What Newport Beach is like to work in
No two Newport Beach ZIP codes ask for the same visit. On the Balboa Peninsula and Balboa Island the houses are small and vertical, wedged onto lots barely wider than a car, with the kitchen on the second floor and a roof deck above that. Lido Isle and Dover Shores put the same square footage on the water, with dock doors, glass walls and salt coming off the bay every day. Newport Heights and Eastbluff are the closest thing the city has to a normal family tract.
Then the city climbs. Big Canyon and Newport Coast are large, guard-gated and hard-floored, and a visit there is measured in stairs and glass rather than bedrooms. A good share of the peninsula also turns over as short-term lodging under city permit, which means change-of-guest cleans on a tight window. We plan visits around the summer crawl on Balboa Boulevard rather than pretending it is not there.
Inside a typical Newport Beach home
Newport Beach housing runs from about 900 square feet to well over 6,000. Peninsula and Balboa Island homes are three narrow floors on a 30-foot lot, mostly hardwood and tile, with interior stairs between every room. Back Bay neighborhoods like Eastbluff and Dover Shores are single and two-story homes of 2,000 to 3,500 square feet. Newport Coast is stone, marble and floor-to-ceiling glass, where the window and hard-floor work drives the visit length more than the bedroom count.