What should you know before buying a home in Grayhawk, Scottsdale?

Grayhawk is nearly 3,800 homes under one name, and a search filtered on price alone hands you three different purchases as though they were the same one. A single-family home with no gate in The Park, a guard-gated home in The Retreat, and a unit in one of Grayhawk's eight gated condominium or townhome communities are not interchangeable, and whoever helps you buy here needs to know which one you're looking at before you tour anything.

I'm Jen Keene, a REALTOR® with eXp Luxury in Scottsdale, AZ, and I'm the agent people call at every stage of their life. Here's the order to go in. First, get pre-approved and sign a buyer broker agreement. Next, decide which side of Grayhawk fits your budget and how you want to live. Then, for any home you're serious about, ask for the total HOA cost, not just the master fee the listing shows. The rest works like any Arizona purchase: an inspection period, earnest money deadlines, and a closing through escrow rather than an attorney's office.

The useful questions here are specific to Grayhawk, not generic. Does this person know the difference between The Park and The Retreat without you having to explain it first? Can they tell you, for a specific address, what the total annual assessment comes to once the master fee, the Retreat Village fee if it applies, and a sub-association fee for a condo or townhome are all added together, rather than quoting you only the master figure? Do they know that both golf courses here, Raptor and Talon, are public, so a membership isn't part of the purchase?

Before I show anyone a home, I find out whether they mean The Park or The Retreat, because they're different markets. I pull the current total assessment on a specific address before you write an offer, not after, because two homes at the same list price can carry a meaningfully different annual cost once every assessment is counted.

Two things come before you see a single Grayhawk listing. You get pre-approved, which rests on information a lender verifies with documents like pay stubs and bank statements, rather than pre-qualification, which rests on what you report yourself. And you sign a buyer broker agreement. According to the National Association of REALTORS®, its MLS participants, which includes me, have had a written agreement with a buyer before touring a home, in person or on a live virtual tour, since August 17, 2024. That agreement has to say commissions aren't set by law and are fully negotiable, and mine can cover one property, one day, or a longer period, so you don't have to commit to more than one house before deciding whether we work together.

Here's what I walk every buyer through before they see a single house.

Grayhawk splits into two communities under one name. The Park has no guard gate at its entrance. The Retreat is guard-gated, built around the Raptor and Talon golf courses, and several of its neighborhoods are gated again inside that. Separately, Grayhawk includes eight condominium and townhome communities, and each one is gated in its own right, which is a different kind of gate again: a code at one building rather than a staffed entry to a whole village.

Inside The Park, the neighborhoods of single-family homes include Coventry at Grayhawk, Featherwind, Monterey Park, Montevina, Pinnacle at Grayhawk and Windsong, along with condominium and townhome communities such as The Edge, Encore and The Venu. Inside The Retreat, behind the gate, you have neighborhoods such as Crown Point, Talon Fairways, Talon Point and Serenity, plus Avian at Grayhawk and Cachet at Grayhawk, the two condominium communities inside that gate. You don't need to memorize the names. You need whoever is helping you buy to know which ones suit what you're after.

That's the first conversation I have with anyone looking at Grayhawk, and here's the full breakdown of what each side gets you.

Assessments here come in up to four separate assessments, and a listing rarely shows all of them. Everyone pays the master assessment. Add the Retreat Village assessment if you're behind the gate, a monthly sub-association fee if it's a condo or townhome, and a neighborhood assessment if that neighborhood has its own pool or courts. A condominium behind the gate at Avian or Cachet can carry three of those at once. A single-family home in The Park may carry one.

I've laid out what each assessment pays for here, and I pull the current total for any specific address before you write an offer.

No. Raptor, a Tom Fazio design, and Talon, from David Graham working with architect Gary Panks, are both public courses. Anyone can play either one without an initiation fee or a club membership. The clubhouse is 40,000 square feet, and there are two City of Scottsdale public parks inside the community as well, carrying no membership and no extra assessment. If you're comparing Grayhawk against a community where the course sits behind a private club, that's a real difference in what you'll pay every year, not a detail to skip past.

Paradise Valley Unified, not Scottsdale Unified. Grayhawk Elementary sits inside the community on Grayhawk Drive. Boundaries move, so confirm the current one for a specific address rather than assuming it matches a neighbor's.

The Loop 101 is a couple of minutes' drive from Grayhawk, so the airport, Old Town and the rest of the Valley are a straightforward trip. Scottsdale Road and Pima are the north-south routes through the area. Hayden Peak Crossing, anchored by a Fry's, and Grayhawk Plaza cover everyday errands, restaurants and coffee without leaving the area. They're laid out more like a strip mall than a walkable street, with their own restaurants and shops. The golf club itself has three places to eat, open to anyone whether you're playing or not: Quill Creek Restaurant and Grill overlooking the Raptor course, Isabella's Kitchen, and the Morning Joint for coffee starting at six in the morning.

Beyond what's inside Grayhawk, Kierland Commons and Scottsdale Quarter are both a short drive south on Scottsdale Road, and Market Street at DC Ranch is close to the east.

What the back opens onto matters here. Greenbelt, pocket park, desert, the golf course, or another house. Grayhawk has a lot of maintained common area, and backing onto it is worth having.

If the home is on the course, which hole matters too. Fairway positions aren't interchangeable, and a stretch out of the line of play is a different home from one in a landing zone, which anyone who plays will spot right away.

Grayhawk built out over a long period, so two homes of similar size can be a decade apart in roof, air conditioning and finishes, and in this climate those carry real costs. And stand on the street at more than one hour of the day before you decide what you can hear, since the Loop 101 is close enough to matter to some addresses and not to others.

Grayhawk doesn't have its own separate market report. It sits inside ZIP 85255, which also covers DC Ranch and McDowell Mountain Ranch. In October 2026, the Cromford Report showed 244 active single-family listings in 85255, a median of 39 days on market, and 3.3 months of supply, which means it would take a little over three months to sell everything currently listed at the pace homes are selling now. Over the past 12 months, the median sale price for single-family homes in 85255 was $1,700,000. That figure blends three communities together, so it describes the ZIP code, not any one Grayhawk address. For your specific home or your specific search, I'd pull sales from that part of Grayhawk instead.

The first is hiring someone before asking whether they know the difference between The Park and The Retreat. If they don't ask which one you mean, they're about to show you houses that don't match what you asked for.

The second is accepting the master HOA figure as the whole answer. The listing rarely shows the total, and the gap between the master figure and the real one can add up to real money over the years you own the home.

The third is assuming a golf membership comes with a Grayhawk address. It doesn't, on either course.

The fourth is touring homes before you're pre-approved and before you've signed a buyer broker agreement. Both come first, not after you've already found a house you like.

If you want to lock the door and leave rather than maintain a yard, one of Grayhawk's eight condominium or townhome communities is an option, and the HOA documents for that specific building are where that conversation starts, since each of the eight has its own association.

If you're moving to Grayhawk from out of state, you're learning the area while you buy, and the extra pieces that come with relocating are here. If this will be a second home rather than where you live full time, the questions change, particularly around the sub-association rules, and that's covered here. And if you're selling a home to buy this one, I plan both sides of that together rather than one at a time.

Tell me whether you're thinking The Park, The Retreat, or one of Grayhawk's condo or townhome communities, and what you want your total annual cost to look like once every assessment is counted. From there, here's what working with me looks like, start to finish, and here's how a purchase moves from an accepted offer to closing in Arizona.

Most people looking at Grayhawk are also looking at DC Ranch and McDowell Mountain Ranch at the same time, so those are worth reading alongside this.

Call me at (480) 203-6605 or get in touch, and tell me which side of Grayhawk you're looking at. I'll tell you what's on the market there.