A six bedroom estate on Westpark Drive closed this past June for $1.625 million, eleven days after it hit the market, four percent under the original ask. Five months earlier, in late December, a 1.27 acre parcel a few streets over on Merlot Court sold for $375,000. It had been listed for 74 days and closed sixteen percent below its asking price.
Same neighborhood. Same buyer pool, in theory. One asset moved in under two weeks with barely a scratch on the price. The other sat through most of a season and got cut by five figures before anyone signed.
If you are shopping Alessandro Heights and thinking the empty acre is the smart, cheaper way into the neighborhood, that gap is worth sitting with before you write an offer.
The land is not the discount entry point it looks like
Alessandro Heights is priced like the estate neighborhood it is. As of January 2026, listings ranged from just under a million dollars to $6.4 million, with a median sale price around $1.3 million. By April, homes were listed at a median asking price of $1.74 million, a separate measure that reflects what sellers were testing the market with rather than what buyers ultimately paid. Zoom in on just the homes with sizable lots, the ones that compete most directly with raw acreage, and the trailing twelve month average sale price was $1,427,305, up 17 percent from the year before. Recent home sales in the neighborhood have been taking about 42 days on average, well under the national average of 57 days for comparable homes.
Raw acreage inside that same footprint tells a different story. The Merlot Court sale is not an outlier because the buyer got a bad deal. It is representative of how land behaves here: slower to move, and priced down harder when it finally does, because a vacant lot asks a buyer to absorb every unknown a finished house has already resolved. Grading. Utility hookups. Whether the pad will support the home the buyer actually wants. A finished estate answers those questions before the first showing. A lot does not, and the market prices that uncertainty in.
That is the pattern underneath the numbers: buyers pay a premium for certainty and a discount for ambiguity, even within one small, expensive neighborhood.
What "build custom" actually commits you to
Alessandro Heights is not one market. It is a cluster of small, private enclaves, each with its own rules, and those rules change what an "affordable" lot actually costs to finish.
Montecito, the gated community off Overlook Parkway, is a useful example. Its estate lots come with utilities already run to the pad, city sewer included, which removes one layer of risk. But the community's CC&Rs also set requirements for what can be built.
Other enclaves work differently. A 4.17 acre parcel in Hillcrest Estates was listed as raw, ungraded dirt with no utility guarantee attached to the listing at all. Featherstone Estates lots on the same cul-de-sac advertise utilities already run to the site as a selling point, which tells you that is not the default across the neighborhood. Hawarden Meadows has parcels that sit just outside its own gates.
None of this shows up in the price per acre. It shows up after you own the dirt, when you find out what you are actually allowed and required to build, and what it will cost to get there.
The utility question you need answered before you remove contingencies
FHA and VA lenders generally require a septic inspection as a condition of loan approval. For a finished home already tied into that system, this is a formality. For a raw parcel where the listing does not specify sewer access, it is a real open question, and one you want answered with a phone call to Riverside County's Department of Environmental Health before you get attached to a specific site.
The practical difference: a lot in Montecito already tells you sewer is in place. A lot in Hillcrest Estates, sold as unimproved dirt, tells you nothing, and the burden falls on the buyer to find out whether the property can support a well and septic system or requires a costly connection to city service. That gap in disclosed information is part of why land here sits longer. Buyers are doing homework the seller of a finished house already did for them.
A short list before you make an offer on raw acreage here
If a lot in Alessandro Heights has caught your eye, a few questions are worth answering before the offer, not after:
- Does the parcel have city sewer, or will you need a well and septic system, and has either been permitted before
- Is the lot inside an HOA with its own CC&Rs, and if so, is there a minimum square footage or architectural standard attached
- Has the pad been graded, and is there an engineering report on file, or are you paying for that work yourself
- What did comparable raw parcels in the same enclave actually sell for relative to list price in the past six to twelve months, not just what they were asking
That last one matters most. The Merlot Court sale is one data point, not a rule, but the direction it points in, land discounting harder and sitting longer than finished homes in the same footprint, is consistent with how uncertainty gets priced across real estate generally. A buyer who treats a lot's asking price as the finish line is negotiating from a weaker position than one who understands why that price exists.
What this means if you are comparing the lot to the house
None of this makes raw land in Alessandro Heights a bad move. Several of the enclaves here, Whitegate among them, still have half acre and full acre home sites available with utilities in place, and for a buyer who wants a specific floor plan on a specific piece of ground, building is the only way to get it. But the math is different from what the sticker price suggests. A $375,000 lot is not automatically a $1.25 million discount against a finished $1.6 million estate. Once you add grading, utility work, permitting, and a construction budget that meets whatever the HOA requires, the gap narrows, sometimes by more than buyers expect going in.
The finished homes in Alessandro Heights sell quickly and close near their asking price because the market already knows what it is buying. The land takes longer and gives up more ground because the market is still asking questions the seller has not answered. Knowing which enclave you are looking at, and what its rules and utilities actually guarantee, is the difference between a smart custom build and a lot that sits for two and a half months while you find out the hard way.
FAQ
Is buying land in Alessandro Heights actually cheaper than buying a finished estate? On a per-parcel basis, yes, the sticker price is lower. But once utility work, grading, permitting, and any HOA minimum square footage requirement are factored in, the total cost to reach a finished home can close a meaningful part of that gap, and the timeline is longer.
Do all lots in Alessandro Heights have city sewer? No. Some gated communities, like Montecito, advertise utilities including sewer already run to the pad. Others, including raw parcels in enclaves like Hillcrest Estates, are sold without that guarantee, which means well and septic feasibility needs to be confirmed before you remove contingencies.
Do HOA rules apply to vacant lots the same way they apply to finished homes? Yes, in communities that have them.
If you are weighing a finished estate against a custom build in Alessandro Heights, or trying to figure out what a specific enclave's rules actually allow, 1903 Realty can walk the comps and the covenants with you before you write an offer. Reach out to Adam Schwarz for a clear read on what a given lot or listing actually costs to finish.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.