Elijah71

Wife and I are talking about moving out to Arizona in the future.
what towns / neighborhoods are great?
What towns / neighborhoods are crap?
Are there any wooded areas or is it all desert?
im wanting to not be anyplace congested got plenty of that crap here in MD.
Would want to be within an hour of airport to get around country to go see the kids n grandkids.

Thanks

cpt11gs

Northern AZ can be very wooded. A friend lives in Flagstaff. Very pretty area, and cool in the summer. No congestion there.

69 L46 4 Speed

I have several Corvette friends that live in Lake Havasu City and love it.

owc6

I would move from MD to the Southwest tomorrow!

Northern AZ or NM preferably. Southern AZ is too hot for me, however. Why AZ in particular? There is plenty of the Desert Southwest that is beautiful. Heck, I'd move back to 29 Palms, CA if it wasn't in CA.

Yes, I am a Desert Rat at heart.

NOWUCME

We've been looking too. Found this site it gives some good information. Try playing around in it as you can change to different areas or a lot are already listed unless you change the town or city looks like....Phoenix and Tucson areas would be close to and airport. Pull up a google map to get familiar where some of the cities are located...Flagstaff would be cooler and has snow in the winter, has a ski area, Phoenix probably closest airport. Close to Grand Canyon too.

https://www.niche.com/places-to-live...burb&type=city

Bob Paris

Avoid Phoenix. Worst rush hour traffic I have ever been in and I know what I am talking about since I have lived in Los Angeles my whole life.

My sister & brother-in-law moved to Prescott and love it. Weather is less severe than other AZ locales.

Dano523

You may end up snowbirding there in the winter time, but it's too brutally hot in the summer time there for older people, and you will need a second home some where its not so hot summer time instead.

So I suggest before you decide to move to Arizona, go visit it in the dead of summer heat around July to make sure you can live in that kind heat day in, day out instead.

BlindSpot

I live in far North Scottsdale. Nice, not congested, but expensive as all get out.

Prescott is nice, but 100+ miles out of metro PHX and you can get a little winter there.

Flagstaff is like Santa Fe, NM. Both 7000 ft ASL. Winter like conditions, quaint, but both close to skiing.

There are several places to live between Flag and PHX if you like "rural" and less "Hades" type heat.

Tucson is also nice, smaller, not so metro, and close to the border.

I lived in Albuquerque for 15 yrs, and prefer it over PHX, but that was another lifetime ago.

AVOID - the Sun Cities; Maryvale (LOL); Tempe is questionable; I also don't like Surprise, or much of the westside for that matter.

pure zen

Sounds like South Chandler, North Scottsdale, or East Mesa might be what you are looking for... 30 to 60 minutes from Sky Harbor airport and Mesa also has an airport with some commercial flights. Plenty of shopping/entertainment places near the above cities, w/o going in to PHX.
75 miles or 75 minutes away to Payson at 5000+ elevation if you want to see mountains, pine trees, or snow.... If you prefer to live in liberal government cities, Tempe, PHX, or Gilbert is for you


It's a dry heat most of the summer and everything/everywhere is air conditioned. If you are a pansy-azz and don't like warm temps, stay back East in the frozen tundra/rust belt. BTW, it was 75 degrees and full blue skies here yesterday. A few summer dust storms to endure, but no hurricanes or tornadoes. Despite being desert, water is plentiful - snow melt from Colorado and northern Arizona runs downhill...to fill our many lakes. Houses and taxes are much, much less than CA, and you don't have to deal with 39 million distressed people,,,,many of which speak no English


I'm sure other opinions may differ...

Turbo6TA

So is a pizza oven !

Bruster

We have "older people" here in Arizona, they get along just fine, yes year around.

A second home? Most of us live in one just fine.

Come in August when there is heat and humidity to get a full sample of summer.

Some of you crack me up with how you think we live here in the desert.

Bruster

You're not honestly claiming Phoenix traffic is worse than L.A. are you?

Thanks, that one actually made me laugh out loud.

Cordes Performance Racing

if you're going to the valley gilbert is my absolute favorite. that's where we have lived for 17 years now.

HOXXOH

We have crap here too, but it's different crap from your crap. I moved to the Phx area in '71 after 29 years of NW Ohio. I'd never live anyplace else. There is no utopia, so you just need to find the place with the smallest number of your personal evils.

If you are retired or plan to be soon, rush hour traffic is easily avoided and that can put Maricopa County (MC) back on your list.
Quick facts:
MC and MD have fairly close areas. MC at 9,200 sq mi vs MD at 10,400.
Population- MC 4.2 million vs MD 6.0
Density/sq mi - MC 456 vs MD 594
The city of Phx has the largest municipal park in the world, with 2,000 more acres than all of Manhatten Island.
There are 11 commercial airports, 193 golf courses, at least a half dozen car shows every week, way too many restaurants to list, and far more things to do in the great weather.

Once you get out of the MC area, the rest of the State changes a lot. There are barren mountains and some with forests. Small towns of less than 100 people and many in the 10,000 +/- range are scattered all over. Only Tucson, Lake Havasu, Yuma, and Flagstaff have populations over 50,000. Other than MC and Tucson, there are about 1.5 million people living in the other 100,000 square miles.
It's happened a few times where the Nation's warmest and coldest temps of the day were both in AZ and less than 200 miles apart.

I have three suggestions for you.
1. do google searches for everything that interests you as far as a place to live. Check those places with Wikipedia. Then put pins on a map for those places outside of MC. Take a look at them on google earth and go to street view to get a better look.
2. plan for at least a day to investigate each of those places in person.
3. plan for at least a week in MC for comparison.
I'd suggest April or May. Earlier if you can.

Don't wait to long too make a decision if you're serious. We're starting to get an influx of people from FL and TX hurricane refugees, which will soon be followed by those fire, flood, and mudslide victims from CA. The home prices are increasing quickly.

HOXXOH

Phoenix 5-day forecast

Friday Sunny 70 46
Saturday Sunny 75 48
Sunday Mostly Cloudy 75 48
Monday Partly Cloudy 73 47
Tuesday Mostly Cloudy 71 48

No hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, snow, fires, floods, mudslides, or things a little A/C can't fix.
Just had rain two days ago for the first time since August.

Vet65te

PM Sent.
Mike T - Prescott AZ

azvetteguy

Check out Peralta Trails in Gold Canyon AZ.

CQRT

We moved out here from Ohio in the early 90s and although Ohio might always feel like "home" for our kids, we've never looked back and lived in the McCormick Ranch section of Scottsdale as well as up near Pinnacle Peak before moving to Fountain Hills 11 years ago.

My wife's a realtor and sells all over the valley and like most areas, there are people that are passionate about all parts of town as well as the surrounding areas. I'm happy to talk on the phone if that would be helpful- just shoot me a PM.

We like Fountain Hills because of its small town feel, but still only 30 minutes to the airport and a nice selection of homes from smaller snow bird condos to very large, multimillion dollar places in gated communities. There's a nice selection of restaurants and golf courses surrounded by beautiful mountain views.

Good luck-

ROLLIE

blacksedan87

We moved from the Chicago area 26 years ago - because of a corporate relocation. I wasn't sure it was the right move back then, but now I wouldn't live anywhere else! I love Arizona - period. The summers are hot, and in the monsoon periods, it's certainly not a dry heat. 300+ days of sunshine. But when the rest of the country was freezing (including the deep south), Arizona was in the mid 70's and absolutely beautiful.

The comment about the Phoenix area traffic is total bullshit. Chicago, New York, all of southern Commiefornia and most metro areas are worse.

I live in Chandler, which is now the third or fourth largest city. When we moved here it was a sleepy community of about 65K. Now its about 250K population.

I agree - come for a couple of months in the summer to determine if you can live with the heat before you buy.

pure zen

So,,,, you like rain, humidity, wearing sweaty clothes, BUGS, alligators, swamps, hurricanes, tornadoes, pythons, and a surplus of blue haired seniors down at the buffet with their discount coupons?


118 was a comfortable day This one was even better:








If you can't stand the heat,,,stay out of God's Country....