Scottsdale Market Notes — August 2026

Two new listings, a rebuilt site, and a helicopter on the pad at 5850 Glen.

Well — a mild May through early July, and then the last few weeks happened. Scottsdale is the only place on earth where people say at least it's not 118 and mean it as good news.

Plenty in this one: two new listings, a rebuilt website, and a helicopter that put down on one of our listings. But the real story is the engine running at the top of this market — and it isn't quite the one the headlines are describing.

Coming Soon

7624 E Solano Dr

Camelot Reserve · Scottsdale, AZ 85250

Camelot Reserve is easy to drive past without noticing — twenty lots behind a gate, built by Camelot Homes in 2013 on an infill site rather than out on the edge of town. That last part is the whole point. You are minutes from Old Town, the Greenbelt, and Camelback, on a street most people never turn down.

It is also why a number of owners here came from large Paradise Valley estates. Same proximity to everything, considerably less to look after. Four bedrooms, five and a half baths, and a media room that flexes to whatever you actually need it to be. Heated pool and spa, and a backyard nobody can see into. Camelot builds at enough scale to have genuinely solved the floor plan — 4,277 square feet that works, rather than 4,277 square feet.

Request the details

Full photography and the public listing go live September 1. Reply to this note if you'd like a look before then.

Just Listed

6333 N Scottsdale Rd, #5

Hilton Casitas · Scottsdale, AZ 85250

Ralph Haver drew these in 1973 — a small gated enclave on the line where Scottsdale meets Paradise Valley, attached to the Hilton resort. Number 5 has been taken apart and rebuilt: quartz and a gas range in the kitchen, wood and stone underfoot, tankless water, a fireplace in the living room. Nine-foot flat ceilings, 2,740 square feet, all on one level with not a single interior step.

Like much of the land along this stretch of Scottsdale Road, Hilton Casitas sits on a land lease — the Herbergers held this ground and structured it that way long before most of us got here. It runs $990 a month alongside the $700 HOA, and it is why the tax bill is $2,206 a year instead of five figures. Financing is cash or conventional. Rentals are permitted too, which is rare in a resort community and means the place can earn while you're not in it.

Walk to Houston's, AJ's and Trader Joe's. It is about as lock-and-leave as Scottsdale gets. See the full listing and photos here.

Ask about this one

From the site

We rebuilt the whole thing

For a long time martawalsh.com was a business card. Over the past few months we turned it into something with an actual reason to open it — live listings, real numbers, and fourteen years of writing that had never left an inbox. Four things worth a look.

What your house is worth

Put in your address and see where you stand, with neighborhood-level detail for Paradise Valley, Windgate Ranch, and Scottsdale Ranch. Not a guess pulled from a national database — built on what has actually sold nearby. Check your value

Your neighborhood, live

Every home currently for sale in the communities we know best, pulled straight from the MLS and updated through the day. No portal signup, no lead form, no phone calls afterward. Browse the communities

Fourteen years of this market, written down

We went back through every newsletter I've written since 2012 and pulled it into a single year-by-year history — what each year actually felt like from inside it, before anyone knew how it would turn out. The original issues are being republished a few at a time behind it. Read the year-by-year history

The Edit

The other half of living here — where we're eating, what's worth the drive, the occasional weekend away. Read The Edit

It's all live now. Have a look around.

Market Notes · August 2026

Prices held. Patience got expensive.

Scottsdale's median sale price hit $899,500 in July, up 5.8% from a year ago. Values are holding — what changed is everything around them. Homes now take 101 days to sell, up from 94, and sellers are closing at 92.3% of asking, down from 94.7% in March.

If you've read that Phoenix is softening, that's not wrong, just incomplete. Valley-wide this year, sales under $1 million are flat. Above $3 million they're up nearly 29%, and in Scottsdale closer to 35%. The market didn't slow down. It moved up.

At the very top

Homes closed, January–July 2026

$2–3 million

$10 million and up

Source: ARMLS.

Scottsdale outsells Paradise Valley about nine to one between $2 and $3 million. Above $10 million it reverses — Paradise Valley has closed 32 this year to Scottsdale's 14.

Paradise Valley isn't a luxury market with an ultra-luxury corner. The top is the market.

Two details from up there: nearly two-thirds of those $10M+ homes were built in 2024 or later, and they sold at roughly 92% of original asking after a median 90 days. Ambitious pricing, real negotiation, patient buyers.

If you own at this end of the market — or you're just curious what's actually trading up there — we keep a running picture on our Arizona ultra luxury page.

ARMLS, closings through July 31, 2026. Happy to run your street's numbers — just reply.

Land · For Sale

5850 E Glen Drive

Paradise Valley, AZ

You may have seen the rescue on Mummy Mountain last week — a hiker in trouble near the summit, airlifted off by Phoenix Fire. There is a detail that did not make the broadcast. The crew needed somewhere to set the helicopter down, so they cut the padlock on the gate at 5850 E Glen Drive and landed on the building pad.

Which tells you something about this parcel that photographs never manage to. It is 8.76 acres of Paradise Valley hillside with a pad flat enough and open enough that a rescue crew picked it, at eight in the morning, with someone’s grandfather on the line. Camelback to the west, the whole valley below it, and conceptual plans already drawn for a modern desert house. Land like this does not come up in Paradise Valley, and when it does it tends to go quietly.

See the property site

High Country

Somewhere to be in August

Every year around now the same conversation starts. It begins with somebody saying they're done with it, and it ends with them looking at maps. Three places absorb most of that traffic, and they are genuinely different from one another.

Flagstaff sits at 7,000 feet, and that number is the whole point — you want a jacket after dinner in August. Pine Canyon and Forest Highlands are where most Valley families end up. It's the longest drive of the three at about two and a half hours, and the only one that delivers an actual different season.

Sedona is roughly two hours, red rock instead of pine, and cooler than home without being cold. Inventory stays thin and prices stay firm for the simple reason that nobody is building more of it.

Payson is the one people skip over. Rim Country, ninety minutes, real relief from the heat without Flagstaff's drive or Sedona's pricing. It's where the numbers work if what you want is a cabin more than a club.

I've sold in Sedona, in Pine Canyon, and in Payson — so this isn't a referral to somebody else. We wrote up how the three compare on drive time, what you get for the money, and what a second place up there actually costs to own.

Read the High Country guide

Around town

In the neighborhood

• Worth knowing if anyone in your house hikes: Phoenix Fire's hoist helicopter — the one used on Mummy Mountain last week — is out of service for maintenance until around October. Other aircraft can assist, but the primary rescue bird is down through the hottest stretch of the year.
• Scottsdale ArtWalk runs every Thursday, 7–9pm, along Main Street and Marshall Way. Free, and it has been happening since 1975 — the longest-running one in the country.
• The Shemer Art Center on Camelback has its "Inside Perspective" show up through August 27 — 109 pieces by students and instructors. Tuesday through Saturday, 10 to 3, and air conditioned.
• Roman God of Fire opens Friday at Hayden Ferry Lakeside — Scott Conant's menu, everything over wood fire, and a dining room built to look like a Roman cathedral. It's a drive to Tempe, but it's the most interesting thing opening in the Valley this year.
• Three more issues went up in the Market Notes archive this week.

That's it for this month, folks. As always — just hit reply if you want to talk about any of it, or about anything else.