Fountain Hills · Second Homes
Resort and Second Homes in Fountain Hills
Buying a second home in Scottsdale, from someone who holds the Resort and Second-Home Property Specialist designation.
The question is the empty months, not the good ones
Everyone buying a second home in Fountain Hills has already pictured the good months. Nobody needs help imagining a February morning on a patio up the hill.
The part worth thinking about carefully is the other seven or eight months, when the house is sitting empty in real heat with nobody in it. That is where a second home either works or becomes a running irritation, and it is almost never what people ask about first.
I hold the RSPS designation, which is the resort and second-home certification, and most of what it is actually useful for is this side of the purchase rather than the pleasant side.
Talk to me about a second home
What a hillside property needs while you are away
A house on a slope has a different empty-season list from a condo on flat ground, and that difference is the main reason to think about the lot before the finishes.
Landscape irrigation is the first thing. Desert planting still needs a working system, and a controller that fails in June is discovered in October by which point the planting is gone. Somebody needs to be looking at it, not just paying for it.
Drainage is the second, and it is specific to the terrain here. Monsoon water moves fast across a graded lot, and the damage from a blocked channel happens over one afternoon while nobody is in the state.
Then the ordinary absent-owner items: pool service and who checks it, a pest contract, and somebody with a key who will physically walk the property once a month. Not a camera. A person.
I will tell you which properties are straightforward to leave and which are going to need real management. Some of the most beautiful lots here are in the second category, and that is worth knowing before you buy rather than after your first summer away.
Lock-and-leave is a property type, not a description
If leaving easily matters more to you than land does, say so at the start and the search changes shape completely.
An association that handles the exterior and the landscaping removes most of the empty-month list in one decision. Communities like FireRock, Adero Canyon, SunRidge Canyon and Eagle Mountain each handle this differently, and what is covered varies enough that it is worth reading rather than assuming.
A large share of the town sits in no association at all, which for a full-time owner is often an advantage and for an absent owner is usually the opposite. It means everything outside the walls is yours to arrange.
This one decision matters more to how a second home actually feels than square footage does, and it is the one most buyers make by accident.
If you are thinking about renting it out
Ask this before you buy, not after, because the answer changes which properties make sense.
Short-term rental rules in Arizona are set at the state level and towns are limited in what they may impose, but there are still registration and local requirements to meet, and they change. An association can also restrict rentals independently of anything the town does, and plenty here do.
So the order is: decide whether renting matters to you, then let me confirm the association rules and current town requirements for the specific address, then we shortlist. Doing it the other way around is how people end up owning a house that cannot do the thing they bought it for.
I will point you to the current rules rather than paraphrase them from memory, because this is an area where being roughly right is worse than useless.
What people actually use here
There are four golf courses inside the town limits. FireRock and Eagle Mountain are both Scott Miller designs, SunRidge Canyon is a Keith Foster course, and Desert Canyon is the shortest of them. FireRock is private; the others are public.
McDowell Mountain Regional Park sits to the north with a substantial trail network, and Adero Canyon has trail access onto the McDowell Sonoran Preserve from within the community.
And the evenings are the thing people do not anticipate liking as much as they do. The town has been an International Dark Sky Community since January 2018, so the night sky here is genuinely dark rather than nominally so.
Buying this from somewhere else
Most second-home buyers here are not in Arizona when they decide, and the process works fine when it is built for that.
I walk properties with a camera and give you my own read, including the empty-season problems a listing will never mention. I confirm association rules, rental restrictions and what the lot will need while you are gone, before you get attached to it.
And if the right answer is that a particular house will be more work than you want, I will say so. A second home that becomes a chore is a bad purchase at any price.
Call me on (480) 203-6605.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a Fountain Hills house need while I am away for the summer?
A working irrigation system somebody actually looks at, because a controller that fails in June is discovered in October by which point the planting is gone. Drainage checked before monsoon, since water moves fast across a graded lot. Pool service, a pest contract, and a person with a key who walks the property monthly. Not a camera, a person.
Is lock-and-leave possible here?
Yes, but it is a property type rather than a description, so say it matters at the start. An association handling exterior and landscaping removes most of the empty-month list in one decision. A large share of the town sits in no association at all, which suits a full-time owner and usually works against an absent one.
Can I rent out a second home in Fountain Hills?
Short-term rental rules in Arizona are set at state level and towns are limited in what they can impose, but registration and local requirements still apply and they change. An association can also restrict rentals independently, and plenty here do. Decide whether renting matters first, then I confirm the rules for the specific address before we shortlist.
What is there to do in Fountain Hills?
Four golf courses inside the town limits: FireRock and Eagle Mountain, both Scott Miller designs, SunRidge Canyon by Keith Foster, and Desert Canyon. McDowell Mountain Regional Park to the north with a substantial trail network, and trail access onto the McDowell Sonoran Preserve from within Adero Canyon. The fountain itself runs hourly from nine to nine.
Fountain Hills
What second homes looks like in Fountain Hills
Its own town east of Scottsdale, built into the hills, with big views and a different pace from the valley floor.
The first thing to understand about Fountain Hills is that it is not part of Scottsdale. It is its own town, incorporated in 1989, with its own council, its own school district and its own tax structure. It shares a border with Scottsdale and very little else, and most of the surprises people run into here trace back to assuming otherwise.
It was laid out in 1970 by McCulloch Properties on what had been cattle ranch, and the fountain that gives the town its name went in the same year. It still runs for fifteen minutes at the top of every hour between nine in the morning and nine at night, and on a handful of days a year they open all three pumps and send it up to its full 560 feet.
- The homes
- Fifty-plus years of building in one town, so the range is wide: 1970s and 1980s homes on generous hillside lots, a large middle of 1990s and 2000s construction, and newer custom and semi-custom work in the gated communities. FireRock, Eagle Mountain, SunRidge Canyon and Adero Canyon each sit at the higher end and each feel different from one another. Much of the town outside those is not in an HOA at all, which is unusual for this side of the valley and worth checking address by address.
- Why people choose it
- The reason people give for choosing Fountain Hills is almost always the same one: the view and the quiet, and being willing to drive for them. The town runs at a slower pace than Scottsdale and it is noticeably darker at night, which is not an accident.
- Schools people ask about
- Fountain Hills Unified School District #98, not Scottsdale Unified. Four schools serve the whole town: Little Falcons Preschool, McDowell Mountain Elementary, Fountain Hills Middle School and Fountain Hills High School. If schools matter to your decision, this is the single biggest practical difference between buying here and buying across the Scottsdale line.
- Getting around
- Shea Boulevard and the Beeline Highway are the two ways in and out, and everything is measured from them. Old Town Scottsdale is roughly half an hour, Sky Harbor closer to forty-five minutes without traffic. Inside the town you will drive to almost everything, and the hills mean the short distance on the map is not always the short drive.
- Nearby
- Fountain Park and the lake, McDowell Mountain Regional Park to the north with its trail network, and four golf courses inside the town limits: FireRock and Eagle Mountain, both Scott Miller designs, SunRidge Canyon by Keith Foster, and Desert Canyon. Adero Canyon sits against the McDowell Sonoran Preserve with trail access from the community.
- The trade-off
- You generally get more lot, more view and more house per dollar than the equivalent address in north Scottsdale, and the town levies no primary property tax of its own. What you give up is convenience. Every errand is a longer drive, the choice of restaurants and shops is a fraction of what Scottsdale offers, and the school district is smaller. People who love it here made that trade deliberately.
The method
How we do it in Fountain Hills
Second Homes: keep exploring
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