Living in Long Beach's Eastside & Circle Area: The Neighborhood Built Around CSULB and the Roundabout

If you want to be close to everything in Long Beach without paying coastal prices, the Eastside and its Circle Area, built around the historic Traffic Circle roundabout, is one of the most underrated spots in the city. It's walkable, well-connected, and sits right next to Cal State Long Beach, yet it still prices well below the citywide median.

I'm Diana Galvez, a REALTOR® with HomeSmart Realty Group's Homeverse Team, and I show buyers this stretch of Long Beach often, especially first-time buyers, CSULB-adjacent renters ready to buy, and anyone who wants a walk score most of the city can't match. Here's what the neighborhood actually offers.

A Neighborhood With History: From Zaferia to the Circle Area

The Eastside was historically known as Zaferia, one of Long Beach's oldest commercial districts, centered on Anaheim Street between Temple and Redondo Avenues. Today "Eastside" refers to the broader area covering ZIP codes 90804, 90803, 90808, and 90815, and it wraps around the neighborhood most people know by its landmark: the Circle Area, named for the Los Alamitos Traffic Circle roundabout. It borders Cal State Long Beach, Lakewood, and the Orange County line, which makes it one of the more centrally connected parts of the city.

That history shows up in the mix of housing today: older bungalows and duplexes near the old Zaferia commercial core alongside apartment complexes and mid-rise buildings closer to the Circle itself.

An Affordable, Walkable Way Into Long Beach

Homes around the Circle Area typically sell in the $550,000 to $575,000 range over the trailing 12 months, well under the citywide Long Beach median of roughly $879,000. That affordability comes with a real lifestyle upside: the neighborhood carries a Walk Score around 88 and a Bike Score around 76, numbers that are hard to find anywhere else in Long Beach outside of Downtown. Multiple Long Beach Transit lines run through the area, including direct service to CSULB and Downtown, so a car-light lifestyle is realistic here.

Housing stock runs from small studios and two-bedroom single-family homes to three- and four-bedroom houses and apartment or high-rise buildings near the Circle, which gives buyers more entry points and price ranges to work with than most single-character neighborhoods.

Location, Schools, and What's Nearby

The neighborhood sits about five miles from Downtown Long Beach and roughly 25 miles from Downtown LA, with easy access to Pacific Coast Highway and the surrounding freeway network. Cal State Long Beach is about a mile away, including access to campus programming like performances at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center. Recreation Park, one of the city's largest, is within walking distance and includes an 18-hole golf course, a 9-hole course along the Colorado Lagoon, walking trails, and a dog park, and nearby El Dorado Park adds an additional 18-hole course and disc golf. The Long Beach Playhouse, an intimate theater in a 1929 Art Deco building, sits along the neighborhood's southern edge.

Schools serving the area, including Bixby Elementary, Stanford Middle, and Woodrow Wilson High School, are generally well regarded, which matters for buyers weighing this area against pricier East Long Beach neighborhoods with similar school access.

Who the Eastside and Circle Area Fit Best

This neighborhood makes the most sense for buyers who want central access, walkability, and price relative to the rest of Long Beach, rather than a beach-close address. It draws a genuinely mixed crowd: students and young professionals near campus, longtime families in the single-family pockets, and buyers who were priced out of Belmont Heights, Los Altos, or Bixby Knolls but still want to be five minutes from all of them.

If you're comparing the Eastside and Circle Area against other Long Beach neighborhoods at a similar price point, I'm happy to pull real listings and walk through the trade-offs with you.

You can reach me at (323) 807-4184 or casasbydianag@gmail.com. Let's find your way into Long Beach.

Diana Galvez, REALTOR®
Homeverse Team, HomeSmart Realty Group | DRE #02040313
Serving Long Beach, and the greater Los Angeles & Orange County area