Flagstaff?... (Phoenix, Scottsdale, Prescott: best town, condo, mobile home)

[NEPA]

looking to relocate family to Flagstaff in about 1-2 years. Where would be the best place to look for a home?... In Flagstaff, Williams, somewhere else?... Will spend up to $200k.

[bstree]

Will spend up to $200k.

-Ahahahaaa.a.ha...hahahaaaaa....hahaha.... wheeze.
But seriously, not a chance in the area at that price. Used to be Williams could be had for that price. But no more.
Flagstaff= 350k to enter home market. The surrounding areas are all that price more or less. Doesn't get cheap till ashfork. (YUCK!)
Really, don't move here unless you have a good paying job (good luck!) waiting for you. Essentially this is a town with very little work, high prices to live and nice surroundings.

[Ponderosa]

Bstree is right. Flagstaff is one of the priciest places in AZ. Thank CA refugees and PHX people buying second homes. Empty lots run 100K or more. You might be able to swing it if you can build a house yourself (like you do the work). Otherwise no way for 200K. To help you feel better you should know that Flag gets more snow than Buffalo NY, you have to shovel it at 7000 feet, and for several days after a good storm the temps fall below zero at night and its bitter cold and windy during the day. The place has traffic that will make make you cry. And a lot of the new development is going up on barren, desolate, wind-swept fields on the edges of town. It's a decent place to live, but not for 350K. I'd be looking at Colorado.

[MoMark]

Plus, it's such a tinderbox in the summer with pine needles piled up everywhere it's a wonder that a stray cigarette tossed out a window doesn't cause the place to burn down every couple of years.

[kansaslady]

I love Flagstaff....HOWEVER, I have never lived there, just visited during the summer when the weather was wonderful. I did notice however that the traffic throught town is terrible!

I had thought of living there once, but the winters are lousy enough here in the Kansas City area.....of course, we sure don't have the gorgeous scenery that Flag has!

Still a great place to visit, and IF I won the lotto (ha ha ha ha ha ha), I would love to have a home in Flag...with a perfect view of the Peaks of course, and I could sit and watch the snow from the warmth of my home.

[rivcelt]

I was born and raised here and that's what we call it. You better have a great paying job and about $360,000 to spend for a small (1100 square foot)older ranch style home...oh wait, you can buy a mobile home 30 miles east of town in the cinder hills and 40 mph winds for $200,000.

Really--folks from California flooded the area in the 80s, saw our "cheap" home prices (compared to So. Cal) and bought high, forcing prices higher and higher through the years along with the California r.e. market. There went the neighborhood.

[skitow]

Hi everyone. I have lived in CA since '68. The reason people are bailing out of this state is the constant flow from other countrys. There is no more room to live in CA. I live in the SILICONE VALLEY area. It is wall to wall people and traffic. If there is one square inch of open land, someone will build a condo complex on it. I really feel sorry for anyone wanting to move to CA due to the extreme cost of housing. I live in a 688 sq.ft. condo here and it sells for around 345k. Cal people are looking to get out of here and find someplace to get a fresh breath of air. I am also looking for somewhere to move. I don't have a clue where to go. I am looking at Oregon and Arizona myself, but I don't want to be hated just because my job was in CA. The world is just getting overpopulated and we all have to change with the times. I used to love CA decades ago. It was open country and beautiful here. Now it joins the list of sucko places to live. I hope we all find what we're looking for. Best to all of you, and stay safe.

[Griffis]

NEPA, I'm trying to GET my family to your neck of the woods (assming you live in NE PA.) I can't imagine leaving there for AZ.

Okay, I lived near Flagstaff for a couple of years. Eveyone's right. It's absolutely gorgeous--the whole area is, really.

But I can tell you that is a tough mountain to get up and down at times in the winter. "Beware the black ice!"

Also, as I understand it, there is some kind of town legal stipulation about growth and Flagstaff is surrounded by protected areas so to live in town, you really have to live on top of someone or luck into an opening for a house & property (which will cost you a fortune). From what I saw, the job market wasn't too great either.

However, the town I actually lived IN was just down the mountain from Flag. It was called Cottonwood. I loved it there. The people were absolutely the coolest and kindest. Parts of the town were beginning to take on the "strip mall sprawl" that is affecting so many areas, but Old Town Cottonwood is great (a couple of movies have been filmed around there.) Has an organic market, etc.

Cottonwood's location is great as well-- it is about 45 minutes down the mountain from Flagstaff, right in the foothills. Jerome--a VERY cool place--is about 20 miles up the mountain towards Flagstaff). It would be very hard to find a place to live in Jerome, but it is a cool little historic copper mining town. The locals I knew in Jerome were just a great bunch, though they get a bit tired of tourists roaming their streets. They were like a big, artsy, hippie/outdoorsy biker crowd. Lots of great music made up there, which I was fortunate to be in some jam sessions on. A lot of people up there make jewelry for a living, etc. Wonderful place if you know the people there and have an "in."

The other direction out of Cottonwood, Sedona is about 20 miles or so. I commuted to work in Sedona. Jobs were hard to come by in Cottonwood at the time, being a pretty small town.

Sedona is VERY touristy, but is beautiful in that dersert-y kind of way. (I thought Jerome was WAY cooler than Sedona, but very much smaller too.)

Further out past Sedona you get to the high desert country, which is nice to explore. Lots of wide open places to roam and hike around. Phoenix, if I recall correctly, is about 90 minutes from Cottonwood--you go through Sedona to get to Phoenix. Phoenix to me, was a hell hole. I wouldn't even bother going there if I were you.

Cottonwood could get in the 100s in the summer, but not often (and yes, it's a dry heat!) And could get real cold in the winter, though the bulk of the snow missed the town most of the time I was there. (Though there WERE some snowstorms. I grew up in Minnesota, so it didn't seem so bad to me.

But the best things about Cottonwood were the people and the fact that you could go 20-30 minutes in one direction and be in the mountains, and 20-30 miles in the other direction and be in the high desert.

It may be difficult to find a good setup there, but it was far and away the best town I found in Arizona to actually LIVE in, IMHO, and I looked in Prescott, Scottsdale, Phoenix, Tuscon (also didn't like), Casa Grande (ditto) and Flagstaff.

I haven't been there in about 7 years, but i thought you might want to look into it. If it's gotta be AZ, you could sure do a lot worse!

[Griffis]

BTW, sorry to ramble on so long, but wanted to mention-- while the people I met in AZ were cool and pretty laid back and liberal (except for Phoenix), the politics seemed quite conservative. Uncomfortably so for me.

Also, no disrespect to law enforcement officials in general who do a difficult, thankless and dangerous job, but every cop in Arizona I encountered was a damned nazi pig. I was treated absolutely terribly (probably criminally, but I was too young to think about that) on several occasions, apparently just for minding my own business and being law-abiding. I also looked perfectly normal, not like some punk or thug or hippie child or anything. I still get bitter thinking about it. Some of this happened right in Cottonwood, too, which really shocked me.

Just thought I'd tell you.

[Cassandra]

Griffis -

I think you are being overly generous with the Nazi Pig remark.

Where else can a cop shoot you in the back and get away with calling it "self defense"?

Now behave. I wouldn't want you to disappear for "questioning" by one of the AZ DPS Brownshirts.