Cost of living in Phoenix Arizona

Hey everybody! I’m real estate agent John Cunningham with exp Realty and right here on YouTube, every week we’re talking about your real estate questions. We’re talking about the cost of living in Phoenix, awesome neighborhoods and the greater Phoenix area. Living in Phoenix is Muy Bueno. We’re answering tons of text messages, answering the phone all the time and responding to your comments below and we absolutely love it. So keep it coming in.

If you happen to be focused on a neighborhood or it’s in a neighborhood and you don’t see a video about that below, let me know which one that is and we’ll make one for you. One of the things that I did in preparation for this video was I looked up the top 20 cities across the country for median home price. Phoenix isn’t anywhere to be seen that’s make it awesome when you are living in Phoenix. We’re not on that list. I had create my own. It’s all the way down to the number 25 city where Phoenix finally pops up into the top 25 and I think that’s really interesting. Especially since Phoenix is the number five city in terms of population.

We are a real life city. This is a vibrant place. It’s a cosmopolitan city. There’s lots of jobs here. Unemployment is low, and as you’ll see, cost of living is really reasonable. Another interesting fact that I discovered while I was doing my research is that Phoenix shows up as the number 42 city in terms of cost of living across North America.

Now that list doesn’t collude five cities from Canada, but the rest of them are all in the U.S so Phoenix ranks as the number 37 in the U.S in terms of cost of living. So it’s super inexpensive. And now let’s dig into the details and see why that is. So let’s get the big question out of the way first.

What about rent? Right? So actually rents have gone up substantially here in the Valley over the last couple of years and the last year in Phoenix rents went up 7.7% that is a lot.

Cost of Renting a Home in Phoenix

In order to rent a three bedroom home, you’re going to be paying right around $1,700 per month. If you’ve got a little bit bigger family, you’re going to be showing out $1,900 per month for four bedroom. So if you’re new to Phoenix, it might not be a bad idea to park yourself in a rental for about six months. Get the lay of the land, figure out where you want to live, the cost of living and then make your purchase.

Now on the other side of the coin, if you’re ready to make a buying decision sooner rather than later. You can really make a solid decision by researching online, jumping in on an airplane. Flying here for a weekend and looking around and getting a feel for what our city’s all about. What the various areas have to offer. Something interesting to think about is what kind of a house could you afford for that $1,900 house payment that you’re making on the rental?

Mortgage with A Minimum Down Payment

If you took those dollars and applied them towards a mortgage with a minimum down payment. You’d be able to afford a $359,000 house. The median price for a home in Phoenix is right around two 52 so you’re going to be able to afford something well above the median price range. You’ll be able to afford something quite nice in the $360,000 range. My family moved to Phoenix right in the middle of my high school years. And then as an adult I moved away and a couple of my brothers and I.

We lived in Huntington beach and everybody’s heard of that place. It’s a beautiful town when you are living in Phoenix. But guess what? Yeah, it’s expensive, like big time, you know. It seemed like all we did was work all the time. The freeways were an absolute nightmare and the cost of rent was through the roof. And this was 30 years ago.

So finally I came back to Phoenix, bought a house. I’ve owned several homes since then and that was a great decision for me. But enough about me. Now what about you? Well, here’s some of the costs that you’re going to be facing. If you decide to become a Phoenician number one cost of utilities for a 915 square foot apartment. You can expect to pay right around $160 per month for your utilities. That includes water, electricity, and garbage. You can also expect to shout about $75 a month for internet service.

Cost of Transportation When Living in Phoenix

Well, if you’ve got a car, I always say Phoenix has the best freeway system of any major metropolitan. Hands down. If you don’t believe it, come on over here, drive around on our freeway sometime and you’ll be able to see. You can get from point A to point B rather quickly. Now if you’d rather use public transportation, we’ve got the light rail and bus system. You can get a monthly pass for about a hundred bucks and if you’re a senior or somebody with disabilities, you’ll be paying only $32 per month.

Now what about gasoline cost when living in Phoenix? Well, the other day I went over to Costco and gassed up my car just three days ago. Cost me $2 and 85 cents per gallon and then I got a little bit lazy and took my wife’s car over to the QT station near my house and it cost us $3 and 5 cents.

Well, what about groceries? You got to eat right? Well, Phoenix has an extremely competitive grocery market. There are tons of grocery stores here in this town. So right now we are just a midge below the national average in terms of what you would normally spend at grocery store. What’s it cost to go out in Phoenix?

What’s It Cost to Eat Out?

If you’re living in Phoenix and going to eat out for a couple. It’s going to cost you right around $46 if you have alcohol with that, it might be. Around $60 but right around $46 for a nice meal for two people.

Now if you’re eating fast food, it would be a lot less than that, but we don’t want to do that to ourselves. Right? By the way, that gives me the chance to talk about this place. This is little miss barbecue and I like to highlight a good eatery here in Phoenix.

Every time I make one of these videos, little miss bargain barbecue is an awesome place and I’ve never talked to the guy. I’ve talked to his dad and what happened is this guy went over to Texas and he trained on making beautiful Texas barbecue and he brought it back to Phoenix.

He’s got two locations now and I’m telling you, that staff is so good. He makes the bomb brisket, he makes a beautiful cheddar and how Pendo grits. All of his side dishes, his beans and the whole works. It’s all really good. So checkup. Little miss barbecue.

The Cost of living in Phoenix is such mesmerizing. You may also enjoy the movies and expect to spend around 20 bucks. Maybe $22 if you’re going to go to the movies. You can absolutely attend for a lot less than that at a matinee. Maybe spend 11 or $12 for a pair of tickets on a matinee.

So what’s it cost to have a nice handcrafted beer? Somewhere between $4 and $7. Now know this in case you’re a beer drinker, we’ve got eight breweries here in Phoenix and 40 of them across the entire Phoenix Metro.

Property Taxes when Living in Phoenix?

Property taxes are going to run you around $1,600 on average for the entire year. When you buy a house in the Phoenix Metro, keep in mind the national average is around $2,700. Well, what about homeowners insurance? If you buy a house in Phoenix, you can expect to pay right around $813 a month on average. The national average is above $1,200 per month. So living in Phoenix is a lot cheaper. Health insurance ranks 37th among all the other States and you can expect to pay around $450 per month on average.

If you’re younger than that, you can probably cut that in half. If you’re older, it might be a little more household income and Phoenix is just a tad below the national average. The national average is right around $57,000 in Arizona. Average income is right under $53,000 one of the things that I noticed while I was researching income. Median home prices was that while our income is slightly lower, the median home price is on average, a hundred thousand dollars lower than 14 of our cities that are on that list with their median home prices. Home prices are significantly lower.

Now let’s take a couple of minutes and look at all the various places that residents are proud of living in Phoenix. I’m going to jump on a map and show you what it costs to live in these various parts of greater Phoenix and I won’t be able to touch on every single one of them. Then I’m going to move quickly and cover a lot. If you’ve got a question about a particular city, a particular town, just drop me a comment below or give me a call or send a text.

The Greater Phoenix Metropolitan

Which has roughly 30 cities and towns, and you can see the map is color coded. The key down here shows the least expensive represented by the lighter colors, the more expensive represented by the darker plum colors. And this color right in here represents the average of 100 in the for the cost of living across the U.S and you can see that this color is reflected in Phoenix proper where you can buy a home for $265,000 for the median price and you get a lot for that money.

There’s so much to offer. So many awesome housing options in the Phoenix city. You can see all sorts of homes being renovated, lots of gentrification in Phoenix proper. You can’t go down the street without seeing a dumpster to where a house is being completely renovated. So if you’re not handy and you don’t want to fix something, chances are some flipper has renovated a house and made it new again on the inside and made it so that you can live in it and enjoy it for another many decades.

New Condo Buildings Going in All Over Phoenix

You can find mid rise buildings, high rise buildings, really cool, eclectic, small condo complexes. There’s a lot to choose from in Phoenix proper for your money. So moving on from Phoenix, let’s look at the Southeast Valley. There’s Tempe, Mesa, Chandler, queen Creek, and over in Tempe you can expect to be able to find a home median price right around 300 Mesa, right around two 75 Chandler’s right around three Oh three queen Creek.

It’s a little bit lower than it is in May, Sam. And you know, the further out you go from the center. The less expensive it’s generally going to be. In terms of price, then as we swing over to the West Valley, all these cities, lots of these used to be pure farmland 30 years ago, and in the last 15, 20 years, a lot of houses have been put up.

A lot of street, roads and infrastructure and new schools have been put up. A lot of choices to choose when living in Phoenix. That’s true in the East Valley as well. There’s been a big expansion. You know, a lot of times people don’t realize how big our Valley is from one corner to the other. It’s easily a hundred miles. You know, this map gets really big if you’re driving. So here in the West Valley, you can expect to find really low prices in Avondale, Buckeye and in Surprise. A lot of this is a new construction and you can get a lot for your money in Surprise, right around $270,000. (For new construction upgrades tips, check this out).

Median Price to Expect

In Peoria, you can expect a median price of around three or six. So these are some great options for you if you’re looking to stretch your dollars and get as much bang for your buck as possible. Then moving up North in the Anthem, a Delt web development and what Del Web did? They started doing so many years ago and they stuck with it and it’s worked and it’s made them so successful when they build one of their communities.

It’s always a big community and they put all the infrastructure and all the amenities in before they start allowing any home sales to take place. Living in Phoenix have golf courses, clubhouses, pools,parks, all that stuff gets finished off before the sales take place. It’s what makes them succeed. So families just love the Anthem.

You get a lot for your money and you get a beautiful community with a lot to do. It is a little bit out on the edge and that’s the complaint. It’s about 34 miles from the center of Phoenix, but it’s a quick drive. Again, our freeways are so good you can really get around rather quickly going in, whether you’re going into Phoenix or Scottsdale, you can get there quickly. Then moving over into the carefree area, the median price is going to be right around $606,000 so substantially higher.

Like the Idea of Having Acreage

A lot of them in carefree and in cave Creek have have horse property and they keep horses on the property so they need more land for those homes. A lot of these homes are custom and then Scottsdale, the median price is right around four 85. You can certainly spend a lot more than that in Scottsdale. Get a few things for a little bit less. You can still get a condo for 300,000 and in Scottsdale and there are some awesome options for you if you want to be on that lower end of the price spectrum. Just don’t expect to get as big of a place for the, the lower dollar amounts. Then as we swing into this area here, this is where paradise Valley is. Paradise Valley is a fabulous community.

Most of the homes are on an acre plus that was the vision of the, of the townspeople when it was established more than 50 years ago. They wanted to make sure that the zoning changes taking place in Phoenix and Scottsdale didn’t resemble what they wanted to have in paradise Valley. So they said, you know, you guys are building all those little houses, but we want to keep this so that we’ve got like an acre plus in paradise Valley for our houses.

Generally speaking, the homes there are on an acre or more and it’s reflected in the price. 1.5 million on add on for the median priced home in paradise Valley. Absolutely. You can spend substantially more double, triple that. No problem. Uh, and there are a few homes South of $1 million, but don’t expect much. Typically it’s going to be a tear down.

I hope this overview of the Phoenix metropolitan housing is helpful to you and I look forward to assisting you in every way possible. Helping you figure out exactly what you need when you move to Phoenix. So that’s about it for the cost of living here in Phoenix. If there’s something I forgot to cover. Please let me know what that is. Give me a call, send me a text, leave me a comment below and we’ll make sure to get back to you. In the meantime, thanks for watching this video on the cost of living in Phoenix, Arizona. See ya.