North Scottsdale

The McDowell Sonoran Preserve is owned by the City of Scottsdale, and the northern neighborhoods are built against its boundary rather than merely nearby.

The setting

The preserve itself is municipal, held by the City of Scottsdale, and it runs along the eastern and northern edge of the developed city. Every trailhead in it is free to enter, where the county parks north of it charge by the vehicle. The protection is this community’s own edge and it does not run north unbroken. Head north and you cross miles of platted ground first, the estate subdivisions and then the towns of Carefree and Cave Creek, before Maricopa County land picks the thread back up at Cave Creek Regional Park and the Spur Cross Ranch Conservation Area. Past those the Tonto National Forest takes over and keeps going toward the Rim. Head east instead and you meet Rio Verde Foothills, roughly twenty square miles of entirely private land lying between the preserve and the forest.

The homes

North Scottsdale is not one product, and the expensive end is not the whole story. DC Ranch is a master plan of four villages whose first residents arrived in 1997. Country Club Village is the original, eight neighborhoods across Western Regional Farm House, Ranch, Spanish Eclectic, Pueblo and Prairie styles. Desert Camp Village runs to eleven neighborhoods, holds Market Street, and carries attached patio homes, condominiums and townhomes alongside single-family. Desert Parks Village is another eleven, custom and non-custom, with attached homes and apartments. Silverleaf Village is the estate tier. Silverleaf sits inside DC Ranch, and the two names are not interchangeable. It stands behind three twenty-four hour guard-gated entrances, with lots running from a third of an acre to more than ten and product from lock-and-leave villas to custom estates. Past DC Ranch, the custom and estate end continues, and the older northern subdivisions are a different proposition from the listings that make the headlines. The older reason to keep driving north for land no longer applies on its own, since Silverleaf has lots running past ten acres inside its own gates. At the master-planned end the address buys governance: architectural review, club infrastructure and a public realm somebody maintains.

Lifestyle

DC Ranch maintains more than fifty miles of paths for walkers, runners and cyclists, and its own resident trail map names Gateway as the community’s access point into the preserve. The paths connect to land the City of Scottsdale owns and manages as preserve. The preserve takes horses and most of its trailheads have parking sized for trailers, but the community paths are not equestrian and the boarding sits north and east, in the Cave Creek and Rio Verde corridors. You board at the edge and trailer in. WestWorld of Scottsdale is the regional equestrian center and hosts the Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show. Market Street sits inside Desert Camp Village and works as the walkable center for that side of the market, with Fleming’s, the Living Room wine lounge and a handful of others around the timber porte-cochere. Further north the resort dining rooms take over, Talavera and the Onyx lounge at the Four Seasons among them, with dining rooms and patios that face the desert. For a late night out you drive to Old Town.

Who it fits

Buyers arriving from coastal California recognize the trade quickly, because a hillside behind them has been built out. The adjacency can be verified on a plat before an offer. People also move north within Scottsdale as their budget or their tolerance for the drive changes, and the northern neighborhoods absorb both directions of that. If north Scottsdale has been on your mind, whether you are looking here or thinking about selling here, I would be glad to begin a quiet conversation.