Living in Phoenix Arizona

10/16/2026

American Airlines moved 20.9 million passengers through Sky Harbor last year. Now it's getting its own terminal. The airport says nobody local is paying for it with taxes. Ticket fees and bonds are doing the work, and the number to keep your eye on is $4.5 billion, which is an estimate and not a budget.

Full breakdown of who pays, who moves, and what's still undecided: https://livinginphoenixaz.com/blog/sky-harbors-dollar45-billion-west-terminal-who-pays-who-moves-and-whats-still-undecided

Which airline do you think ends up with the old American gates in Terminal 4?

10/07/2026

Mortgage rates hit 7.28% last week. I checked what the last 30 days did to every large Phoenix city. All 15 went down. Not one went up.

Mesa, Gilbert and Glendale flipped from seller's market to buyer's market in a month. Tempe lost 18.6 points. Scottsdale lost 7.7 and still sits at 149.

The blog has the full city-by-city breakdown, plus six plans for buyers and sellers depending on where your city landed. Which situation are you in?

https://livinginphoenixaz.com/blog/between-the-lines-ep6-rates-hit-728-heres-what-30-days-did-to-every-major-phoenix-city

10/01/2026

Empire Group just announced Revelry, a new high-rise community going up on the southeast corner of Rural Road and University Drive in Tempe, a block or two from ASU. Ground breaks this spring. Two towers, 17 and 15 stories, 533 units total, about 850,000 square feet.

The amenity list reads like a hotel brochure: pickleball courts, a golf simulator, a bowling alley, a dog spa, sauna, cold plunge, a 27,000-square-foot pool deck. Reported project cost is in the $280 million range, though that figure varies some depending on the source.

If this sounds familiar, it should. Optima has been building this type of high-rise up the road in Scottsdale for years, Optima Kierland and Optima Sonoran Village among them, with the same hotel-grade amenity list. Optima has used both models across its Scottsdale projects over time: some towers sold off as condos, others kept and leased as rentals. It's a real choice developers make per building, not a fixed formula. Revelry, as announced, is going the rental route.

That choice isn't an accident. A developer who sells a building as condos gets one lump sum, split across however many buyers close on units, and then they're done, whatever that building does for the next 30 years belongs to someone else. A developer who keeps the building and rents it out collects income every year instead, and still owns the dirt and the structure underneath it. Several groups researching this shift have pointed out that the rental route can take 15 to 20 years to match what a condo sale would've paid up front, but after that, every dollar of rent and every dollar of appreciation is pure upside, and the developer still owns an asset instead of a memory. That's a big part of why more builders are choosing to hold their luxury towers rather than sell them unit by unit, especially in corridors like this one where demand looks durable.

Empire Group, Gensler (architect), Layton Construction (general contractor), and Diversified Partners (retail leasing) are the names behind Revelry, real firms with real track records, not a speculative announcement that quietly disappears in a year.

Worth watching whether Tempe actually has the luxury demand to support a project this size. Other developers have tried this play elsewhere and it hasn't always panned out, a big amenity list doesn't guarantee the rents needed to justify an $280 million build. Revelry is a real bet, not a sure thing.

How do you think this affects Tempe moving forward? Do you think Tempe has enough luxury demand to make this work? Let us know in the comments.

09/29/2026

I keep seeing this stat everywhere: sellers now outnumber buyers nationally by 57.9%, the strongest buyer's market Redfin has recorded since they started tracking it in 2013. I wanted to check if that actually holds up for Phoenix, so I pulled the numbers.

Turns out Phoenix is beating the national trend, not just matching it. Redfin has the Phoenix metro at a 94.8% gap between sellers and buyers, nearly double the national average, putting us in the top 10 strongest buyer's markets in the country alongside Nashville, Miami and Houston.

Verdict: Fact. But it comes with a big asterisk, because "Phoenix" isn't one market.

I cross-checked against the Cromford Report's city-by-city data. Queen Creek and Buckeye are sitting at the softest numbers in the Valley right now, real leverage if you're buying there. Scottsdale is the exact opposite, still tight, still competitive, one of the only cities still seeing prices climb. Phoenix proper sits in the middle.

So if someone tells you "it's a buyer's market right now," the real question is which part of the Valley they mean. Full breakdown, including the actual numbers by city, is on the blog.

If you're house hunting in the Valley right now, has that matched what you're seeing? Curious where it's felt easy versus where it's still a fight.

09/28/2026

I saw this one making the rounds on Instagram this week and had to check it out for myself, because it sounded too extreme to be real. It's real, and it happened about 20 minutes from where I live.

Toby Newton bought a four bedroom house in East Mesa in 2022 for $475,000. In 2024 he lost his job, got diagnosed with diabetes, and started falling behind on bills. One of those bills was his HOA assessment, about $170 a quarter. His unpaid balance hit $977. He says he offered the HOA a payment plan three separate times, $50 a month, then $134, then $200, and each time the HOA turned it down. By November 2024 they had started foreclosure.

While that was playing out, Newton's longtime partner Sherrie Patten was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer and went on long-term disability. Between attorney fees and mounting costs, the $977 debt grew to $6,579. In October 2025, the Maricopa County Sheriff sold the house at public auction. The buyer was the HOA itself, the Superstition Springs Community Master Association, for $8,172. A $475,000 house, gone, over a debt that started under $1,000.

I wrote about this exact issue back on September 17, when six new HOA laws took effect in Arizona. The biggest one raised the bar for foreclosure from $1,200 owed or 12 months delinquent, up to $10,000 owed or 18 months delinquent, whichever comes first. If that law had been in place when Newton's case started, it likely never gets to foreclosure. But his case was already filed before the new rules kicked in, so it didn't apply to him.

What actually saved his house wasn't the new law. It was attention. Once the story went national, the HOA reversed course at their next board meeting and agreed to work out a payment plan so Newton could keep the home.

That's worth sitting with. The law fixed this going forward, but it took a viral news story to fix it for the one guy it had already happened to. If you're in an HOA, it's worth knowing your association's actual foreclosure threshold and where your own balance stands against it, before it's the kind of number that makes the news.

Has your HOA ever come after you over a balance that felt way out of proportion to the actual amount owed?

09/22/2026

Scottsdale's luxury condo market has six major projects in active development right now, adding up to roughly 5,400 units, with over 1,000 of those being for-sale condos.

Some of it's already built. Atavia just topped out its first phase. Portico sold out in 2024. Optima McDowell Mountain's second tower is 40% sold with move-ins still a year out.

Some of it's still coming. One Scottsdale just got approved for 350 more units. The Parque adds another 70. Pricing across it all runs from $860K to north of $3.3 million.

And the older, already-built inventory down the road at Optima Kierland is starting to show it, a 2-bed/3-bath unit there just sold after a documented $300,000 price cut.

Full breakdown on the blog: https://livinginphoenixaz.com/blog/scottsdales-luxury-condo-boom-whats-built-whats-coming-and-what-to-expect-as-inventory-grows

Do you think there will be enough luxury condo buyers coming in to fill these projects, or will they sit longer than anticipated? Any other thoughts, we'd love to hear them.

There has been a huge boom in demand in the Scottsdale luxury market. But will that translate to all of the new luxury condo projects coming up as well? Let's dive in to see what's happening now, what's coming soon, and what to expect as these projects...

09/21/2026

This is one of the craziest stats I've seen in the Phoenix housing market lately.

August closings across the Valley were down 6.3% from last year, the first month in 2026 sales didn't beat 2025. At the same time, sales over $3 million were up 59%, from 39 closings a year ago to 62 this August.

Same month. Same market. Two completely different stories. Rate volatility stalled a lot of buyers under $1.5 million, while luxury buyers, who aren't financing the same way, kept right on going.

I pulled the city-by-city numbers too. Phoenix citywide is basically balanced right now. Scottsdale is running hot and has climbed every single period this year. Queen Creek, same Valley, is solidly a buyer's market.

Full breakdown of what this means by price point on the blog: https://livinginphoenixaz.com/blog/this-is-one-of-the-craziest-stats-ive-ever-seen-in-the-phoenix-housing-market-but-its-one-worth-paying-close-attention-to

Have you seen a split like this before? Curious what you're seeing in your price range.

09/18/2026

Same size. Same single story, private pool, 3-car garage. Wildly different price tags.

I pulled three luxury listings that match on nearly everything except location: North Scottsdale, Camelback East/Arcadia, and Paradise Valley. None of them are twins on paper (year built ranges from 1994 to 2015), but they're about as close as real, active listings get.

North Scottsdale: $1,700,000, $440 a square foot, 1.78 acres.
Camelback East/Arcadia: $2,925,000, $775 a square foot, newest build of the three, backs to the canal.
Paradise Valley: $3,750,000, $962 a square foot, guard-gated.

Price per square foot more than doubles from one end of this list to the other. That's not a typo.

Full comparison and the MLS link to all three are on the blog.

Would the extra land in Scottsdale get you, or is the Paradise Valley address worth paying double per square foot for?

09/17/2026

Six new HOA laws took effect in Arizona this week. I broke down which ones actually change something and which ones just sound bigger than they are.

The big one: condo owners now get the same foreclosure protection planned-community owners got last year, 18 months behind or $10,000 owed, whichever hits first, before an HOA can foreclose. Before this, a condo owner could lose their home over as little as $1,200 owed after 12 months.

The other five: shade structures can't be banned outright, two more flag categories are protected, HOAs have to enforce their own rules fairly, sellers have to disclose more before closing, and HOAs can't charge mandatory fees for property they don't own.

Full breakdown, including what it means whether you already live in an HOA or you're thinking about buying into one: https://livinginphoenixaz.com/blog/six-new-hoa-laws-just-took-effect-in-arizona-heres-which-ones-actually-change-anything-for-you

Was there anything else in the new rules that stood out to you as odd? I definitely saw something that made me say hmmmm. Let me know if you caught it on your end.

Six new Arizona HOA laws took effect September 12, 2026. Here's a breakdown of what actually changed for condo foreclosures, shade structures, flags, disclosures, and more.

09/16/2026

Mortgage rates crossed 7% this week, the first time since January 2025.

Last time this happened, the Phoenix market split hard. Homes over $1 million kept selling like nothing was going on, sales in that range were up 57.7% year over year that January. Meanwhile Buckeye, Surprise, Maricopa, and San Tan Valley tipped into buyer's market territory, and Maricopa hit its worst supply numbers since 2008.

That window for buyers didn't last. Rates eased in February and the leverage closed back up within a few weeks.

This time the driver is different, an ongoing conflict pushing oil and bond markets around instead of a Fed timeline everyone saw coming, and nobody's predicting a fast drop back into the 6% range the way they did last time.

If you're shopping above $1 million, history says the rate headlines probably won't slow things down for you. If you bought with an ARM in the last few years betting you'd refinance before your first adjustment, now's the time to check your rate cap and reset date instead of hoping rates bail you out.

Full breakdown on the blog: https://livinginphoenixaz.com/blog/mortgage-rates-are-rising-again-but-by-how-much-and-will-it-continue

Did you buy with an ARM recently, or negotiate a rate buydown last time rates spiked instead of just asking for a price cut? Curious how many people actually used that playbook.