The Bottom Line
Pros
- Good descriptions of historic neighborhoods
- Charts for home sales crime, schools, neighborhood ethnicity
Cons
- Advertisements
- Some info based on outdated census data
Description
- Kudos to the writers for not including Scottsdale in the East Valley.
- For those of you who don't live here, Mesa is always considered part of the East Valley.
- What's up with such a heavy focus on pizza places, anyway?
- This book has a magazine look and feel, which includes advertising.
- The acknowledgement list is heavily weighted to Realtors, and one company in particular.
- Includes crime data charts, school charts, population by ethnicity charts.
- Colorful, glossy pages, good photos, good maps.
Guide Review - Where to Live in Phoenix
An impossible task. I commend the publishers of the Where To Live books for even trying to put descriptions of the metro Phoenix area in writing!
Where to Live in Phoenix takes large geographical areas of the Valley and breaks them down into cities and neighborhoods, to provide insight from a real estate perspective. Each area is evaluated with respect to schools, shopping, dining, leisure, and real estate trends.
Anyone reading the book who is unfamiliar with the area would think that just about every neighborhood in town is a good area, or at least up-and-coming from an investment perspective, with the exception of West Phoenix. Even there, the authors comment that "Everything east of I-17 is excellent." Like this statement, I found lots to disagree with in this book. DC Ranch is more middle class? South Phoenix residents have to travel farther than most to get to shopping? Sun City residents don't pay school taxes? Wrong.
Still, the book was useful. I like the price statistics for each neighborhood. These quickly become outdated, but still serve as a point of comparison. The discussion of historic neighborhoods was comprehensive. The map insets of Who Lives There? for each neighborhood, although generalized, were helpful.
Every neighborhood in Greater Phoenix, with few exceptions, has good parts and bad parts. Use this book as just one more piece of your research when deciding where to live in Phoenix. Nothing can substitute for coming out and driving around.
