Living in Old Town Scottsdale: what the nine districts actually mean

Old Town Scottsdale is nine connected districts, all walkable from each other, and they do not feel the same.

I'm Jen Keene, a REALTOR® in Scottsdale, AZ helping long-time homeowners sell the family home and find the next one. Old Town is where I spend the most time correcting an assumption, and it's always the same one. People say they want to live in Old Town, having experienced it as visitors, and what they mean is they want to live near one particular part of it.

The nine are Fashion Square, the Waterfront, SouthBridge, the Entertainment District, the 5th Avenue shopping district, the Brown and Stetson district, the Arts District, Historic Old Town, and Civic Center Park.

They're genuinely different in character. The Arts District holds more than fifty galleries and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, and runs the ArtWalk on Thursday evenings. Historic Old Town is the Western frontage, the boutiques and the jewellery shops. The Waterfront and SouthBridge sit along the Arizona Canal with restaurants and shops on both banks. The Entertainment District is clubs, bars and lounges, and it's busy late.

Every one of those is within walking distance of the others, which is the appeal and also the thing to think carefully about. Walkable in means walkable out, and a Thursday gallery crowd and a Saturday night crowd are different crowds.

Which district is this home actually next to, and what does that block sound like at eleven on a Saturday night?

That's not a mark against the area. It's the single most useful piece of due diligence available here, and it takes an evening rather than a document.

Go and stand there. Twice. Once on a weekday afternoon when you're seeing the version in the listing photographs, and once on a Friday or Saturday evening. A unit two streets from the Entertainment District and one directly on it are both fairly described as Old Town, and they're different purchases.

Then look at the building rather than the street. Which way does the unit face, what's directly below it, how high up is it, and what are the windows. Two units in the same building can have completely different experiences of the same street depending on orientation and floor, which is why I'd want to see the specific unit at the specific hour rather than the building generally.

Plenty of people do this and buy right next to the busiest part on purpose, because that's what they came for. The failure here isn't choosing a lively block. It's choosing one by accident.

Old Town is mostly attached housing, and that's the real distinction from the rest of Scottsdale.

Condominiums and townhomes make up most of the inventory, from mid-century buildings that have been through various renovations to recent construction with resort-style amenities, concierge arrangements, secure parking and underground garages. Properties around the Waterfront, including buildings like Optima Camelview Village and the Scottsdale Waterfront Residences, sit at the more serviced end of that range.

There's a small amount of detached housing in and around the historic streets, and it's a genuinely scarce product.

What that means practically is that buying in Old Town usually means buying into an association, and the association matters more than it does elsewhere. In an attached building, the association is responsible for the roof, the structure, the elevators, the garage, the pool and the building insurance. Those are large, expensive systems, and what you're really evaluating is how well they've been funded.

Which brings me to the thing I'd read before anything else.

In a condominium, the reserve study tells you what the building's major systems are, when they'll need replacing, and whether there's money set aside for it. It's the closest thing to a financial x-ray of the building, and it's in the disclosure package you receive during escrow.

If the reserves are thin and the roof is near the end of its life, somebody's going to pay for that roof, and it'll be the owners, through a special assessment. Special assessments in Arizona condominium communities have landed anywhere from a few thousand dollars per unit to very large figures, depending on what needed doing and how underfunded the reserves were. That's not a reason to avoid condominiums; it's a reason to read the study.

Three other documents worth your attention in the same package.

The budget, so you can see what the monthly dues actually cover. In an attached building they usually include building insurance, exterior and structural maintenance, the elevators, the pool and the common areas. The figure looks larger than a single-family association fee because it's buying considerably more.

The rental rules. Short-term rental policy varies by building and it's a live issue in Old Town specifically, given where it is. If you intend to rent at all, or if you'd rather live somewhere that limits it, this is the document that tells you.

Anything about litigation or pending assessments, which also affects whether the building is financeable. A building with certain problems can fall outside what a conventional or FHA loan will accept, which narrows your resale pool as well as your own financing. Ask your lender about the building early, not late.

This catches people who've only ever bought detached houses, and it's the thing I'd want a buyer to understand before they fall for a specific unit.

When you finance a condominium, the lender underwrites the building as well as you. A building can be approved for conventional financing, or for FHA or VA loans, or for none of them, and that status has nothing to do with your credit or your income.

What a lender looks at is the association's financial health and the building's circumstances: how much is held in reserves, what share of units are owner-occupied rather than rented, whether a single owner holds too many units, whether there's active litigation, and whether a special assessment is in progress. A building that falls outside those limits is harder to finance, and in some cases cannot be financed with a particular loan type at all.

Two consequences, and the second is the one people miss.

Your own financing may be constrained by the building rather than by you, which can mean a larger deposit or a different loan product than you expected. And when you come to sell, your buyer faces the same constraint, so a building with financing problems has a smaller pool of buyers and that shows up in the price you get.

So the question to put to your lender early, before the inspection period is running out, is simply whether they'll lend on this specific building. It takes a phone call and it's the cheapest piece of due diligence in the whole purchase.

Three practical items decide more about daily life in Old Town than the district does, and none of them appears in a listing photograph.

Parking. How many spaces come with the unit, are they assigned or shared, are they covered, and where does a second vehicle go. In a walkable area people assume parking matters less, and then discover that guests, a second car and a delivery van all still have to go somewhere. Ask specifically what conveys with the unit rather than what the building has.

Storage. Somebody leaving a house with a garage, an attic and a shed is carrying decades of belongings into a building with none of those. A dedicated storage unit, where a building offers one, is frequently the thing that makes the move workable, and whether the unit includes one is a specific question with a specific answer.

How things get in and out. Service elevators, loading arrangements, the hours moving is permitted, and whether the building needs notice. This sounds trivial until moving day, and in a building with one elevator and a booking system it is not trivial at all. It also matters every time something large is delivered or replaced.

None of these is a reason to buy or not buy. They're the questions that separate a building that works for your actual life from one that photographs well, and they cost nothing to ask before you offer.

The strongest case for Old Town is the lock-and-leave one, and it's the reason a large share of my clients end up looking here.

Somebody leaving a house they've been in for twenty-five years, with a yard and a pool and a roof and four bedrooms they no longer use, is usually not looking for a smaller version of the same responsibilities. They want to close the door, go and see the grandchildren for three weeks, and come back to a building where somebody else has been handling everything. Old Town does that about as well as anywhere in the Valley, with the addition that you can walk to dinner. That move has its own shape and it's most of my work.

It also suits people buying a second home who want the place used rather than maintained, and buyers relocating who want to be somewhere they can learn the city on foot before deciding where they'll end up. Second-home buyers hit a different set of questions, mostly about what happens to the property when they aren't in it.

Where it fits less well: anyone who wants a garden, anyone who wants a residential street with no evening footfall, and anyone whose budget is built on a single-family association fee rather than a full-service building's dues.

If you want to compare it against the central Scottsdale alternatives, McCormick Ranch and Gainey Ranch are the two that come up most, and both are a different proposition: more space, more car, less noise, and a different kind of association.

Call me on (480) 203-6605 or get in touch and tell me which part of Old Town you've been walking around in. I'll tell you what's actually for sale near it and what the buildings' reserves look like.