Study: Maricopa home prices up sharply 

If you bought a home in Maricopa in the last two years, congratulations – your home has likely risen in value in the neighborhood of 60 percent since your purchase. 

If you bought in the last seven years, throw a party, you’ve hit the mother lode.  

Median home values have increased an average of 235 percent since December 2015 according to median sales price data recently released by the Maricopa Association of Governments. The median value is one in which half the sales are for more than that amount, and half are for less. 

Those trends have dramatically shifted the market in Maricopa. In 2012, 95 percent of the homes sold for less than $200,000; in 2021, less than 1 percent sold in that price range. And on the reverse side of that equation, in 2012 there was not a single home in town that sold for more than $300,000, while last year 69 percent sold above that figure, including 53 percent from $300-400,000; 14 percent from $400-500,000; and 2 percent for more than a half million dollars. 

The median home price in the city has risen from $154,250 in January 2015, to $195,000 in December 2017, to $225,940 in December 2019, and finally to $360,000 in December 2021. 

Just two years ago, 31 percent of all sales were still below $300,000, and the city didn’t see its’ first sale of a home for more than $400,000 until 2019, when that category accounted for 1 percent of total sales. That number doubled in 2020, then shot up to 14% last year.  

The median sales price in Maricopa has risen 33 percent in just the past year, MAG said, from $270,000 to $360,000. That is considerably higher than the average rise in value for Maricopa County which was at 25 percent. Only five of the other 24 cities cited in the study had a greater growth rate for home values than Maricopa – Buckeye, Carefree, Cave Creek, El Mirage and Youngtown.  

The median sales price in both Cave Creek and Carefree is over $1.1 million, and Paradise Valley had the highest median sales price at the end of 2021 at $3.138 million. 

The only other Pinal County city noted in the data was Florence, which saw an increase in median sales price of 25 percent, up to $338,450. 

Maricopa was within five percentage points either way of several larger cities including Phoenix at 29%; Buckeye 34%; Chandler 24%; Gilbert 32%; Mesa 27%; Queen Creek 28%; and Tempe 30%.