Scottsdale · Home Value
What Your Home Is Worth in Scottsdale
A real number from someone who has been inside the comparable homes, not an automated estimate that has never seen your kitchen.
A Scottsdale comparable is not a thing
Whatever number a website has given you was built by comparing your home against recent sales nearby. The trouble is what nearby means in a city that runs thirty-one miles and climbs nearly four thousand feet.
Fifty years of building sits inside those miles, one era at a time. A 1958 ranch home on a quarter-acre in the south, a 1978 lakeside home in McCormick Ranch, a 2001 gated home north of the 101 and a 2019 condominium in Old Town are four different products with four different buyer pools. They are all Scottsdale.
An estimate that treats them as one market produces a number that is confidently wrong. Not slightly off in a random direction, but wrong in a predictable one, because the average of a very wide range is not near either end of it.
What the number is actually made of
Which Scottsdale you are in. Not the city, the segment. South, Old Town, central, or north of Shea. These are separate markets with separate buyers who do not cross-shop, and a comparable from the wrong one is not a comparable at all.
The era of the house and what has been done since. In the south especially, one street can hold an untouched original, a sensible update and a full rebuild behind the same roofline. That range is wider here than almost anywhere in the valley.
Lot size relative to what is being built now. Older parts of the city carry lots a builder would not give you today, and buyers pay for that specifically.
Whether there is an association. A great deal of central and south Scottsdale has none, and depending on the buyer that is worth money in either direction.
What you back onto. Preserve, greenbelt, golf, water, or another house. Backing onto the McDowell Sonoran Preserve is permanent in a way that backing onto a vacant parcel is not.
How I build it
I walk the house, because condition cannot be judged from a listing and in this city the condition range inside one neighborhood is enormous.
Then I build the comparable set from your segment and your era rather than your radius. That usually throws out most of what an automated estimate counted, and throwing them out is the part that makes the number mean something.
I read how long each one sat before it sold alongside what it closed for, because a home that took four months is telling you something the final figure hides.
Then I show you which comparables I rejected and why. That reasoning is the valuation. A figure with no working behind it is a guess with a decimal point on it.
You get a range in writing, the comparables I used, the ones I threw out, and the association and tax situation for your specific address.
If your address is 85254, start here
This one costs people real money and almost nobody knows about it until escrow.
The 85254 zip code around Kierland carries a Scottsdale mailing address, because the post office serving it sits in Scottsdale. A great many of those homes are inside the City of Phoenix.
That changes which city's property tax rate applies to your home, which affects what a buyer's monthly cost looks like and therefore what they will pay. Phoenix rates are generally lower, which works in your favor once it is stated rather than discovered. Paradise Valley Unified serves the area either way.
I check the parcel with the title company on any 85254 address before I give you a number, because a valuation built on the wrong city is built on the wrong monthly payment.
The renovation question
Most people asking what their home is worth are really asking a second question underneath it, so here is the straight answer.
There are three numbers. What it sells for as it stands, what it sells for after the work, and what the work costs including the months you live through it. The gap between the first two is often smaller than the third.
In south and central Scottsdale there is a specific version of this worth knowing. There is a real and active buyer for an original home on a good lot, and they are paying for the lot and the position. Spending eighty thousand dollars to reach a buyer who intended to remodel anyway is money you do not get back.
I will give you all three numbers and tell you which way I would go. Sometimes the answer is to do nothing and price it for what it is, and I would rather say that than sell you a project.
What this costs you
Nothing, and there is no obligation attached.
Plenty of people ask me a year or two before they do anything, and that is a good reason to ask rather than a premature one. Knowing the real number early is what lets you plan the next move properly instead of discovering what you have to work with in the week you need to use it.
Call me on (480) 203-6605 and we will book a time for me to come and see it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is the online estimate wrong for my Scottsdale home?
Because it averages across a city that runs thirty-one miles and holds fifty years of building. A 1958 ranch in the south, a 1978 lakeside home in McCormick Ranch, a 2001 gated home north of the 101 and a 2019 Old Town condominium are four different products with four different buyer pools, and the average of a very wide range is not near either end of it.
What makes a comparable actually comparable here?
Your segment and your era, not your radius. South, Old Town, central and north of Shea are separate markets whose buyers do not cross-shop. Building the set that way throws out most of what an automated estimate counted, and throwing them out is what makes the number mean something.
Does being in 85254 change my home's value?
It can, because a great many homes with that Scottsdale mailing address sit inside the City of Phoenix, and that changes which property tax rate applies. That changes a buyer's monthly cost and therefore what they will pay. Phoenix rates are generally lower, so it usually works in your favor once stated. I check the parcel with the title company before giving a number.
Should I renovate before I sell?
There are three numbers: what it sells for now, what it sells for after, and what the work costs including the months you live through it. The gap between the first two is often smaller than the third. In south and central Scottsdale there is a real buyer for an original home on a good lot who is paying for the lot, so spending heavily to reach someone who intended to remodel anyway is money you do not get back.
Scottsdale
What home value looks like in Scottsdale
From established central neighborhoods to north Scottsdale luxury, with prices and character that shift block to block.
Scottsdale runs thirty-one miles north to south across 184.5 square miles, with about 243,000 people in it, and the ground climbs from roughly 1,150 feet at the south end to nearly 4,900 feet in the McDowells. A city that long, rising that far, does not stay one thing along its length.
So when somebody tells me they want Scottsdale, that is the beginning of the conversation rather than the end of it. The south end is a walkable grid of post-war homes on generous lots. The north end is Sonoran Desert with houses in it. In between sits fifty years of master planning, one decade at a time.
- The homes
- Close to every era the valley has built. Mid-century ranch homes in the south, many original and many taken back to the studs. Master-planned communities through the center from the 1970s and 1980s, McCormick Ranch, Gainey Ranch and Scottsdale Ranch among them. Then the 1990s and 2000s communities north of Shea, and custom homes in the foothills above them. Old Town carries the condominium stock. As a rough rule the building gets newer and the lots get more expensive as you move north, and neither of those is the same as better.
- Why people choose it
- The real decision here is not whether Scottsdale but which part of it. People choosing the south end are usually buying position and an older house on a bigger lot. People choosing the north end are usually buying newness, a gate, and the desert at the end of the street. Both are Scottsdale and they are almost nothing alike day to day.
- Schools people ask about
- Scottsdale Unified covers much of the city, but not all of it. Paradise Valley Unified serves parts of the west and north, and Cave Creek Unified reaches some of the far north. District lines do not follow neighborhood names or even city limits here, so confirm the assignment for a specific address rather than relying on a listing.
- Getting around
- Scottsdale Road runs the length of the city and the Loop 101 wraps the north and west sides. From the south end, Sky Harbor, Tempe and Arizona State are all close. From the far north end they are a genuine drive. The Indian Bend Wash Greenbelt runs eleven miles through the middle of the city with more than twenty-four underpasses and bridge crossings, so much of it can be walked or ridden without stopping at a major road.
- Nearby
- The McDowell Sonoran Preserve, more than 30,500 acres with over 230 miles of trails, which is why roughly a third of the city's land is permanently protected. Old Town, which the city counts as nine separate districts inside just over a square mile. Scottsdale Fashion Square, the largest mall in Arizona with more than two hundred retailers. And the Arizona Canal path at the Waterfront, which continues for close to seventy miles across the valley.
- The trade-off
- The whole trade runs north to south. Go south and you get an older house, a larger lot, a lower price and a short run to Old Town, Tempe and the airport, with no gate and no golf course. Go north and you get newer construction, preserve access and dark skies, and you drive further for everything. Two million dollars near Kierland and two million in Troon buy completely different days, and a search result will line them up as though the floor plan were the difference.
The method
How we do it in Scottsdale
Home Value: keep exploring
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