McCormick Ranch · Luxury Homes
Luxury Home Marketing in McCormick Ranch
A marketing plan built to get your home noticed, syndication that reaches buyers worldwide, and weekly reporting so you always know what is working.
Here you are selling the renovation as much as the house
At the top of McCormick Ranch you are almost never selling a new house. You are selling a 1970s or 1980s home that somebody took back to the studs and rebuilt, on a lot and among trees that nothing newer can match.
That is a genuinely strong proposition and it is a harder thing to market than a new build, for one reason. A buyer at this price has to believe the work was done properly, by people who knew what they were doing, and that they are not buying somebody else's cost-saving decisions hidden behind nice finishes.
Photographs of a beautiful kitchen do not answer that. So the marketing has to.
Proving the work, which most listings never bother to do
This is the part I do differently on a renovated home here, and it is the part that matters most.
Document what was actually done. Not a bullet list saying fully remodeled. What was replaced and when: roof, air conditioning, electrical, plumbing, windows. Who did the work. What was permitted and what the record shows.
A buyer looking at a fifty-year-old house at the top of the market is quietly running a list of worries. Every item you answer in advance is an objection that never becomes a negotiation, and a seller who volunteers the permit record reads as somebody with nothing to hide.
Show the systems, not only the surfaces. A photograph of a new mechanical room sells more house at this level than another angle on the island. It is the least glamorous image in the set and frequently the most persuasive.
The trees and the water are the part nobody can copy
Whatever the renovation cost, the thing that makes this home worth what it is worth is partly outside it.
Fifty years of established landscaping, and in the best positions here, water or a greenbelt behind you. A newly built home at the same price is standing among saplings in gravel, and a buyer who has spent a weekend looking at those feels the difference in about ten seconds.
So the shoot gets planned around that. Twilight exteriors, because that is when mature planting and a water position show properly. Drone, to establish what you back onto and how much green surrounds you. Video, because walking out of a rebuilt interior onto a fifty-year-old lot is the whole argument of the house and a still photograph cannot make it.
And a 3D walkthrough, so somebody out of state can move through it before spending a trip.
Where it goes
The MLS reaches people already searching Scottsdale, which matters and is not sufficient, because a share of the people who would buy this home have not started looking here yet.
Through eXp Luxury the listing syndicates a good deal further. The financial press, meaning the Wall Street Journal, Barron's and MarketWatch. The luxury property titles, meaning Mansion Global, Robb Report, Unique Homes, JamesEdition, HAVEN and UPMKT. And more than ninety international property portals, translated, with advertising across seventy-plus markets.
Alongside that, paid and retargeted advertising aimed at the profile the house suits, and direct work agent to agent, because a real share of these buyers never search a portal.
The caveat: that is reach, not a sale. It puts the home in front of the right people. The house, the price and the presentation still do the work.
Pricing a renovated home in an unrenovated street
This is the specific pricing problem here and it is worth understanding before we set a number.
Your comparable sales will include homes that look similar in the data and are nothing like yours in reality. An appraiser and an algorithm both see a 1979 house of a certain size. You are selling something that was rebuilt three years ago.
So I build the case rather than assuming it is obvious. Which sales I am using and why, which I am discarding and why, and what the documented work is worth against each. That reasoning goes to the buyer's agent and, if it comes to it, to the appraiser, because on a home like this a low appraisal is a real risk and the way to reduce it is to have the argument ready before anybody asks for it.
Putting it on high to see what happens costs more here than it looks, because the people genuinely shopping at this level in central Scottsdale are not numerous, and they will all have seen it.
What you get while it is on
Showings logged automatically by the lockbox with the agent's feedback collected as it happens, so what I report back is a record rather than my memory of a call.
A written update every week with the numbers in it, and what I think they mean.
A refreshed valuation every month.
The general version is here, selling here is here, and the number starts here.
Call me on (480) 203-6605.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is different about marketing a luxury home here?
You are selling a renovation as much as a house. At the top of McCormick Ranch these are 1970s and 1980s homes rebuilt to the studs, and a buyer at that price has to believe the work was done properly rather than that they are buying somebody else's cost-saving decisions behind nice finishes. Photographs of a kitchen do not answer that, so the marketing has to.
How do you prove a renovation was done well?
By documenting it rather than describing it. What was replaced and when, covering roof, air conditioning, electrical, plumbing and windows. Who did the work. What was permitted and what the record shows. A photograph of a new mechanical room sells more house at this level than another angle on the island.
Will a renovated home appraise here?
It is a real risk, because the comparable sales include homes that look similar in the data and are nothing like yours. So I build the case in advance: which sales I am using and why, which I am discarding, and what the documented work is worth. That reasoning goes to the buyer's agent and, if needed, the appraiser, before anybody asks for it.
Does the mature landscaping matter at this price?
It is the part nobody can copy. A newly built home at the same price is standing among saplings in gravel, and a buyer who has spent a weekend looking at those feels the difference in about ten seconds. The photography gets planned around it, with twilight exteriors and drone to establish what you back onto.
McCormick Ranch
What luxury homes looks like in McCormick Ranch
Established central Scottsdale, built around lakes and golf, with mature landscaping and a wide range of home types.
McCormick Ranch was a working cattle and Arabian horse ranch before it was a neighborhood. It sold in 1970 and development started in the early 1970s, which makes it Scottsdale's original master-planned community.
Fifty years on, the thing it has that no newer community can buy is mature landscaping. Full-grown trees, water, and green that has had half a century to establish. A community built last year can copy the floor plans; it cannot copy a forty-year-old tree.
- The homes
- Five genuinely different products under one name: traditional single-family from the 1970s and 1980s on larger lots than a builder would give you now, homes backing onto the lakes or greenbelts, golf-course homes, patio homes and townhomes, and condominiums. More than forty individual neighborhood associations sit inside the community.
- Why people choose it
- People choose it for the mature landscaping and the central position rather than for newness. It is in central Scottsdale rather than north, which changes what is within ten minutes of the door, and the paths through the greenbelts are the amenity residents actually use daily.
- Schools people ask about
- Scottsdale Unified. The district is working through a reorganization at the moment, so confirm the current assignment for a specific address rather than relying on a listing or on last year's boundary.
- Getting around
- Central Scottsdale rather than north, so Old Town, the airport and the rest of the valley are all closer than they are from the communities further up. Hayden, Via Linda and Shea are the routes you will use. The greenbelt paths run for miles and connect the neighborhoods to the parks and the shops on foot.
- Nearby
- McCormick Ranch Golf Club with two eighteen-hole courses, the lakes and greenbelt paths, Comanche, Mountain View and Shoshone parks, and McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park, which exists because the McCormick family gave the city a hundred acres in 1967.
- The trade-off
- Against the north Scottsdale communities you are trading newer construction, dramatic terrain and preserve access for fifty years of mature landscaping and a central location. Against DC Ranch or Grayhawk you generally get more established character and a much lower master assessment, and you give up a single resident clubhouse, because the amenities here are spread through the community rather than gathered in one building.
The method
How we do it in McCormick Ranch
Luxury Homes: keep exploring
Ready to make your move with Jen Keene?