Ballantree

105 addresses sit inside the 29.8 acres the city draws for Ballantree on its HOA Local register. They sit on six streets, Ballantree, Arboleda, Celeste and Palacio among them, carrying 0.45 miles of centerline. The county parcel record inside the boundary is 118 parcels, predominantly condominium units. The city general plan gives 16.0 of those acres an open space designation. The zoning layer puts 15.9 acres in the OS zone and 12.5 in RLM-4000-D. Mail here carries the 92688 zip code and a Rancho Santa Margarita postal city.

7.7 acres of O'Neill Regional Park fall inside the boundary on the county park layer. 29.8 acres are rated Very High on the 2025 state fire hazard severity map the city publishes. The city assigns the ground to evacuation zone RSM06, which it describes as SFR, HOA Pool, Apt Complex, Church. Water comes from the Santa Margarita Water District and trash is collected Wednesday by CR&R. All of it lies in Saddleback Valley Unified, which feeds Melinda Heights Elementary, Rancho Santa Margarita Intermediate and Trabuco Hills High.

Ballantree is one of the odd ones out on a plain where nearly everything is named in Spanish. The ground under it is the same as the rest: the Plano Trabuco, part of the ranch Flood and O'Neill bought in 1882, and remote enough that the city's own history says the area stayed that way until 1986, when the first master planned homes were sold. Ballantree came later than that first wave, going up between about 1990 and the middle of that decade, when the plain was filling fast and Hughes Aircraft had opened a microelectronics plant here in 1988.

The street pattern shows the split personality. Ballantree itself is a Scottish sounding name, while the streets it feeds are Spanish and reach for height and light: Altivo and Altisima for the high ground, Celeste for the sky, Arboleda for the grove and Palacio for the palace. These are attached homes rather than lots, and SAMLARC counts Ballantree among the sub associations that sit inside the master association and share the lake, the Beach Club and the pools.