Stand at the corner of Palm Canyon Drive and Camino Monte Vista and you can see the whole argument in one frame. On one side, century-old citrus-grove lots behind hedges and privacy walls, houses that have carried the same architectural bones since the 1920s. On the other, a cobblestone drive leading into a gated cluster of brand-new detached homes with rooftop decks and private elevators, the first new construction this neighborhood has seen in decades. Both are Old Las Palmas, but neither one tells you what the address actually costs to own.
That's the question worth sitting with if you're comparing Palm Springs neighborhoods and Old Las Palmas keeps coming up as the answer for prestige. Old Las Palmas has long been known for historic homes rather than new construction. According to Hoodline, The Twelve at Old Las Palmas, a 12-unit project from one of the desert's longtime developers working with designer Michael Walters of Dakota DesignWorks, offers a new-construction option. Phase one is already showing three fully detached units on Pena Lane, priced from $1,995,000 up to $2,495,000, each with its own dipping pool, rooftop kitchen, and elevator. That's new information for anyone evaluating this neighborhood, and it changes the math in ways that go beyond square footage.
A Neighborhood Built Around One Product
Old Las Palmas has never had a second tier of housing stock. It's roughly 290 single-family lots, most dating to the mid-1920s subdivision of what had been citrus grove land, developed by builder Alvah Hicks and Prescott Stevens, the same developer behind the old El Mirador Hotel. The homes range from Spanish Colonial to mid-century.
That history has defined the neighborhood's value proposition. You get land and history. New construction was never part of that equation.
What $1.995 Million to $2.495 Million Buys Instead
What it offers is the zip code, the walk to Palm Canyon Drive shopping and dining, and a maintenance profile that looks nothing like the estates surrounding it. The completed model unit is available for private tours now, and the listed specs for phase one show 2,245-square-foot, three-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath detached homes with no shared walls, elevators, and private cocktail pools on each lot.
That's a genuinely different product sitting inside the same boundary lines as $7 million estates. Recent sale and listing activity on Old Las Palmas estates has put the typical transaction somewhere around $2.76 million as of spring 2026, with the largest properties clearing well past $7 million. The Twelve's pricing sits inside that range, but it's buying a fraction of the land and none of the provenance. What it buys instead is a locked door you can walk away from for the season and come back to exactly as you left it, which is a different kind of value than an architect-attributed 1930s Spanish estate, even if the address on the mailbox reads the same.
| The Twelve at Old Las Palmas | Legacy Estate | |
|---|---|---|
| Construction | New, 2025-2026 | 1920s to mid-century |
| Typical price | $1,995,000 to $2,495,000 | ~$2.76M median, estates to $7M+ |
| Land | Small detached lot, shared streetscape | Large, often original-subdivision lot |
| Maintenance | Grounds and exterior managed | Owner-maintained |
Potential Utility Assessment Costs
The timing is notable. While The Twelve promotes low-maintenance living, homeowners nearby are working through a potential infrastructure assessment.
According to Hoodline, in August 2026, the Palm Springs City Council preliminarily approved the engineer's report for an Old Las Palmas utility assessment district, the formal step that moves the neighborhood toward creating a property tax assessment zone to fund burying overhead power lines. Homeowners there are looking at costs reported to run over $100,000 each once the shared line-burying work is assessed, on top of a separate expense: state tariff rules require each property owner to pay for the "cutover," the private connection running from the street to their own electrical panel, which Southern California Edison estimated could add another $8,000 to $40,000 per property. The push started with a neighborhood kickoff meeting in April 2025, after the city passed an ordinance letting neighborhoods petition to form their own assessment districts rather than waiting on the utility to act.
The potential costs are an important consideration for buyers.
Check the Assessment District Boundary
Here's the friction a buyer actually needs to resolve before writing an offer on either product: does a brand-new parcel inside a gated development like The Twelve sit inside the same assessment district boundary as the surrounding estates, or was it carved out separately during permitting? That distinction is knowable. It shows up in the engineer's report and the assessment district map the city council is working from, both public record through the city's planning department, and it's worth confirming before you assume either way.
This is the actual decision in front of a buyer comparing these two products, and it's more specific than the usual old-versus-new tradeoff. An estate buyer might be weighing the potential assessment. A Twelve buyer might be getting a smaller footprint at a similar price point, but whether its parcel is included remains a question. Neither is guessable from a listing sheet.
Hoodline has also described the broader Palm Springs market as cooling into 2026, a factor buyers may consider when comparing The Twelve with established estate territory. A buyer with time to compare both products can use that context in a pricing discussion.
A Few Straight Answers
How can I check whether a new-construction parcel is in the utility assessment district? Check the engineer's report and confirm the parcel's status before assuming either way.
How much of The Twelve is currently available? Phase one lists three fully detached units on Pena Lane. Additional phases are part of the twelve-unit plan but pricing and availability should be confirmed directly, since project pages note that figures are subject to change.
Whichever side of Palm Canyon Drive you're picturing yourself on, the boundary lines and the assessment rolls are worth pulling before the emotional case for the address does the deciding for you. That's the kind of due diligence Bernal-Smith Group walks Old Las Palmas buyers through property by property, parcel map and all.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
