5 Best Master-Planned Communities Near Portland, Oregon (2026)

Prefer to watch? Here's the full video. Or keep scrolling to read it.

If you're moving to Portland and picturing a big master-planned community, here's what nobody tells you: they're pretty rare here. Oregon's urban growth boundary limits how far the metro can spread out, so you don't get the giant amenity-packed developments common in other parts of the country. That makes the few good ones worth knowing about. The trade-off you'll see over and over is less yard, more neighborhood.

I ranked these five on what you get for the money, how finished the community is today, amenities, and commute. Two are on the east side, three on the west and south.

5. Fairview Village (Fairview)

Fairview is a small city in east Multnomah County, north of Gresham and west of Troutdale, right off I-84. Fairview Village is about 93 acres in the middle of it. Construction started in 1995, and it was one of the first New Urbanist neighborhoods built in the Northwest. That basically means it was designed like an old-school small town on purpose: front porches facing the street, small parks tucked all through it, and streets built for walking and biking, not just driving.

The cool part: Fairview's city hall and public library were built right inside the village, so the civic center of the whole town is a walk from people's front doors. The housing mix is wide for a neighborhood this size, with detached houses, townhomes around courtyards, row houses, and even live-work row houses where the ground floor can be a small business.

Price: Fairview overall has been running around $450,000–$500,000 depending on the month and the source. That makes it the most affordable way into a true planned community on this list.

Outside the village you've got Blue Lake Regional Park for paddle boats and disc golf, Salish Ponds for trails and fishing, and you're one of the closest picks on the list to the Columbia River Gorge. PDX airport is close too.

Trade-offs: homes here were mostly built from the mid-90s to the early 2000s, so you're buying a 20-plus-year-old house, not new. Lots are generally small, and there's no pool or clubhouse. It's in the Reynolds School District, so look up the specific schools for any house before you fall in love with it.

Best fit: budget-first buyers who want a walkable, small-town layout, work on the east side or near the airport, and don't need anything brand new.

4. Orenco Station (Hillsboro)

If Fairview Village was one of the first, Orenco Station is the one that put Portland on the map for this kind of neighborhood. The name comes from the Oregon Nursery Company, shortened to Orenco. Around 1900 it was the largest nursery on the West Coast, with an actual company town built around it. The nursery eventually closed, and by 1938 the town was gone.

In 1997, developers started building a new neighborhood on about 209 acres, and they built the whole thing around a MAX light rail station. That's the key. The station is the center, a walkable main street runs off it with shops, restaurants, and homes above the storefronts, and a grid of neighborhood streets spreads out from there. In the late 1990s the National Association of Home Builders named it the best master-planned community in America, Sunset magazine later called it the best new suburb, and an early study found residents commuting by transit at more than three times the regional rate.

Price: Orenco has been running somewhere around $460,000–$500,000, but it depends heavily on what you're buying. Condos and townhomes near the station can come in well under that, and detached homes on the edges run higher.

For jobs, Orenco is about as good as it gets on the west side: minutes from Intel's Hillsboro campuses and the rest of the Silicon Forest along US-26. There's a Sunday farmers market from spring through fall, Orenco Woods Nature Park nearby, and you can ride the MAX straight into downtown Portland without dealing with parking. Orenco also shows you what these communities look like 25 years later, once the trees grow in.

Trade-offs: it's basically built out, so you're mostly shopping resale, and detached homes don't come up often. It's dense, lots are small, and parking near the main street can be tight.

Best fit: people working in the Silicon Forest who want walkability and transit, and buyers who'd rather have an established neighborhood with mature trees than one still under construction.

3. Pleasant Valley Villages (Happy Valley)

This is one of my favorites, and it's the closest thing on this list to the master-planned community most people from out of state picture. It sits just off Sunnyside Road with its own community pool, clubhouse, sports courts, playgrounds, and walking trails. It's being built out in phases by multiple builders, including Holt Homes and Lennar, and it hosted the NW Natural Street of Dreams in 2021, the big annual home show here, where Holt picked up a few awards.

Price: homes start in the $400s here, including townhomes. Lennar single-family homes have been listing from the high $600s into the low $700s, and the bigger plans go into the $800s. Don't skip the HOA: one of the floor plans here lists dues around $180 a month. That's what pays for the pool and clubhouse, so build it into your monthly number.

Schools are North Clackamas School District, and homes here feed into Scouters Mountain Elementary, Happy Valley Middle, and Adrienne C. Nelson High. Clackamas Town Center, Costco, New Seasons, and plenty of restaurants are close, Powell Butte Nature Park is right there, and Mount Hood is about an hour out.

The part most people miss: Pleasant Valley Villages isn't a one-off. Happy Valley has a plan covering about 2,700 acres on its east side, the Pleasant Valley/North Carver plan, and roughly 1,000 of those acres have already come into the city. This whole corner of the metro is going to keep growing for years, and buying early gets you in before a lot of what's planned gets built.

Trade-offs: it's an active construction zone, so expect trucks, noise, and empty lots for a while. The commute to downtown runs Sunnyside and I-205, which gets slow at rush hour. And Happy Valley in general costs more than people expect (I broke that down in Happy Valley vs. Portland).

Best fit: buyers who want new construction with real amenities like a pool and clubhouse on the east side, and who work on the east side or from home.

2. Villebois (Wilsonville)

Villebois was built on the land where Dammasch State Hospital used to be, on the west side of Wilsonville. After the hospital closed, the city planned a whole new neighborhood on the site. The name is French and roughly translates to "town in the woods." It was modeled on traditional European villages, and it's now Wilsonville's largest newer neighborhood, planned for about 2,600 homes.

You can feel the plan when you walk through it. In the middle is Piazza Villebois, a plaza with a big fountain, bocce ball courts, a kids' maze, and string lights at night. From there you've got linear parks, pocket parks, and walking paths everywhere, and right next door is Graham Oaks Nature Park, about 250 acres of oak woodland and trails run by Metro. The home mix is wide too: single-family, row houses, townhomes, condos, and apartments from a bunch of different builders, so there are a lot of price points.

Price: Wilsonville overall has been running around $635,000–$700,000. In Villebois it varies a lot by home type, with condos and townhomes well under that and bigger single-family homes above it.

The other big reason it ranks this high: Villebois is in the West Linn-Wilsonville School District, one of the top districts in the state. You're getting that district in a park-heavy planned neighborhood for a lot less than you'd typically pay in West Linn or Lake Oswego.

Trade-offs: Villebois is nearly built out, so brand-new homes are rare and most of what you buy will be resale. And Wilsonville is at the south end of the metro, so a daily I-5 commute into downtown Portland can be rough at peak hours.

Best fit: buyers who want a top school district, a finished community with real character, tons of parks, and who work south or west, or remote.

1. Reed's Crossing (South Hillsboro)

If you've watched my other videos, you've heard me talk about South Hillsboro growing. Reed's Crossing is the center of it, and it's one of the biggest master-planned communities being built anywhere in the Portland area right now.

The numbers: about 463 acres, planned for roughly 2,600 single-family homes plus about 1,400 apartments and other multifamily units, so around 4,000 homes when it's done. It has its own 34-acre town center that already has over 100,000 square feet of shops and restaurants, anchored by a Market of Choice grocery store, with a Providence health center going in too. The centerpiece is the Greenway, a 23-acre park running through the middle of the neighborhood with play areas, a mini amphitheater, and paved trails.

Price: it's being built by multiple national builders, including David Weekley, Lennar, and Richmond American, so the range is wide. Entry-level townhomes and small cottage-style homes start in the $400s, single-family homes run from the high $500s, and the biggest homes go past $1 million. That's new construction in a planned community with a 23-acre park, about 12 miles from downtown Portland.

For schools it's Hillsboro School District, and there's a brand-new elementary school right inside the community: Tamarack Elementary opened in fall 2023, built for about 600 students, with a STEAM lab. The district has land set aside in Reed's Crossing for more schools. When a district builds a school before a neighborhood is even finished, that tells you how fast it's filling up. For jobs, you're close to Intel and the Silicon Forest, and Tanasbourne shopping is a short drive.

Trade-offs, and they're real: some homesites are narrow, under 30 feet wide. I've helped a lot of clients buy here, and this is the thing I warn everyone about: go stand between two houses before you buy and see if it works for you. It'll be a construction zone for years, and more of the town center is still coming. And there's an HOA, currently around $105 a month for a detached home and around $265 for attached, covering things like the parks, trails, and front yard mowing. Get the current dues and rules in writing.

Why it's #1: it's the biggest community on the list still selling new homes, with the widest price range, from the $400s to past $1 million. You get the amenities of a big master-planned community, west-side job access, and plenty of builders and floor plans to choose from.

Best fit: buyers who want brand-new construction, work on the west side or from home, and want the most choice in home type and price.

Honorable mentions

• North Bethany (north of Beaverton): Washington County planned it as its own community, with parks and trails designed so homes are a short walk from a park.
• River Terrace (Tigard): newer homes, multiple builders, and the city is planning a second phase that could add thousands more homes.
• Frog Pond (east Wilsonville): active new construction, same school district as Villebois.
• South Cooper Mountain (Beaverton): another newer area that's been growing fast.

All four are solid. They just didn't beat the top five on amenities and price.

4 things to check before you buy in a master-planned community

1. Read the HOA documents. Not just the monthly dues: what they cover, the rules on paint colors, fences, parking, and RVs, and how much the HOA has in reserves. A pool is great until the HOA doesn't have the money to fix it.
2. Ask for the site plan. In a community that's still being built, the empty lot behind your house is going to be something someday. It might be a park. It might be a three-story apartment building. The builder knows, so ask.
3. Compare the builder's lender to your own. Builders often offer good incentives for using their preferred lender, like a rate buydown or help with closing costs. Sometimes that's a great deal, sometimes the price is higher to pay for it. Get an outside quote and compare the full picture.
4. Look up the property taxes on new construction. This one is specific to Oregon. The taxable value on existing homes has been capped since the 1990s and can only grow about 3% a year, while a new home gets its taxable value set fresh off today's market. Two similar homes on the same street can have very different tax bills, so look up the actual number before you commit.

If your top pick is on the west side, my Hillsboro vs. Portland breakdown is the next thing to read.