Corona del Mar

Corona del Mar sits on the bluffs at the east side of the Newport Harbor entrance, where the jetty meets the open coast. The village is a tight grid of streets named for flowers, Acacia through Poppy, drawn on a 1922 re-subdivision of George Hart's 1904 town. Coast Highway runs through the middle, and the shops and restaurants along it are the village's center.

South of the highway the Flower Streets run downhill to Ocean Boulevard and the edge of the bluff. Below are Corona del Mar State Beach, known locally as Big Corona, and the tide-pool cove of Little Corona. North of the highway the same grid climbs to Fifth Avenue, Harbor View Elementary, and the canyon of Buck Gully.

People here walk to the beach and the bakery, and each December the Christmas Walk fills the Coast Highway sidewalks. You pay for that in traffic, tight parking and coastal rules on the bluff. The 2020 census counted 12,017 people in the 92625 ZIP code, which reaches well beyond the village itself.

James Irvine bought the land that became Corona del Mar in 1875 for $150,000. In 1904 George E. Hart bought 700 acres of it and founded the town, numbering the north-south streets from 29th to 45th as if the grid would one day run all the way to the harbor bridge. Hart promoted Corona del Mar for more than a decade with little success. In 1915 he gave up and sold to the F. D. Cornell Company, and unsold land was marketed as Balboa Palisades that year.

The village people know today took shape in the 1920s. The flower street names first appear on a 1922 re-subdivision map that created lots fronting the newly announced Coast Highway, with the streets running from Acacia to Poppy. That same year the Sims-Guedel Company bought tracts at the west and east ends and named Avocado and Hazel; Sherman Library's historians suspect Hazel honors two of the company's owners, Hazel Sims and Hazel Guedel. Newport Beach annexed Corona del Mar in 1923, and a post office opened on July 16, 1926.

One street changed its name. What is now Poinsettia was Pansy Street until 1940, when the city renamed it. The beach below the bluffs was a surfing spot into the 1930s, and Duke Kahanamoku is credited with the first surfboard rescue there in 1925, paddling people to shore after a chartered fishing boat capsized in heavy surf. The late-1930s extension of the harbor jetty changed the waves, creating the Wedge on the far side and shielding Corona del Mar from all but the most southerly swells.

The village's housing follows its zoning. Large parts of the old grid carry the city's R-2 designation, the two-unit residential district, which allows two dwellings on one lot. That's why so many Flower Street lots hold a front house and a rear unit over the garage, and why the city's zoning records show single-family homes being replaced by new duplexes in the Corona del Mar tract. Many of those pairs now sell as separate condominiums, which is why so many village listings carry a "1/2" address.

The rest of the stock runs from original 1920s to 1950s cottages to full custom rebuilds. On the ocean side of the highway, Ocean Boulevard and the bluff-edge streets carry the views and the top prices. The blocks between the highway and Ocean Boulevard are the village's core. North of the highway, the numbered avenues up to Fifth are quieter, and lots along Buck Gully back onto the canyon.

Read the parcel before the house. A cottage on a rebuildable R-2 lot is priced on the lot, and a new build next door is priced on the finishes and the view. Houses and duplexes on lots that don't front the beach, harbor, or a coastal bluff are generally excluded from coastal development permits; bluff and beachfront lots are not. I check the zoning, the alley parking and the coastal status before I compare prices.

The whole village lies inside the coastal zone. The California Coastal Commission certified Newport Beach's Local Coastal Program on January 13, 2017, effective January 30, so the city now issues most coastal development permits. The Commission keeps appeal jurisdiction over land between the sea and the first public road. It also keeps it within 300 feet of a beach or the mean high tide line, and within 300 feet of the top of a coastal bluff. Ocean Boulevard and the bluff-edge lots fall in that band, and a remodel there takes longer.

Short-term lodging means a rental of 30 days or less. It requires a city permit and business license, a 10 percent transient occupancy tax, a two-night minimum stay, and renters 25 or older, and it has been prohibited in single-family R-1 districts since 1992. The city caps permits at 1,550 citywide, 1,475 of them in residential districts since a May 2025 Coastal Commission approval, and new owners join a wait list. An R-2 duplex may be eligible; a specific address must be checked with the city.

Then parking and fire. Beach traffic fills the Flower Streets in summer, and many older lots have only alley access, so confirm what parking conveys. On fire, in July 2025 the City Council adopted the state's updated fire hazard severity zone maps, which raised the count of very-high-hazard parcels in Newport Beach from 2,825 to 4,247. By my read of the state's 2025 map, the village grid sits mostly outside the zones, but lots along the Buck Gully rim fall in moderate and high zones and the canyon itself is very high. Check the parcel, because a zone brings defensible-space and disclosure duties.