"This is the last chance for home shoppers to own one of our stunning model homes at The Evergreens at The Meadows," said Brad Hare, Group President of Toll Brothers in Southern California, in March 2026. He'd said almost the same thing about a different collection in the same community in April 2025. And in November 2022, when The Meadows first opened, the sentiment was there too, just with a lower number attached.
Three "final opportunities" in four years, at the same 122-acre master plan in Lake Forest. Each one came with a higher price than the last. That's not a coincidence built into the marketing copy. It's the actual story of how The Meadows has been priced, and it's the reason a single median for this community tells you almost nothing useful if you don't know which chapter of that story you're reading.
The pattern, dated
When Toll Brothers opened The Meadows in November 2022, the community launched with six collections at once: The Oaks, The Willows, The Parklands, The Evergreens, The Redwoods, and The Magnolias. Pricing across those 23 home designs ran from $1.5 million to $2.2 million, for homes between roughly 1,900 and 3,600 square feet, and more than half the residences were already spoken for by opening weekend.
By April 2025, most of that original lineup had sold through, and Toll Brothers had opened The Sequoias, a 57-home collection with three floor plans between 3,403 and 3,559-plus square feet, priced from $2,734,000. Toll Brothers called it, again, a final opportunity.
By March 2026, the only homes left at The Meadows were three fully decorated model homes in The Evergreens, ranging from 3,400 to more than 3,700 square feet, priced from $3.5 million and slated for delivery in June 2026. Same phrase. Different number, again.
Each of those announcements was true in a narrow sense. The Parklands and The Redwoods collections did sell out completely. Scarcity was real. But scarcity and price escalation arrived together every time, which means the phrase "final opportunity" has functioned less as a countdown clock and more as a label for the moment the next, pricier release opens.
What each phase actually cost, side by side
Here's what the published starting prices and floor plan ranges look like laid out together. The per-square-foot figures below are rough floors, calculated from each collection's lowest advertised starting price against its largest floor plan, meant to show direction rather than serve as an appraisal of any specific home.
| Collection | Year Priced From | Starting Price | Floor Plan Range | Approx. Floor $/Sqft |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Willows | 2022 | $1.5M | up to 2,200 sqft | ~$680 |
| The Redwoods | 2022 | $1.7M | 2,300–3,100 sqft | ~$550 |
| The Parklands | 2022 | $1.7M | up to 2,900 sqft | ~$590 |
| The Magnolias | 2022 | $1.9M | up to 3,100 sqft | ~$610 |
| The Sequoias | 2025 | $2.734M | 3,403–3,559+ sqft | ~$770 |
| The Evergreens (final models) | 2026 | $3.5M | 3,400–3,700+ sqft | ~$946 |
Even at the floor, the per-square-foot rate climbed by roughly 40 to 70 percent between the 2022 launch collections and the 2026 close-out models. Some of that is genuinely bigger, more finished product. The Evergreens models come fully decorated with designer selections, and the newer floor plans lean harder into multigenerational suites with kitchenettes and primary retreats than the original Willows or Redwoods layouts did. But the size increase alone doesn't account for the full jump. A buyer comparing "The Meadows" as a single line item against, say, Lake Forest's broader housing market is really comparing six different products built four years apart under one shared name.
The collection with no published launch price, and why that matters
Toll Brothers' original 2022 materials didn't publish a specific starting price for The Oaks collection, only its size range: 4 to 6 bedrooms, up to 2,700 square feet, with an optional conservatory and primary suite retreat. What we do have is a resale: an Oaks home sold on December 29, 2023, for $1,878,500 at 2,641 square feet.
Compare that to an Evergreens resale that closed on October 16, 2024, for $2,666,000 at 3,568 square feet, or a home simply listed under "The Meadows Community" that sold September 25, 2024, for $2,798,000 at 4,011 square feet. Three sales, three collections, spread across roughly ten months, ranging from $1.88 million to $2.8 million. None of those numbers is wrong. They're just not the same market. If you pulled a single average from that spread and called it "The Meadows median," you'd learn less about the neighborhood than you would from any one of the three sales on its own.
The same pattern shows up in 2026. Closed sales in The Sequoias Collection this year have landed between $2,529,000 and $2,766,000 for homes in the 3,400 to 3,800 square foot range, closing in June and July. That's below the collection's original $2,734,000 starting price for some units and above it for others, which tells you the floor price was a floor, not a ceiling, and that finish level and lot placement inside a single collection still move the number by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
What's actually shared across every price tier
Here's the part that gets lost in the collection-by-collection story: the recreation center, the two pools, two spas, covered cabanas, and the sports courts belong to the whole community, not to any one collection. A buyer who closed on a Willows home in 2022 for $1.5 million has access to the same amenity package as a buyer closing on an Evergreens home in 2026 for $3.5 million. The HOA structure ties every collection to the same shared resource, which means the earliest buyers into The Meadows got the most amenity for their dollar, simply by timing.
The Meadows also carries no Mello-Roos, a fact Toll Brothers has kept in its marketing materials from the original launch through the current Sequoias listings. That's worth knowing regardless of which collection you're comparing, since it changes the ongoing carrying cost math independent of the purchase price itself.
The parts of the plan that aren't luxury single-family at all
Not every acre of The Meadows went to market-rate homes. In 2025, C&C Development and Riverside Charitable Corp completed The Meadows Senior Apartments, a 65-unit affordable community for residents 62 and older earning between 30 and 60 percent of the area median income. It sits inside the same master plan, funded in part through low-income housing tax credits and tax-exempt bonds, and it marked the first C&C Development project to include pickleball courts.
The city's own planning materials for The Meadows also note a 10-acre site set aside for a potential elementary school through a memorandum of understanding with Saddleback Valley Unified School District. The district was given up to four years to decide whether to accept it, and the city has no authority to force the issue either way, so buyers shouldn't assume a school will eventually appear inside the gates. It's a placeholder, not a commitment.
As of the city's most recent tally, The Meadows includes 541 single-family homes and 65 senior units built, against an original entitlement for up to 675 homes and 101 senior units. The gap between what's built and what was entitled is the plainest explanation for why "final opportunity" kept recurring: inventory really was running out, phase by phase, even as the price attached to what remained kept climbing.
Beyond the HOA, a resident-run group called We The Meadows organizes community initiatives independent of the builder or the property manager, which is its own small signal that the neighborhood has settled into an identity beyond the sales center.
FAQ
Is The Meadows still selling new construction from the builder? As of Toll Brothers' March 2026 announcement, the last inventory left was three decorated Evergreens model homes priced from $3.5 million, with delivery slated for June 2026. That delivery window has already passed. Unless Toll Brothers opens further phases on remaining entitled land, new-construction sales at The Meadows have likely concluded, and any current activity is resale.
Does "no Mello-Roos" apply to every collection, or just the newest ones? Toll Brothers has listed no Mello-Roos as a feature of The Meadows since the original 2022 launch materials through the current Sequoias marketing, so it appears to apply community-wide rather than to a single phase.
Why do closed sales in the same collection vary by hundreds of thousands of dollars? Lot placement, floor plan selection, and finish level still move the price within a single collection. The 2026 Sequoias closings ranging from roughly $2.5 million to $2.77 million are evidence that even a same-year, same-collection comp needs a second look at square footage and specific plan before it's useful.
If you're trying to figure out what a specific collection or resale inside The Meadows is actually worth against today's market, that's exactly the kind of phase-by-phase comparison The Harter Group works through with buyers and sellers across Lake Forest's master-planned communities every week. Reach out for a conversation grounded in the comps that actually match your home, not the headline.
