North Phoenix Real Estate Blog by North Phoenix, Arizona Real Estate

Northeast Phoenix has some of the most expensive homes in town, regularly selling for more than $1 million.

It also has some of the city's least expensive places. A quick check of sales records shows that in April, one residence changed hands for the staggeringly low price of $40,000.

That place, an older mobile home, is a mere 5 miles from neighborhoods in Desert Ridge where a new home, with added options, recently sold for more than $1.5 million.

Despite the area's upscale image, northeast Phoenix has a fair number of moderately priced neighborhoods. In ZIP code 85032, between Cave Creek Road and Tatum Boulevard, from Cactus Road north to Union Hills Drive, houses regularly sell for less than $100,000.

Northeast Phoenix's other ZIP Codes tend to be more expensive, and sales in those areas have not seen the slump experienced in other parts of the metropolitan area.

Three ZIP codes prove the point:

• 85054, the eastern part of Desert Ridge. The cheapest home there, a condominium at the Toscana development, sold for $241,900. The most expensive, on the Wildfire Golf Course, sold for $950,000. Mainly because lots of development has occurred there in the past year, sales are way up (39 in April vs. 11 a year ago), as are median prices ($395,000 vs. $339,000). The $950,000 house sold in 2002 for about half as much, records show.

• 85028, from Dreamy Draw north to Cactus, and from Cave Creek west to Tatum. The range there was $230,000, for a home near 40th Street and Shea, up to almost $2.5 million, for a home west of Tatum and south of Shea Boulevard, virtually a part of the Town of Paradise Valley. The number of sales during April, 40, equaled the previous year, and the median price was down a bit, $333,000 compared to $377,000 a year ago.

• 85254, from Shea north to Union Hills on the east side of Tatum. Its sales range was $137,000 for a house near Tatum and Bell Road to $1.4 million for a condo at Kierland Commons. The number of sales during April was up, to 147 from 136, and the median price was down, to $420,000 from $455,000.

The biggest discrepancy is in ZIP Code 85050, which includes the western part of Desert Ridge as well as neighborhoods south of Loop 101.

The $40,000 mobile home was purchased by Mike Fazzari, and records show he owns several properties in the area, just south of the Costco store at Loop 101 and Cave Creek. He could not be reached.

The $1.5 million home in the Aviano development at Desert Ridge was bought by Bob and Michele Mangold, real estate agents with One Source Realty.

Mangold said the home is his second in Desert Ridge, The first was just a few blocks away, and sold originally for $168,000. It would sell now for $550,000, Mangold's brother, Ed, said.

"In our opinion, appreciation is still strong" in the area, Ed Mangold said. "Sales are a little slow."

He said Desert Ridge is "a consistently strong area."

Bob Mangold said he thinks he got a deal on the house, considering one nearby sold earlier for more than $1.8 million. He said the ZIP Code, 85050, is one of the top three in the nation for real-estate appreciation.

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Homes in NE Phoenix among most expensive

North Phoenix Real Estate By Kevin Zurek