Cortesia

Cortesia covers 21.1 acres on the city's own HOA Local register, and the city address layer records 312 addresses inside that line. They sit on one street, Melinda Road. The published boundary follows lot lines and leaves the street rights of way outside it, so no centerline falls inside. The county parcel record inside the boundary is 5 parcels, predominantly multi-family buildings. The median lot the county records here is 1.13 acres. The city general plan gives 20.6 of those acres a high density residential designation. The zoning layer puts 20.6 acres in the RH zone and 0.5 in OS. Mail here carries the 92688 zip code and a Rancho Santa Margarita postal city, and 312 of the addresses carry a unit designator.

0.3 acres of O'Neill Regional Park fall inside the boundary on the county park layer. 21.1 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. All of it lies in Saddleback Valley Unified, which feeds Melinda Heights Elementary, Rancho Santa Margarita Intermediate and Trabuco Hills High.

Cortesia stands on Melinda Road at the Melinda Heights end of Rancho Santa Margarita, which is the newer, higher part of the city. The plain below it had been ranch land since James Flood and Jerome O'Neill bought the combined ranchos in 1882, and it stayed remote, in the city's own words, until 1986, when the first homes in the master planned community were sold. Extensions of the Oso, Antonio and Alicia Parkways, completed in 1992, finally linked the plain to the rest of the county.

This is a multi family community rather than a subdivision of lots, more than three hundred addresses on twenty one acres, built in 1999. Its name is simply the Spanish word for courtesy. Voters chose incorporation in November 1999 and Rancho Santa Margarita became Orange County's thirty third city on 1 January 2000, which means the last homes here went up in a place that was still, legally, unincorporated county.