Arizona's Luxury Real Estate Market Shaping Up to a Record Year
When a home in the Silverleaf community of Scottsdale, Arizona, sold for $24.1 million in September, it set a new record as the highest-priced home sale in the state’s history. Sitting on 17 acres, the 15,000-square-foot mansion has eight bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, an indoor basketball court, and a 7,500-square-foot guest house.
That sale broke the record set in November 2019, when Phoenix Suns owner Robert Sarver sold his 28,000-square-foot, seven-bedroom, 11-bathroom home in Cameldale Estates for $19.25 million. When that same property sold again in October 2020 for $20.9 million, it set another record—the highest-priced home sale ever in Paradise Valley.
Such transactions are looking less like outliers and more like a trend for Arizona’s luxury home market, where prices are skyrocketing along with sales activity. As COVID-19 reduces travel, keeps jobs and schools online, and brings college-age children back home, buyers are moving up to homes that offer more space and more amenities.
The residential luxury market in Maricopa County (the Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale metropolitan area) is “on fire,” says Russell Diehl, Owner/Designated Broker for Arizona Network Realty and the owner of ArizonaRealEstate.com. In the $1 million to $6 million price range, the number of sales is up 49% year-to-date through October compared to the same period last year. The dollar volume of those sales rose from $2.74 billion to $4.1 billion over the same period, according to the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service (ARMLS).
“What’s even more dramatic,” Diehl points out, is the growth over just the past three months. For the period from August to October, the number of home sales in the $1 million to $6 million range throughout Maricopa County was up 138% compared to the same period last year.
Scottsdale has been especially active, with the number of sales in the $3 million to $4 million range—the “hottest segment”—showing “a whopping 82% increase” this year through October over the same period in 2019, says Diehl. For the August to October period alone, the increase is 285%.