Ask how many new homes are actually coming to Brea and you'll get three different answers, sometimes from people quoting the same developer. Simon Property Group's own leasing page for Brea Mall lists 385 apartments rising over the old Sears wing. A trade publication covering the same project cites 380. Another outlet puts it at 377. These aren't rival estimates from competing analysts. They're all describing the identical building at the identical address, and they still don't match.
That small discrepancy is worth sitting with, because it points to something bigger than a rounding error. Brea is currently entitled, under construction, or in active planning for somewhere close to 1,800 new housing units across three completely separate developments, and if you're comparing Brea to Yorba Linda or La Habra Heights or Fullerton right now, the total number matters far less than what kind of homes those units actually are and who they're built for.
Three Projects, Three Different Buyers
The mall apartments are rentals. The hillside community north of the 91 is for-sale, mostly single-family. The infill project near the 57 and Imperial is another rental building. None of these compete head to head with the resale ranch homes and 1970s-through-1990s tract houses that make up most of Brea's existing inventory, and none of them compete with each other either.
Here's the shape of it:
| Project | Units | Product | Who It Serves | Status as of August 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brea Mall apartments | roughly 380 | Mixed-income rental, three-story residential enclave over the old Sears site | Renters, including 23 units reserved for households earning 65% of area median income and 15 units up to 120% AMI | Phases opening now alongside Din Tai Fung, North Italia, and Life Time Fitness |
| Brea 265 | 1,100 (450 low-density, 650 medium-density, including 76 affordable units) | Hillside single-family and estate-scale homes on former oil land | Move-up buyers who currently have to leave Brea for new construction | Specific Plan approved July 2022, timeline tied to oil-well remediation, no public delivery date confirmed |
| Infill near 57/Imperial | roughly 300, including Brea Plaza Living's 120 | Four-story rental building over a parking garage | Renters | Approved by City Council in April 2025 |
Three pipelines, three buyer profiles, one city.
Why the City Council Fought Over the Mall Apartments Specifically
When the Brea City Council approved Simon's plan to demolish the vacant 162,000-square-foot Sears building and its adjacent parking lot, the vote was unanimous, but not everyone was satisfied with the mix. Council member Steven Vargas pushed back on how few units were set aside for lower-income households.
"I would like to see that push."
That single line captures the tension running through this whole redevelopment. The project brought real investment into a dead retail anchor, along with brands like Zara, Rivian, Alo Yoga, and Uniqlo filling out the storefronts. It also delivered 38 income-restricted units out of roughly 380, a small fraction reserved below market rate inside a $300 million overhaul. If you're a renter hoping this building solves an affordability problem, the math says otherwise. If you're a homeowner wondering whether 380 new rental units down the street will soften your resale value, the math says that's not really what this building is built to do either. It's adding density and rooftops to a commercial site, not adding competing product to the for-sale market.
The Hillside Community Runs on a Different Clock Entirely
The most unusual project in Brea isn't at the mall. It's on the hillside north of the 91 Freeway, where Aera Energy, a Bakersfield oil company, is converting 265 acres of active drilling land into what the Brea 265 Specific Plan describes as a master-planned community of 1,100 residential units. The plan includes 15 acres of new parks and roughly 47.5 acres of open space, along with an expansion of Brea Sports Park by nearly 65 percent and a new trailhead connecting to a wider trail network under Lambert Road.
Every part of that plan sounds like a normal suburban buildout until you get to the timeline, which isn't governed by financing or grading crews the way a typical subdivision is. Under the approved Specific Plan, remediation of every oil well and production facility on a given parcel has to happen before construction can start on that parcel. Aera has the in-house expertise to manage that process, since it's an oil company by trade, but it also means the schedule moves at the pace of environmental clearance rather than a builder's construction calendar.
That distinction isn't hypothetical. Public forum threads from early 2023 show buyers expecting the first Brea 265 homes to be finished by 2024. As of late August 2026, the project is still in a marketing and pre-planning phase rather than delivering homes, which is exactly the kind of gap that opens up when a build-out is gated by remediation instead of a fixed contract date. A nonprofit organization tracking the project, Hills For Everyone, has documented the same 450 low-density and 650 medium-density unit split, along with the requirement that all oil operations be safely decommissioned before ground is broken.
If you're weighing Brea against a city with newer housing stock already on the ground, like parts of Yorba Linda, that timing gap matters. Brea 265 will eventually offer something the existing Brea market doesn't have much of: hillside lots with topography and separation from the flat grid that defines most of the city's older tracts. It just won't offer it on a schedule anyone can promise yet.
What This Means If You're Comparing Neighborhoods
None of these three pipelines threatens the value of an existing single-family home in Brea the way a flood of directly comparable new construction would. Here's the practical breakdown:
- The mall apartments add renters to the local population, which over time deepens the buyer pool as some of those renters eventually look to purchase, but they don't add resale inventory competing with your listing.
- Brea 265 will eventually add new-construction hillside product that currently doesn't exist inside city limits, which could pull some move-up buyers who'd otherwise look at La Habra Heights or Yorba Linda for new construction, but the remediation-gated timeline means this isn't a near-term factor for anyone selling or buying today.
- The infill apartments near 57/Imperial add more rental supply, which is the same story as the mall units on a smaller scale.
If someone tells you Brea is "adding 1,800 homes" as a reason to worry about oversupply, or as a reason to expect a wave of new resale competition, the honest answer is that the number is real but the framing is off. Ask instead which of the three pipelines they mean, and what kind of home is actually going in.
A Few Direct Questions
When will Brea 265 homes actually be available to buy? No confirmed public delivery date exists as of late August 2026. The Specific Plan was approved in July 2022, but construction on each parcel depends on oil well remediation being completed first, which is a slower and less predictable process than standard grading and permitting.
Are the new Brea Mall apartments for sale? No. They're rental units, with a small share reserved for households earning 65 percent and up to 120 percent of area median income. The rest are market-rate rentals.
Does any of this affect what my current Brea home is worth? Not directly, at least not from these three projects specifically. Rental additions and a remediation-gated hillside community aren't the same as a wave of comparable resale homes hitting the market. If you're weighing a sale or purchase in Brea right now, the fundamentals worth tracking are the ones tied to your specific property and street, not a citywide unit count.
If you're trying to figure out what any of this means for a specific address in Brea, or you're comparing it against La Habra, Fullerton, or the hillside communities nearby, The Kennedys have been doing this work in these neighborhoods for decades. Reach out for a free home valuation and a conversation about what's actually happening on your street, not just at the mall.
