Best area to live around Phoenix (Tucson, Chandler: sales, apartments, to rent)

[Nancykygirl]

Interested in moving to AZ between Phoenix and Tucson. Where is the best weather, best healthcare, safest, cheapest taxes, etc.????? Looking for a maintenance free yard. All information would be appreciated.

[grmi66]

Well to be honest, there isn't much between the two cities. You are either in one or the other.

We landed in NW Tucson, partly due to family and partly due to it's ease of getting up to Phoenix. It is anywhere from 5-10 degrees cooler in the summer, more rain and with the U of A in town a ton of good doctors.

The cities in between Phoenix and Tucson are generally agricultural towns or very small towns that rely on the interstate and are full of truck stops.

[Adamson865]

Originally Posted by Nancykygirl

Interested in moving to AZ between Phoenix and Tucson. Where is the best weather, best healthcare, safest, cheapest taxes, etc.????? Looking for a maintenance free yard. All information would be appreciated.

Your only choice would be Casa Grande. Good luck with that! Other than that, there's nothing between Phoenix and Tucson.

[Nancykygirl]

Why good luck with Casa Grande?

[grmi66]

Originally Posted by Nancykygirl

Why good luck with Casa Grande?

Casa Grande is a combination of cotton farming town along with truck stops and other freeway service industries. Though it has landed a few large manufacturing plants and will probably end up becoming a booming blue collar city due to it's location along two major freeways and having a rail line that all take you to California. My take is that it will become Arizona's answer to the Inland Empire.

Bottom line, it's not a very attractive place to live in my opinion.

[wilberry]

There is also SUN LAKES, AZ it is the furthest south Suburb of greater Phoenix with Several medical care centers, wellness centers, doctors, internal medicine, etc, Most of the yards in Sun Lakes ( in the front and back ) are rocks. desert plants, some trees, Sales tax is 8.6 %. There are Homes in old Sunlakes, Az that look like Prefab doublewides, not sure what they are, that sell for around 375 K and they don't look small and up to 500 K
This is a nice area with a golf course and Country club and it is a few degrees cooler than in Phoenix and there is not a Walmart for miles just Bashas and Safeway grocery stores.

$335,000 ( regular house )
2 Bd
2 Ba
1,384 Sqft
($242/Sqft)
9524 E Sherwood Way,

$379,000 ( regular house )
3 Bd
2 Ba
2,005 Sqft
($189/Sqft)
9612 E Minnesota Ave, Sun Lakes, AZ 85248



https://www.city-data.com/city/Sun-Lakes-Arizona.html

[sh9730]

Originally Posted by grmi66

Casa Grande is a combination of cotton farming town along with truck stops and other freeway service industries. Though it has landed a few large manufacturing plants and will probably end up becoming a booming blue collar city due to it's location along two major freeways and having a rail line that all take you to California. My take is that it will become Arizona's answer to the Inland Empire.

Bottom line, it's not a very attractive place to live in my opinion.

OMG - how do people still believe this about Casa Grande. PLEASE FOLKS - DRIVE A MILE WEST OF I 10 once in a while. You will find a complete city with almost anything (though not all) that most of the other Phoenix or Tucson suburbs have.

CG is over 60,000 population, is MUCH cheaper than Phoenix or Tucson, offers the ability of short drives within an hour to either of those cities when needed.

Yet in town is anything you will need on a daily basis - Walmart, Lowes, HD, a Harkins Movie theater in a mall that has a Rosatis Pizza, an independent steakhouse, Kohls, Olive Garden, many others.

Then elsewhere in town - Texas Roadhouse, Several grocery stores, a city owned recreation center, Chilis, Lins Buffet, Angry Crab, any service industry (tires etc.) you would need, and tons more - again - very similar to any other suburb.

And MUCH more is on the way - CG is getting our first "build to rent" complexes which offer the benefits of apartments (no maintenance, pool, clubhouse, etc.) without "upstairs neighbors" - and then there are multiple 55 plus communities in the area - including a Robson community (Robson Ranch) where we just recently moved that includes a golf course, full Country Club, Restaurant and Bar, and homes that can go over 500K.

Lucid Motors, Abbott Labs, Frito Lay, Walmart DC, Tractor Supply DC, all employ over 5000 already with Lucid tripling in size this year, Kohler building a factory here, as well as SEVERAL semiconductor supplier moving in during 2022. CG has over 20K employees in the industrial sector alone.

Anyway - CG is not a sleepy farm or truck town - you just can't see most of it without getting off of I 10. BUT, even that is changing as development gets closer and closer to the freeway.

[Adamson865]

Originally Posted by sh9730

Anyway - CG is not a sleepy farm or truck town - you just can't see most of it without getting off of I 10. BUT, even that is changing as development gets closer and closer to the freeway.

It's still dog-ugly.

[DetroitN8V]

CG is great for rural living with none of the benefits of rural living.

[grmi66]

Originally Posted by sh9730

Anyway - CG is not a sleepy farm or truck town - you just can't see most of it without getting off of I 10. BUT, even that is changing as development gets closer and closer to the freeway.

I have driven around CG. It is an ugly farm town (albeit a large one) with a number of restaurants that all seem to be clustered around the freeway. So in addition to truck stop food, it is your one opportunity to easily access the above mentioned restaurants you mentioned without having to wait until you get to Phoenix or Tucson. To quote one of the other posters, Casa Grande is "dog-ugly".

Now that image will likely change, as I did state that manufacturing and logistics warehouses are moving into Casa Grande. My take is that the regular factory workers will live in CG and the management class will commute in from Chandler or NW Tucson.