes sell in Westcliff?
Median 14 days. Thirteen of 95 closed sales went at zero days on market and 41 closed within ten days. Only nine took more than a hundred.

Do homes sell above asking price here?
Often. Twenty of 95 closed above list and another 19 closed at exactly list, so 41 percent of sales met or beat the asking price. The median outcome was 1.22 percent under ask, which is much tighter than the coastal end of Newport Beach.

Which houses sell fastest?
The oldest. Houses built before 1960 closed in a median of 5.5 days. Houses built in 2000 or later took 40 days.

Are single story homes common in Westcliff?
Yes. The original tracts were built as midcentury ranch houses, and the recorded median size of 2,616 square feet on an 8,900 square foot lot reflects that pattern, though a growing share of listings are two-story rebuilds.

Are there condos in Westcliff?
Yes, in five attached tracts near the Westcliff Drive commercial edge: Newport Garden Villas, Newport Villas, Westcliff Villa, Dover Village and Vista Bahia. Together they accounted for 12 of the 111 listings.

Is Westcliff gated?
No. The detached tracts are open streets.

Is it worth renovating in Westcliff?
Yes, when the renovation delivers the finished ranch the neighborhood's buyers are waiting for. 1724 Tradewinds Lane closed at $4,250,000 in April 2025 and at $6,325,000 in June 2026, both times at zero days on market, having added 221 recorded square feet. 1112 Pembroke Lane closed at $2,950,000 in July 2025 and closed again on September 2, 2026 at $4,875,000.

How does Westcliff compare to Dover Shores?
They are adjacent but separate. Dover Shores is a controlled access community with annual dues and private Back Bay beaches, and has its own guide. None of the figures on this page include Dover Shores addresses.

How does Westcliff compare to Newport Heights?
Also adjacent and also separate. Newport Heights sits south of Westcliff Drive with its own tract code and its own guide, on smaller lots and older stock, and none of its sales are included here.

Which school district serves Westcliff?
Newport Mesa Unified School District. Mariners Elementary is inside the neighborhood. Attendance boundaries are set by the district and do change, so confirm your specific address with the district rather than relying on any listing or portal.

Where does the data on this page come from?
The California Regional MLS, covering every listing recorded in this part of Newport Beach over the last two years, with Dover Shores and Santa Ana Heights addresses removed because they are separate neighborhoods. Figures use recorded closed sales rather than list prices or automated estimates, and tract assignment, dues, dues frequency and list versus close prices are read from the structured fields on individual listings. Figures are current as of the last update to this page and should be verified for any specific property.