A Charleston Sensibility Above Pacific Coast Highway: 255 Ocean View, Newport Heights

There are streets in Newport Heights where you feel the elevation the moment you turn onto them. This is one of them.

255 Ocean View sits just above Pacific Coast Highway in one of the most coveted pockets of the Heights, close enough to walk to C'est Si Bon in the morning and the Balboa Bay Club in the evening. The views run out across Catalina, the ocean, and the bay, and they run out clean, because the utilities along this stretch have already been undergrounded. No poles. No wires cutting through the sightline. If you have looked at other bluff properties in this neighborhood, you already know how much that changes the picture. If you have not, it is the first thing to ask about anywhere else you look.

The Way It Lives

The house has a Charleston sensibility to it, and I mean that in the way it feels rather than the way it looks in a photograph.

Wood floors run throughout. Fireplaces anchor both the main and upper levels. French doors open from nearly every room, including out to a true French-door patio, so the house spends most of the year with its edges open. In this climate that is not a detail, it is the whole point.

A dramatic spiral staircase sits at the center of the plan and gives the entry a sense of grandeur from the moment you walk in. Around it, the rooms stay warm and gracious. Nothing here is chasing a trend. It reads as a home that was thought about carefully and then lived in well.

Five bedrooms, four and a half bathrooms, and an elevator serving all levels. That last one deserves more attention than it usually gets in a listing. An elevator is what lets a multi-level bluff home work for the long haul, for guests, for parents visiting, for staying put in a house you love for another twenty years instead of moving out of it.

A Lot You Do Not See Often

This is a street-to-street lot, with access from both Cliff Drive and Ocean View. In Newport Heights those come up rarely, and when they do they change what is possible with the property.

You can move in exactly as it stands. It is finished, comfortable, and ready.

Or you can reimagine and expand on the existing footprint. Dual street access gives an architect and a builder room to work that a standard interior lot simply does not offer, from how the site plan gets organized to how the project gets staged. Any expansion would be subject to City of Newport Beach zoning and permitting, so I would want you talking to the city and an architect early. What I can tell you is that the lot gives you more to work with than most of what comes to market up here.

On Value

The neighboring property, on a smaller lot, sold in February 2024 for $5,175,000.

Put that next to what this home is offered at today, and then add the larger lot, the dual street access, the elevator, the undergrounded utilities, and the Catalina and bay views. I have been running numbers in this neighborhood for over two decades. This is the kind of spread that closes quickly once two buyers notice it at the same time.

I am glad to walk you or your agent through the full comparable set, including the recorded details on that neighboring sale. Information is power, and I would rather you evaluate it yourself than take my summary for it.

Come Walk It

Photographs carry the finishes. They do not carry the light through the French doors in the late afternoon, or the way the view opens up as you come up the stairs.

If Newport Heights is on your list, let me show you this one in person. Call or write anytime and I will make the time for you.

Annie Clougherty Founding Agent, SERHANT. The Annie Clougherty Team (949) 873-7649 DRE# 01716801