What is all the North Scottsdale Wealth From?

[43north87west]

Real estate, plus old money from here, or in the Midwest or the coasts. The widget making factory is a great example; that describes my grandparents on one side. Both sets of grandparents landed in Arizona, at least part time. On one side, my grandparents owned a successful manufacturing company that employed ~500 people. It was a larger company that sent the senior executives off to 40s retirements. That must have been nice! In the 80s, they sold to a foreign company when that was the thing to do. They were some of the early adopters from the Midwest, with most of their land still in a trust. The other side of my family were on the finance side, and also had a lot of opportunity here, both in the valley and the high country.

Their generation, and their 60+ children (not the much younger grandchildren like me) seem to be in the sweet spot for having mountains of disposable cash. Many of the savvy ones were sitting pretty before the crash, and are still sitting pretty a few years later.

Besides a lot of lingering wealth from that era, there exists plenty of west coast inflated property value liquidation, and still a lot of left over pre-crash real estate holdings. I also have family members who abandoned CA for Phoenix, Sedona, and Flag, and greatly increased their standard of living in the process, so I'm sure that accounts for some of it.

Then there are obviously a handful of ball players and that type of person who has an unrealistically huge income. They are in the great minority, IMO, but they are visible.

[grmi66]

Originally Posted by Bondurant

Everyone I know with money earned it.

Just read about one guy that was into collecting vintage cars and had a big house to store them all. Guy worked 80+ hours a week since high school at a chain of grocery stores his family owned in the midwest. Cashed out when he was in his 50's with enough to finance his hobby and build a few big houses in various spots around the country.

What I thought was an interesting observation from my friend the carpenter is that very few of his customers were doctors or lawyers. He runs into them while doing smaller jobs at million dollar houses, but once you get into the multi-million dollar houses it is generally the type of family I described before.

[observer53]

Multiple off topic posts deleted. Please keep the thread on the topic of the original post. General discussions belong in the general forums. Thank you.

[asufan]

Well I nailed it azcentral just posted the top 7 (I think) priced Scottsdale home sales and only one was for a local resident, the others were from out of state. Like I said go to any one of these ultra high priced communities and click on GIS maps and you can find out who owns them. It may take a while to find a local. Paradise Valley has a lot of locals though, it seems the out of towners who are romanticized by the desert are more attracted to Scottsdale's more rustic/old west feel.

[Tall Traveler]

Originally Posted by asufan

Well I nailed it azcentral just posted the top 7 (I think) priced Scottsdale home sales and only one was for a local resident, the others were from out of state. Like I said go to any one of these ultra high priced communities and click on GIS maps and you can find out who owns them. It may take a while to find a local. Paradise Valley has a lot of locals though, it seems the out of towners who are romanticized by the desert are more attracted to Scottsdale's more rustic/old west feel.

There's just not enough wealth generated in Az to sustain the wealth you see in Scottsdale...I would estimate 80% of the truly wealthy in Scottsdale made their wealth elsewhere.

[Hivemind31]

Originally Posted by grmi66

A buddy of mine specializes in building the custom cabinets and other wood features in those high end homes. Told me that his typical buyer is a guy from the midwest who sells his widget making factory, service company or chain of stores. Once he has his millions in the bank it's usually the guy's wife who says that shes tired of living in backwater Iowa (or Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, etc...) and it's time to move to Arizona.

This x 1000.