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Everything you need to know about Tucson, AZ real estate
FULL TEXT TRANSCRIPTION:
- Hi everybody, Scott Fuller here. Founder of leavingthebayarea.com. Welcome to another edition of the Market Insider Series, where every episode we take you across the country, look at some more of the popular areas that we see Bay area and California residents are moving to. And I'm totally excited we're going to the Southwest today, Tucson, Arizona with my friend Jeff Wilhems EXP Realty Jeff, how are you today?
- You know, Scott I'm doing great. Thanks for asking us to be here with you.
- Absolutely, my pleasure. I know that your wife Marcee is off and she's busy, you know, running business for you guys and now you've got a pretty big team there, appreciate taking time out of your day today. So for those of you who have not seen any of these episodes before, we are going to cover as much information about Tucson as we can in 45 minutes. We're going to pile through a lot of stuff. We're going to talk about housing prices, we're talking about industry, and we're gonna talk about employment, weather, recreation, you name it, we're gonna cover it. Hopefully you get some great information out of this. Jeff, give me some background. So you've been in Tucson for a while, how long have you lived in Tucson yourself?
- Yeah, so my wife, Marcee Wilhems and I came here in about 2002. We moved from the Midwest, our family was out here. So we wanted to have our daughter get a little closer to grandma and grandpa.
- Okay.
- So we came out here and got into the real estate business in 2004. Marcee got her license, I was a lender and kind of a long story short, and since 2004, we started working with another company, REMAX for many, many years. And we were there for, oh until about 27 months ago or so, When we switched our business to EXP, but we started, just my wife and I, and we built our business up to first employee, was our sister to be our, my assistant.
- Okay
- And then we hired a buyer agent to be on our team. And now we have a team of 27 agents and six support staff, and we're about, just under 6000 homes sold later and you know, about a billion and a half dollars worth of real estate.
- So there you go
- We've seen a lot of stuff in Tucson.
- It's safe to say that you know Tucson pretty well. And you know, a little bit about the real estate market and having done so much business, right?
- Yeah, that is absolutely correct. But you know, enough about us, what can we help everybody know about Tucson?
- Fantastic, Okay. So one of the biggest questions that we get from people is, what can you get in Tucson for what price? And so would love you to kind of screen share with us, and take us through some property examples and some different areas where you guys are seeing a lot of growth, where you're seeing people move into, whether it's people who are, you know, moving there for work, or maybe retirement. So walk us through some of that if you would.
- Sure, be happy to let me see if, I am not real technical here, but let me see if I can get this screen, the screen share here. Would it be okay to start with a map like this?
- Let's do that, Perfect.
- Can you see the map okay?
- Yup, I can see the map, I can see your cursor.
- This is basically just a Google map. And, and so Scott, when you're looking at Tucson, Tucson is kind of right in the middle of this map, and when people fly into Tucson, they you know, they're flying in, the airports a little South down here. And then, you know, they start, you know, essentially looking around the area for places to live. Now most of the residential populations not going to be down here on the south side of Tucson. It's going to be more up in central Tucson and up in the foothills of, you know, the Catalina Foothills. Up to Casas Adobes and Oro Valley, and then even the, you know, people that come in, that are looking for more of a retirement community, 55 plus community. There's a real popular one up here in Saddlebrooke, or even and so it's really far north. When I say really far north, it's still only about 35 minutes out of outside of downtown.
- Okay, so close, Yeah.
- Yeah, so it's still I guess, when you're coming from the Bay Area, you know, 35 minutes to me feels like a long time. But it's right down the street in the Bay Area in some places, Right?
- Exactly, yeah, 10 miles away, is going to take you sometimes 45 minutes to an hour or so.
- So--
- [Jeff] Not quite that, we don't have the traffic problems like that. But then, as I go further south, you know, we've got another retirement community down here, 55 plus, called Green Valley. Vail is another kind of growing area Southeast. Is, and I don't know if this map is moving but--
- Yeah
- A lot of the growth right now in Tucson is up in this bedroom community here called Oro Valley. And it's expanding over, as I move my cursor, over towards Granite, to I10, this all, all this area out here against the base of the Tortolitas. So Tucson surrounded by mountain ranges. It's the Tortolita mountains up here, the Tucson mountains here, the Catalina Mountains here and then down on the south side are set, you know, like 40 miles south of Tucson, you've got the Santa Rita Mountain Range down here. So no matter where you live in Tucson, you're going to get beautiful mountains, and it's just a wonderful place.
- Fantastic, so you said, you mentioned that Oro Valley is becoming more of a popular place, a lot of development going on there. Give us kind of an idea if you can, maybe show a couple of property examples of what it costs in that area.
- You know, happy to, you know, Oro Valley is, is a very very popular area, super low crime rate, school systems are wonderful. They're very very well, well put together up in Oro Valley. But in terms of price of a home, I think that we've got one here that I can see, I don't know, are, can you see any of these photos?
- I'm seeing everything just fine on this end.
- Okay great, because I just don't know about the connection. Whoop, this is a little floor plan of a typical home in Oro Valley, in the 400 to $600,000 range. I assume, so this home is $549,000. It's, it's essentially a, let me see how many-- It's a three bedroom, three bath home 2700 square feet. So it's just under a couple hundred bucks a square foot. But as you kind of scroll through this, as you can see, it's a pretty nice home. New kitchen, new appliances, you know, hardwood floors. You know, nice bar there, or kitchen bar. You can see out the windows, they've got beautiful views of the of Push Ridge Mountains, you know, you're just, everywhere you go in Oro Valley, you're gonna look out of a window, and you're gonna see an amazing mountain view.
- Yeah.
- And it's gonna make you feel like you're right at the base of the mountains. And I think that mountain is called Push Ridge. And so, Adam just kind of flipping through the house here. But you kind of get the idea. I think that or I hope you get the idea of, just what you could get for, you know, I guess a half a million bucks in Oro Valley.
- So this, this looks like this is about a quarter acre, is that pretty consistent for most of the homes in the area, even though--
- It really is, I mean, we have some areas up in a, little bit north of Oro Valley and a little bit west of Oro Valley that are on private golf courses. And if you're gonna, you can go up to 2 million bucks, you know, 3 million dollars, for some of those houses that are going to be on much bigger lots. If you want to spend more money, you can always buy more home, Right? So--
- Well, and that's actually, I think, for a lot of people. And is it safe to say that a quarter acre is pretty low maintenance there? You're not going to have a lot of upkeep?
- Yeah no, you're not going to have a lot of upkeep on a home like this. This is in a little community up on the Northwest side of Oro Valley. And yeah, it's just not going to have a whole lot of upkeep here.
- Yeah, so the outside is easy to maintain, probably, you know, not require a whole lot of water, things like that.
- Yeah, that's correct. I mean, you're not dealing with a whole lot of maintenance issues. So you can see the elevation, the front elevation of the property, it's a, you know, we don't have a lot of grass out here
- Desert scape right?
- You know--
- Save some money on the water and do the desert scape.
- [Jeff] Absolutely, you're having the, you got a lot of rock, desert scape, you know, and coming from the Midwest, it was kind of an adjustment for me at first. But, so we kinda got the best of both worlds in Oro Valley. We personally live on the Oro Valley Country Club. So we got a golf course out our backyard, mountain views. And then we have no grass in our actual yard, it's all rocks Scott . So it's rocks and cactus formations and beautiful things that we don't really have to take, you know, do a lot of upkeep. Our maintenance company comes by and does that. But living on the golf course, we can still see the greenery to which is nice.
- Well, and I'll tell you what Jeff, this is something that California is starting to look a little bit more like. In fact, when you see people that are re-designing and re-landscaping their house, if they're building it for like a dry scape or something like that.
- Yup.
- And this is becoming more common with water restrictions, with the cost of water, utilities. I mean, we're for going this direction here in California, on a lot of new houses. I'm thinking that this isn't as much of a surprise as maybe it was, you know, 10, 20 years ago, to move into something, you know, that you're going to see this type of landscaping.
- No, I agree 100%. If you're coming, if you've done much shopping at all online, or you've looked and you've kind of seen what places or what things are, are moving towards or how people are, or what, you know, people want less maintenance. People don't want a lot of that, so you're going to see more desert scape. You're going to see those things and a lot of areas. But we have to do it, based upon the fact that it's very warm here in the summertime, but for about nine months a year, it's living in paradise, for three months a year, I'm not gonna lie to you. Everybody says it's a dry heat here, it's a very hot, dry heat .
- And we'll go a little bit more into the weather, but can you pull up maybe another property example.
- Absolutely, let me show you another area. We were talking earlier about the Catalina Foothills, being kind of, if I go back and reference this map again, this area that I'm showing you, is right here, did the map pop back up for you?
- Yep, I'm seeing it.
- So this is the area that we're looking at. So basically, you're living up in the mountains, just in the foothills of these mountains. And you're looking down the city lights, to the city lights at night. 'Cause Tucson City is about 1000 to 1500 feet lower in elevation, then up here in the Foothills.
- Got it.
- And so then you get you, get this amazing view. And then so, when you go up here and you want to look at it, This is a place called Peemai Canyon. You can see it's a beautiful home. And what we were talking about the actual home price and what you get. It's a little over a million bucks, four bedrooms, three baths, almost 4000 square foot. Now this is on an acre of lots, an acre of land and it's very common to find half acre to acre lots all over the Catalina Foothills. And of course, you're looking at about 300 bucks a square foot so about 100 bucks a square foot more than you were, over in Oro Valley. And I think one of the appeals to people here is not only the views and what you see at night, and the type of homes that you're living in, but you're about 20 minutes closer to the city in Tucson if you've got to work around the university. A lot of professors, doctors in the medical centers. The Catalina Foothills are famous for their outstanding schools. And again, we could talk about that later, but just a just a wonderful place to live. And if I scroll through some of the pictures, you can see that it's just a beautiful home.
- That's awesome, wow.
- Kind of an aerial shot with the drone, showing you what the top of the house would look like. This is pulling up the driveway and seeing the three and a half car garage. This is kind of the entryway walking up to the home. You can just see it, is just an absolute gorgeous home. So if you want to spend a little more money, you want a little more land, you want the city lights twinkling at night out your, out of your backyard when you're sitting out of that back patio. And in fact, this is a picture that--
- I love that window, that's amazing.
- Can you see that out there? And just imagine when it's completely dark, and how beautiful that is.
- Yeah.
- But yeah, this is just a great piece. And we love to have houses, our homes like this. I really can't even, doesn't do it justice to call it a house, it's not a house. It's just a really nice home. So-- [Scott] How far, how far would this be from downtown area?
- So this is about 15 minutes from downtown Tucson.
- So close, yeah.
- Not far at all. Now, I guess during rush hour can be 20. But you're not taking a freeway down. I'll take you back over the map and I'll show you. You're going basically surface streets. There's no freeway system over here, so most people that live up in the Cat Foothills are kinda making their way on these major roads, like Campbell, this street is, this road's called Campbell and it runs down to, right down to the university, it's just from here,
- Yeah.
- It's a straight shot right up to, right up Campbell. And then this home that we're talking about is, is literally right over in here. So let's you to, down Skyline to Campbell and you're downtown in minutes, or you could shoot over Skyline to First Avenue, take First straight down but the, you know, the road moves fairly quickly. You don't a lot of problems with traffic here in Tucson. Now getting, if I blow this map up, if you're traveling east and west from the far east, over this way, this is where you start running into more traffic issues, because there is no freeway. The people that have lived here for many, many years. They did not really want to put this cross town freeway, this way, because they were against the growth and against that progression. And unfortunately, it's happened anyway. So you know, if they would have planned the freeway, would have been a lot nicer, but they did not.
- Yeah.
- So hence the foothills are where a lot of people go, and this area, kind of central to, so I mean, they're all nice places to live, but the further you get out east, just plan for it's going to take you a little longer to get downtown if you need to get downtown. The good thing is, everywhere in Tucson has shopping and little strip centers and grocery stores and movie theaters. I mean, it's not like you have to go downtown Tucson. I can tell, I can count on one hand in the last six months, that I've actually been downtown Tucson. So that's, you know, we're always up here in Oro Valley.
- Yeah.
- In fact excuse me, kind of got this saying, if I've got to go South that's Costas Adobes, that's like my limit. You know, I don't even like to go down here, unless I gotta go to the airport. And it's not that there's anything wrong with it. I just like staying close to my home and my neighborhood, up here if you will.
- What if, you know, if you've got the all amenities near by there's no reason to go down there right?
- Right, so exactly.
- If somebody wants to venture downtown, that's great culture, lots of restaurants, lot of beauty.
- Yeah.
- You know, there's a lot of corporate stuff going on downtown. A lot of the law firms and insurance companies, and in Tucson downtown this, it's also very, very pretty. So it's a, they've done a great job taking care of city.
- Jeff, let's talk a little bit about retirement communities. Now, I know that, you know, Tucson, I imagine is a pretty popular area for retirees is that's safe to say?
- Well, it actually is. And that's in fact, how we ended up out here was our parents moved from the Midwest,
- Okay.
- Closer to their parents, who had retired in the community I was talking about down south, in Green Valley. But then Green Valley is nice and it's actually a wonderful community. But we find that there's a lot more retirees, that are up here, north of Oro Valley and Sun City. And then also up in Saddlebrooke. And so I did pull up a home here, in its Saddlebrooke, that I could have you kind of take a peek at if that's all right.
- Yeah, so now Saddlebrooke, is this a 55 plus master plan community?
- It is that, now there are some areas of Saddlebrooke that you do not have to be 55, but very few areas, most of it was designed with the retiree in mind, 55 Plus. You know, a master planned community, golf courses, tennis courts.
- Yeah.
- A big thing now is the, is the, oh what's the little thing that are always using the paddles with, I'm losing my mind. We just had em put in here at Oro Valley because everybody wanted to, a lot of people wanted to play it. Obviously, I'm not a player I would-- [Scott] There's racquetball, I don't know, some but..
- Well, you know, that's crazy that I can't think of it, it's not bocce ball, but it's one of those things where, they just, you don't have to really move too far. But it's like, it's almost like table tennis and dang--
- Yeah, I'll probably think of it also
- Yeah, if it comes to--
- [Scott] Yeah, here's the thing, I love these communities Jeff, because you know, you can come in and have all the amenities, all the benefits, the activities, make some great friendships, especially if you're moving in, you know, from you know, 55 plus, moving into an area, maybe you don't know anybody. And they offer so many amenities. So tell us a little bit about what Saddlebrooke offers and talk to us also about this particular property.
- Well, you know, I guess we could show you the property first. As you can see, it's got to desert scape like the other home we looked at before. That's a very common theme out here. So you don't have a lot of grass that you worry about keeping green or watering it. And the rock yards, if you will, are a lot easier, the desert scape, better way of saying it I guess, easier maintenance. This is a pretty typical home, up in Saddlebrooke. It's a couple of hundred dollars a square foot. But three bedroom, two bath, little under 2000 square feet. Again, around a quarter of an acre. But as you can see this quarter of an acre, once you get, you know, there's not a lot of maintenance. It's not--
- No, there's not. [Scott] I mean, and that's great,
- you got the space and no maintenance.
- I'm sorry, I missed that.
- I was just saying it's great, because you've got all that space, but very little maintenance with it.
- That is correct--
- It's nice to have that buffer with the neighbors and have your own--
- Yeah, you know, you're not right on top of your neighbors, but a lot of those houses are pretty close together, but you're not sitting right on top of each other.
- Yeah.
- As you can see, this is just a little area for somebody, they're walking up and you can see people, it's just a nice little area to sit outside. This is entryway into the home. It's a pretty, I guess, good sized living room and opened up to their back porch with their little chiminea out there, where you can sit out at night, and you do need that, by the way, here in the winter months. When most snowbirds come down here, and we live right in a neighborhood, at Oro Valley Country Club, where about 65% of our residents aren't here in June, July, August or September even. They come down in October, and they usually leave around Memorial Day to go back where ever they're from.
- We have a lot of people that are here from the west coast, from California all the way up to the Seattle area over to North Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan. You know, we find that we have a few people that live out here, that are East Coast. Folks in, you know, around New York and stuff but for the most part, it seems to be that Tucson and Saddlebrooke attracts the Midwest, from about Michigan over to, over to Washington, up around Seattle, and even some folks up in Canada.
- Okay
- And I think the most your your East Coast folks, they kinda like Florida, you know, Florida seems to be where they go, but a, at any rate, it's just a great spot. Wonderful, wonderful little home. And honestly, when you're retired and you don't have anybody living with you and you're an empty nester, it's more home than you really even, you know, it's--
- Yeah, yeah.
- You know, you don't need much more than that, when it's only two of you. So, couple of bedrooms, you know, you got a couple of extra guest bedrooms, for when you got the grandkids in town or your kids in town or whatever, and there's plenty of stuff for them to do. Because you can bring them to your swimming pool, or you bring them to the golf club. You can go eat at the country club. There's so many cool things to be able to do. And I'm just flipping through some pictures here of the property. But yeah, it's a pretty neat spot, and again, for those that are here looking, this is a master planned community up here, called Saddlebrooke.
- Okay.
- just north of Catalina, and you're looking at the backside, this way of the Catalina Foothills. Over here is the Catalina Foothills rather, and this the backside of the Catalina Mountains. And this is all called Push Ridge, going down along this side, and Mt Lemmon back here which you will see, Mt Lemmon is actually, it's almost 10,000 feet in elevation. So we actually have, in the wintertime, you'll be down here at 70 degrees, playing golf on the beautiful green grass and you'll be looking at snow in the mountains in the winter time.
- Awesome, love it.
- Pretty cool.
- So talk to us a little bit Jeff, about, we're talking about people 55 plus and the question I get a lot, when people are considering moving to a new area, is healthcare, proximity to health care services, quality of health care services, because obviously people are getting older, that's a bigger concern. Give us a little bit of background on kind of, you know, the health care model, and proximity to services in Tucson.
- Great question, and so for those that are going to be interested in, I'll just start up North where we were, you know, way up North in Saddlebrooke, and then up here in the Sun City area. Because there's so many retirees that have second homes out in this area, they just built, not long ago, a brand new super big Oro Valley Hospital up here. And that's really nice. And then of course, you know, if people want to, there's another hospital that's located about where my cursor is right here, called Northwest Hospital. And that's another major medical facility. Lots of doctors offices, and anything that you need there. For people that are all over the area, they have got Tucson Medical Center that's down by the University, I'll just blow this map up, maybe this will be a little bit easier to show you. Down around the university, they've got University Medical Center, down here. There's also St. Mary's over on the west side of Tucson about this, right around in here actually, where my cursor is, and then the folks that are down that retire in Green Valley or live South, they have to come up 19. Now there's medical care down here, don't get me wrong, but to get to like a major hospital, they're usually going to St. Mary's or University Medical Center or something like that, if it's something serious. But they do have a lot of these, Pima Heart Hospital and Tucson Heart Hospital. They, they've put locations down here, which is kind of like, just going to the hospital--
- If you got a heart problem, you wanna go to any one of these Pima Hearts or Tucson Heart. You're not 35 minutes to the Hospital,
- Yeah.
- you're 10 minutes or five minutes away.
- Yeah.
- If that's making sense. I don't know if I'm making sense.
- Yeah, yeah, that's great. It sounds like some clinics and maybe some satellite, you know, facilities, right? For a lot of these major hospitals.
- In Tucson, there is so many, the entire area, I mean, because we cater so much to the retirement community, they've certainly got that under control.
- Perfect. Jeff, let's get into, you know, we've kinda talked about retirees, a little bit about what they're looking for, what's important to them, and some of the communities, the healthcare. Let's talk about a working individual or family who's maybe looking to move into Tucson. Whether they're coming in with their company, they're a transfer, or perhaps they are looking for a different job opportunity with a lower cost living outside of California, talk to us and since we've got the map up, talk to us about some of the industry and employment growth and where you're seeing that, what's coming into the area.
- That's a great question, and a great thing to segway into. Obviously, Tucson is growing, we're growing very rapidly. Got a million, a little over a million people in the, in the metro area, and what's driving that growth here is obviously, the weather, we've got great weather here for, like I said, Eight and a half to nine months out of the year, but our major employers that we have here is a, around this part of the town, that you see that there's no streets or roads. This is Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, and so the Air Force Base here is a very thriving Air Force Base. The 810's are here. They've got the C130 Electrical Combat Unit here. They've got, we also have the, I guess what people call it the Boneyard. But there are literally thousands of airplanes that are out here, close to the Pima Air and Space Museum. And I'll try to blow this up a little bit. This is all the base and this is, there are literally thousands of planes that have been mothballed, but when I say mothballed, many of them can be, after they service them, they mothball, they can be brought back into action at any time.
- Okay.
- The reason for it, in Arizona, is because it's so dry out here and just the perfect place, things do not rust here, and so that's why, Davis-Monthan is probably always gonna be a big employer and it's not just being in the Air Force, it's all the civil, the civilian jobs that support the base.
- Absolutely
- In addition to that, we have another, several other major employers that are down around the airport. We've got Raytheon Missile Systems that is, obviously, just about everybody I'm sure has heard of Raytheon.
- Mhm.
- A lot of high paying engineering jobs that are there, rocket scientists if you will, because they are literally building rockets.
- Literally, yeah.
- Literally building rockets and guidance systems for bombs, and missiles, and as long as the defense spending is there, Raytheon's in great shape. And then of course, Raytheon has a lot of other spin off companies that are working, and so there's a lot of other jobs there. Amazon just opened up a big center here. I think they just hired another three or four thousand people in Tucson. And we all know--
- Wow!
- Amazon's doing, and then we've got, in addition to that, Geico has a monster headquarters here. The insurance company that, you know, they spend about a billion and a half dollars worth of advertising and they've got a huge customer service center here. They employ several thousand people. We've got the University of Arizona, can't forget those guys. I mean U of A is that, is one of the biggest schools in the pack 12, in terms of enrollment and a--
- Yeah.
- What's not to like about U of A basketball right? Go Cats.
- Absolutely, yeah
- Yeah, there's lots of, lots of growth and jobs here and I think that people are, wherever their working, because the commute is not a long commute. You could live up here in Oro Valley and be down in Raytheon in 35 minutes.
- So would you say Jeff, that's probably the max commute you're typically going to see anywhere in the area 35--
- 35, maybe 40 minutes, and that's going from one complete side of town, clear to the other because we just, now occasionally you might have a freak accident that's going to block traffic, but at the end of the day, most people, the commutes are 30 minutes, 20 minutes or less actually is the biggest, that's the most commute. I'd say, it's truly an oddity, for somebody to have 30 minutes or more here.
- Well I can tell you Jeff, from experience being here, we're going about 10 miles and it's gonna take
- 35 to 40 minutes to go 10 miles. And sometimes it's worse than that so
- You know I've been--
- 35 minutes--
- [Jeff] Beautiful country, love, love the beautiful city, lots of beautiful ocean and bay views and I love California but you know,
- Beautiful, good job.
- It's amazing, but there is a lot of traffic, that's for sure.
- A lot of traffic. Let's talk a little bit about, what Californians probably don't like to talk about that much, which is taxes. But I would like to do a little bit of a tax comparison, and I always preface this by saying, we're gonna give you, just some general numbers but always talk to your CPA or Financial Planner, how it impacts your bottom line before you decide where you wanna move to. Okay, now that my disclaimer is out of the way, what is your, what's your state income tax rate there?
- Well, you know, I'm not a tax expert either but I think that we have an 8% tax rate, is what we got there?
- So I think, I think 8% might be well,
- I think the state--
- The page I'm looking at, is maybe two and a half on a scale up to four and a half percent. That's only I, the state income tax--
- Actually our state income tax I believe, is an 8% state income tax.
- Isn't okay.
- That form that you're looking at, was filled out by one of my staffers and so, from a guy that pays a bunch of money, unfortunately in taxes, I can tell ya--
- You know what it is, okay.
- State income taxes is 8% here.
- And you're probably on the, I would imagine you're in the upper tier. Ours here in California, ranges from about seven and a quarter percent up to about 13.3 percent. So,
- Yeah, the difference is, we only pay two dollars a gallon or two fifty a gallon for gas and y'all are paying about five bucks because of all the taxes on that right?
- Well right now, in the last couple of months, gas has gone down--
- Okay, good.
- Most of it, yeah you can certainly attribute it to taxes. We're at about four, four and a quarter depending on where you're filling up at. However, my understanding is that in 2020, there is another tax assessment and we might be closer to a permanent four and a half to five dollars. Don't remind me
- Sorry about that, I just, I was visiting in the Midwest, where I used to live, about two weeks ago, up in the Indianapolis area, gas prices were 249 a gallon, and when I got home, got to the airport looked at the, our, we have a SUV and I stopped in to fill it up and it was 251 a gallon. So we're two cents away from the Midwest, but unfortunately, out there where y'all live, it's a little more expensive. But you know, hey, the cost of living here is a lot less, so, you know, it's great you know,
- Yeah.
- We also don't have, we don't have an ocean in our backyard either, so you know, it's kind of a trade off, what you know.
- Now, I do.
- What's your-- Do you know what your sales tax is?
- You know what, the sales tax is, I think the, that's what I was actually talking about. You know what you just mentioned? Sales tax, I'm wrong. The sales tax is the 8%, the State tax is the 4%.
- Okay.
- So, they are right, I was wrong. I thought you were asking them. But sales tax is 8% in Arizona.
- Yeah, see, you're about up to 5% on State Income Tax rate, obviously, it's a sliding scale.
- Correct.
- Sales Tax--
- I said I'm not an accountant.
- [Jeff] That's why I have those guys but I do remember, yeah, it's Sales Tax is 8% and then the income tax is around four, just under 5%.
- Got it. And what's your property tax rate?
- You know, and that depends on where you live.
- Oh, great, yeah.
- What do we put on our form? Did we put those on our form?
- We give 'em about 0.8% up to about one and a half percent.
- Yeah. I mean, I was gonna tell you about one and a quarter% because that--
- Yeah.
- [Jeff] The average for the entire region, you know, if you have value, it's gonna be more. Then when, if you live on the South side of Tucson. You know, it just, it's a little bit less in certain areas, the Cat Foothills and Oro Valley are gonna be, they're taxed at a little higher rate but it's not that much.
- So, here's what you mentioned. You mentioned something about us being near the ocean, which correct we are, but how far are you from, is it Rocky Point for Mexico?
- Yeah, no, watch. I'll show you, not too far.
- How long does it take to get down there? If I wanted to go to the beach.
- Can you see this map.
- Yeah.
- Look how cool this is. So you go out Tucson and literally, just head out Highway 86 over to a little town called, Why, Arizona. And then there's--
- Why not?
- [Jeff] Well, we say to ourselves, why would you ever live there because it's in the middle of nowhere. So, it's two hours over here to Why, and it's two hours down here to Puerto Penasco to be on the beach.
- Got it.
- [Jeff] And it's four hours to be on the beach, in Mexico, and it's essentially the Gulf of California, if I blow it out a little bit farther--
- Yup.
- Everybody can kind of see
- [Jeff] that if you're down here is, you know, you're going all the way down around-- This is called Cabo down here--
- Sure.
- And where I just pointed
- [Jeff] is right here. So, we're not as far from the ocean as what people think. We literally are four hours to Puerto Penasco. And I hear people say they make it in three and a half, but I think they're kind of risking a ticket doing that. It takes me about four hours to get down there.
- Got it. Okay.
- Yeah.
- So you got some good proximity, it may be a long, you know, weekend trip on, you know, something like that. Now how far, what is that average time to get to Phoenix if somebody--
- Phoenix is about an hour and a half, it's 100 miles, but then of course there's not a whole lot out here in the middle between Tucson and Phoenix, there's one little town out here called Casa Grande. You know, you go once you get past Marana, you know, Eloy is pretty much just a bird but then there's Casa Grande. I'll blow it up a little bit farther and you can see Casa Grande. Maybe a little traffic right through here but not a lot of-- When I say traffic, I'm talking about, you might see some cars, but from Tucson all the way up to the south side of Phoenix, you can get there. Put it this way, if I show you a map, right here, that the Phoenix airport is right around where this Phoenix sign is--
- Yup.
- [Jeff] And we can be from our house in Oro Valley to that airport in an hour and 25 minutes. So, not far.
- That's quick.
- [Jeff] Yeah, so you've got an opportunity, if you live up Northwest, and many people do, we have a great airport on the South side of Tucson, and that, you know, flies a lot to a lot of cities direct out West, out East, I can think of like Chicago has a direct flight, New York has direct flights out of Tucson--
- Yeah.
- [Jeff] But most things going East, you're gonna connect through Dallas, or Denver, Chicago, or another city, or Atlanta, but if you want direct flights, and you don't like connections, then you go ahead and you drive the hour and a half up to the Phoenix airport and just leave from Sky Harbor.
- There you go.
- Okay.
- [Scott] Awesome. So let's talk about, speaking of Phoenix, you know hotter than the sun for three, you know, three months out of the year, right? So, tell us a little bit about Tucson and the weather. Is it as, I'll say, severe?
- Well, in the winter time, we're about five degrees cooler than Phoenix, so if you want it warmer in the wintertime, Phoenix is gonna stay warmer. And in the summertime, I think Phoenix is, typically, eight to 10 degrees warmer, because it doesn't cool down at night because of all the concrete that's up there and all the population and everything. There's just not-- And it's sitting in a valley. Much like Tucson's in a valley but Tucson's elevation is higher than Phoenix, so it cools down here. But you know what? They're very, very comparable in the winter. But I still think Phoenix is, and I'm no meteorologist, but just talking to people up there, you know, it's like, if they're 82 degrees in December, we're gonna be 78 degrees here, it's still not too bad. When they're 115 degrees in Phoenix, we're gonna be about 108. There is a difference from 115 and 108, but I can still tell ya--
- Yeah.
- [Jeff] If you're not used to 108, 108's not very fun. So, that's why most people decide that the summer is the time to travel in Arizona.
- So we're towards the end of summer. In fact, today's the September 10th, is when our recording day here, what would you say that the temperature is gonna be outside today?
- Today, right now? Well, I can tell you, right now, exactly the temperature will be 89 today, 'cause I just looked. And so, 89 today and relatively low humidity, it's absolutely gorgeous. We're coming up on to the season, the month of October is about when most golf courses shut down here for three weeks to do what is called, overseed, they kill, they spray all of the Bermuda grass to make it go dormant, they stop watering it and it turns yellow really fast without--
- Yup.
- Any water here.
- [Jeff] But because it cools down at night, they plant all new grass seed, the winter rye, is what it's called, and then that's-- Because it's the best weather of the year, in terms of temperature wise and they still get a little bit of rain here and there but we get-- It just cools down at night and that grass, the sun comes out in the daytime but it doesn't super heat it, it's just, I always said October is the greatest month of the year to live here, but try finding a golf course to play on. Because most of 'em aren't available. Although it's still great in November, but in December. They have to get it ready so it's perfect for the next six months for all of our snowbirds.
- Well, I was gonna say, that's when everybody starts coming in and that's when they make the majority of their money, right?
- Yeah, there's a lot of money that's made here in the winter months. Our population. You can feel it about the middle of October. The traffic does start to kind of, like, you know, where took you five minutes to get somewhere, now it takes you 10. Ah, you're going crazy over 10 minutes but--
- I know, right?
- Yeah, yeah.
- [Scott] It's not always--
- We're just spoiled. We're spoiled.
- So you mentioned, Jeff, that Mount Lemmon, peak gets some snow--
- Yeah.
- [Scott] And, you know, I mean, are we talking about accumulation snow, are we talking about skiing or are we talking about--
- They certainly have a ski lodge up there and and they do have skiing, but it's not, you know, I wouldn't say that skiing in Mount Lemmon is something that's done a lot. I mean, when we get a lot of snow, they're open up there in Mount Lemmon and they definitely get their snow up there. And there's one way in, if you can see this road, and kind of, one way out.
- Okay.
- [Jeff] So if you're in a big hurry, you don't want to get too big hurry to go up to Mount Lemmon. But it's this road that drives up there. The whole, there's so many little places that you can pull over and look down on the city, and Tucson in the valley and see what's going on. It's just really kind of amazing.
- Get some great views, I'm sure.
- Oh, my goodness. And when you're talking about wanting to get out of, in the summer for instance, if it's, you know, 110 degrees, if we get one of those hot days, all you've got to do is drive 45 minutes or less, and you're going to be at 75 to 80 degrees. So, you really don't have to stay here and bake if you don't want to. You know, most people, what they do is they work here during the week in air conditioning, and then they drive up to Globe or up into what we call the White Mountains, which are over here in Show Low, all this green stuff up here is nothing but forest, and higher elevation, and that's why they draw a lot of people from Phoenix go up here, this Pinetop area and Show Low is super, super popular and it'll be up here in the, the low to, you know, high 70's, low 80's all summer long when it's 100 over here in Phoenix or 110.
- Yeah.
- You know, that's where people go or they head out to one of the lakes and they hit the lakes, or they go up here to Prescott, and then if I blow the map up. Arizona is like living in in eight different states with eco, different eco-- Is it eco cultures? I don't know if I'm saying that right, but.
- Sure, I'll buy that.
- Yeah, you know, I would too because I don't really know. I just know that we've got desert, we've got, we got mountains, we've got forest, we've got plains, I mean, you know, if you want to be up and around the red rocks of, you know, what is it up here where everybody goes, Sedona. You've heard of the red rocks and the--
- Yeah, yeah.
- Those beautiful rocks, or if you want to go up to, a little bit further up into the Grand Canyon, you know, we got the Grand Canyon. I mean, there's so many cool places to be in Arizona and that's why we call it our home and we're not going-- You can give me homes everywhere else, I wouldn't live anywhere but here.
- Yeah, no, that's awesome. Well, Jeff you've done a great job, I mean, kind of covering a little bit of everything, as much as we can, within you know 45 to 50 minutes or so. Is there anything that you wanted to mention that maybe we did not cover?
- No, just that my wife, Marsee Wilhems, couldn't be here, and she was wanted to apologize, she said to tell everybody that she says, hello. And if you ever need a real estate professional to show you around that knows the area and knows what we're doing, give us a call.
- You read my mind. Because if we have people who are considering, you know, Tucson as one of the areas that they might want to go to, and they're kind of getting serious, they want to get their feet on the ground. Can they come out and visit with you and your team for maybe a half a day or a day to take a look around and just to get to know the area?
- Or longer. I mean, that's what we do. We consider ourselves, kind of, tour guides, so just-- And we'll show 'em around and a lot more than what we're able to talk about. That's what we do and we'd love to help anybody that is watching this video do that very thing. We've been doing it for 14 years and we have a little experience in this department, for sure.
- Well that's great. And like I said, Jeff, I think that what we've done is provided a pretty good overview of everything. But you know, if somebody really wants to, you know, get a little bit more granular and said, you know, let's, what's important us? Okay, then you can really start working with somebody directly and saying, okay, here's the things that are important to you, here's where we need to kind of focus. Let's take a day, you know, start looking around and find what's going to be the right fit.
- And just so you know, our entire real estate team, that's absolutely correct, Scott. But our entire real estate team, we have hired people that are on our team that are living all over the Tucson area and they're experts in their particular areas--
- Awesome.
- [Jeff] And so we've made sure that, as we've built this team, you know, we don't want to have somebody looking in Vail if they're not working with an agent on our team that lives down there, that can actually talk to them about Vail or if they want to be in the Catalina Foothills, they're going to reached. We have several agents that live in the Foothills and they're going to certainly get experts in every area.
- Perfect. That's great. Okay, well Jeff, thanks so much, I appreciate your time. Say hi to Marcee for us.
- Will definitely do it.
- [Jeff] And thank you for having us and you're doing a good thing here. And I love what you're doing. If you ever need anything from us, you just give us a holler.
- Appreciate that, Jeff. All right, thanks a lot for your time, we'll talk to you soon.
- Okay, pal, have a good one.
- All right, take care. Thanks everybody.
Cost of Living Comparisons
Tucson, AZ VS San Francisco, CA
73.4% less
Cost to Rent
1.9% more
Utilities
18.1% less
Food & Groceries
18.7% less
Health Costs
38.9% less
Transportation
17.2% less
Auto Insurance (Annually)
25.6% less
Auto Sale Tax
85.7% less
Auto Registration (Annually)
1.3% more
Sales Tax
34.4% less
State Income Tax
49.6% less
Child Care
Commute Comparison
| Tucson, AZ | San Francisco, CA | |
Average Commute Time |
22 mins | 45 mins |
Comparison of gas prices |
$2.66 | $4.49 |
Live Traffic Comparison
Tucson, AZ
San Francisco, CA
Climate
Tucson
San Francisco
99
Average Summer High68
71
Average Summer Low55
69
Average Winter High58
40
Average Winter Low47
286
Sunny Days Per Year259
12
Rain (inches per year)25
0
Snow (inches per year)0
Current Temperature in Tucson, AZ
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