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Originally Posted by KirkV
Still have a couple of years left but I have to get out of this God forsaken corrupted, overtaxing state of Illinois! The wife and I are thinking of moving lock stock and Cobra out west somewhere and I was wondering what people out there think of different area's?
I am hoping for a smaller newer construction in the 400K area and wondering as well about the likes and dislikes of the weather in different area's. Tired of shoveling snow in the winter, and I think my aching bones would like the climate better?  |
Avoiding snow (which Arizona has plenty of in about 1/2 of the state) means you'll be south. We lived in Phoenix in the late 70s for about 5 years and I was headed back in the late 90s but Intel canceled my group. I was there for about 9 months. Fortunately our house in MA hadn't sold and my wife and kids stayed there but I did get a chance to do a lot of real estate scouting.
We lived in Tempe the first time. Tempe is a great city but landlocked so not much new development. Moving "out" from there (south and east) Mesa, Gilbert, and Chandler areas are expanding. The problem with all those new developments is that they all have Home Owners Associations. Read the CC&Rs carefully. They almost all prohibit you, for example, from parking your car on the driveway for more than a few hours, or leaving the garage door open. These rules will be attached to most newer developments, even un-gated communities and I haven't seen a gated community in the past 20 years that doesn't have egregious rules.
We ended up zeroing in on the Queen Creek area in the Southeast. It had larger lots, very few areas were HOA controlled. When we had decided to move from Colorado we considered both Phoenix and Tucson, and agreed Queen Creek would have been the starting point again. There are newer developments yes, but there are still small builders building spec houses on 1/4+ acre lots, and plenty of places with 1+ acre (many with horse rights). The trend was starting then to heavily remodel or scrape off the old house. There were some striking properties for very reasonable prices (compared to CO).
Over all the years, we decided we liked the southern part of the valley best. My sister recently moved to the northwestern part of the city (Surprise) and there are some nice areas north of Scottsdale (but pricey).
We are also retired and in the end, even though Arizona's state tax is among the lower, we settled on Nevada because of zero state income tax. When you're living on pensions and investments that's a 5% raise. Again, the state has a wide variety of climates but we liked the desert so chose the Vegas area. There are lots of smaller communities around the city (just like in the Phoenix valley) but ended up in a no-HOA area in Vegas. Lots of people like Pahrump. Don't be put off by "the strip". We are roughly 3 miles from it and it has zero influence on us (except that it makes it so we have no state income tax.)
It gets hot in both places, Vegas will hold 5-10*F below Phoenix on average. (For example, we had below freezing at our house this week). On the other hand during the summer last year we had something like 20 straight days of 105*F, and at one point the water in our pool topped 100*F.
Good Luck!
P.S. Several other replies came in while I was typing this. I second Tucson as a closer look, and if you really like hot and a really cool small town with lots of artsy feel, look at Bisbee. I love that little town.
PPS. Both AZ and NV are quite friendly with Cobras. AZ has a better deal though. It's mileage based and I recall that people have even registered Ford GTs on the program. Which reminds me - these areas do have emissions inspection. Phoenix for sure and I think Tucson, and Las Vegas (Clark County) but not Pahrump.
PPPS: Both of the areas in AZ and NV were hit really bad by the housing market decline. We bought just coming off the bottom in 2013, and both markets are on an upswing that will probably last for more than a few years. If you can, consider buying in now as a second home. That was our intent when we purchased here (and to stay working in CO until 65) but we changed our minds and moved here early which again was heavily driven by the state tax situation.