Fountain Hills Is Changing Address
Arizona’s newest two-comma town: Fountain Hills!
The East Valley Tribune reports that Fountain Hills is becoming a new destination for luxury housing and estates. Last week, four homes went on the market for $3.2 million to $4.6 million each, and next month another house is expected to be listed at $7 million. The town’s top attraction is ample amounts of mountainside "city lights view" property available for purchase.
Fountain Hills has grown from 2,772 residents in 1980 to 22,474 in 2004.
The towns surge of high-end buyers generally are Paradise Valley, Scottsdale and California residents who want to live at the edge of the urban frontier, where Starbucks meets sagebrush.
Furthermore, Fountain Hills also has become more livable in recent years with expanded employment opportunities, its first high school and improved access to and from the rest of the Valley of the Sun. Commutes have eased in Fountain Hills because Shea Blvd. and Route 87 having been improved over the last several years.
This mixture of improvments has helped fuel a population explosion in the 17-square-mile town. But, there is growing concern that housing prices are soaring well beyond the reach of middle-income people, such as firefighters and bank tellers.
"One of the people I spoke to said we’re becoming a ‘two comma’ town; that means six zeroes," said Dick Bauer, past president of the Four Peaks Rotary Club and owner of B&B Contracting and Consulting, referring to million-dollar-plus home selling prices.
"We’ve got so many houses now that are going for over $1 million, we can’t get teachers in, we can’t get workers in and don’t have young families, so it’s a two-edged sword," he said.
Fountain Hills officials have just begun discussing whether the town should try to retain or encourage new moderately priced housing, said Mayor Wally Nichols.
Look for this area to explode since it is bounded on all sides by the McDowell Mountains, other towns and Indian Reservations.
Fountain Hills, Arizona