What we know about Laguna Woods
Ross Cortese bought part of the Moulton Ranch in 1962 to build a second Leisure World, and its first residents moved in during 1964. Today it is Laguna Woods Village, home to more than 18,600 people, with at least one resident 55 or older in every home. The Village is divided into three housing mutuals: Third Laguna Hills Mutual with 6,102 condominiums, United Laguna Woods Mutual with 6,323 cooperative homes, and Mutual No. Fifty, the Towers, with 311.
Housing-related services and the common areas are the mutuals' responsibility, and Village Management Services, with about 800 employees, acts as their managing agent. Before anyone opens a wall or cuts into a shared line, it helps to know what your mutual covers in your building. Tell us your mutual when you call, so that any pipe it is responsible for is handled through it and not around it.
By the Census count the city has about 13,300 homes. Their median year built is 1969: 49 percent date from the 1960s alone and 90 percent from before 1980. Just 7 percent are detached houses, while 51 percent sit in buildings with five or more units. Inside units this old, the parts that wear out are the ones that move or get hot: shutoff valves, fill valves, faucet cartridges and water heaters. One worry can be set aside: El Toro Water District reports no lead and no galvanized service lines anywhere in its system, customer-owned lines included.
El Toro Water District, formed in 1960, supplies every address in Laguna Woods. All of its water is imported, treated at the Diemer plant or the Baker plant, whose water averaged 236 and 293 mg/L of hardness in 2025, and the district owns the largest covered drinking-water reservoir in Orange County, at 275 million gallons. Sewage from its 158 miles of sewer pipe is treated at the district's own Water Recycling Plant in Laguna Woods, first built in 1963 and rebuilt in 1998. Private sewer laterals, inside or outside a building, are not the district's to maintain; they stay with the owner. Plumbing permits are issued at the City Hall counter, 24264 El Toro Road.
Close to Laguna Woods are Laguna Hills, Aliso Viejo, Irvine along with Laguna Beach. A call from any of them rings the same line as yours, with a person on it day and night, and the plumber for each sets out from Laguna Niguel. Whatever the address, the cause of the trouble is tracked down first, and the repair waits until you have seen its price on paper.
Neighborhoods we get called to
- Laguna Woods Village
Laguna Woods ZIP codes on our map
- 92637





