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Picture Paradise Valley in its infancy — a sprawling rural community of dude ranches — and you’re not too far from what this aptly named area is like today. With its mountaintop locale, and zoning that limits homes to one per acre while prohibiting commercial property (except resorts and medical facilities), Paradise Valley offers a relaxed, luxurious home life tucked away from the city’s hustle and bustle. In fact, you’ll still see plenty of rabbits and quail living quite happily throughout the peaceful neighborhoods here. No wonder it’s listed as one of the nation’s 50 wealthiest areas (and one of only three non-coastal communities on the list).
A map of Paradise Valley looks a little like an upside-down Texas, with curved and stair-stepped boundaries. Roughly, it stretches from Shea Boulevard to Camelback Road, Scottsdale Road to 32nd Street. It contains most of the Phoenix Mountain Preserve, and Camelback and Mummy Mountains.
In Paradise Valley you’ll find 50s-vintage brick Ranch and Southwestern-style homes in the grand style—spread wide over acre-plus lots. You’ll also see modern creations with clean lines made of glass and steel, and custom or semi-custom palaces of stucco and stone. Somehow, all seem perfectly suited to the desert landscaping, gated driveways, and privacy-giving hedges that predominate the area’s milieu.
School-age residents attend the top-ranking schools of the Scottsdale Unified School District or one of several high-performing private schools:
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Camelback Desert School (3 years–8th grade; the oldest private school in the Valley),
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Kachina Country Day School (20 months–6th grade),
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Desert View Learning Center, (K–4th grade),
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Tesseract (preschool–8th grade with a 9th grade class starting in Fall of 2008).
Adults enjoy the high-end amenities of a handful of resorts whose pedigree is rooted in the area’s Old West tradition: The Hermosa Inn, which opened in 1930; The Camelback Inn, 1936; and the 200-acre Paradise Valley Country Club, built in 1953 and recently renovated for a lavish $28 million. (The Country Club is by invitation only.) Golfers find heaven on earth at the PV Country Club, The Phoenician Resort and Golf Course, and the Camelback Golf Club (see Camelback Country Estates, below). For those who love the truly modern spa experience—Asian-inspired body treatments and “royal” salon services, there’s always The Sanctuary on Camelback Mountain, which joined the Paradise Valley neighborhood in 2001. Other neighborhood resorts that are definitely worth a visit include the Doubletree La Posada Resort, Doubletree Paradise Valley Resort, Renaissance Scottsdale Resort, and Scottsdale Plaza Resort.
And everyone loves the wide variety of fine restaurants and fabulous shopping in nearby Scottsdale and the Biltmore area.
Mummy Mountain Park
Mummy Mountain Park is a great place to look if you want a unique home in a unique spot.
The East Valley’s Mummy Mountain (2,260 feet) sits just to the north of Camelback Mountain, looking a little like an Egyptian Mummy (or a lot like one, depending on the light). The 320 acres of residential land that weave through its foothills are gratefully protected by the Mummy Mountain Preserve Trust — that means no future development throughout the area in a plan to preserve it as one of our great national treasures: natural open space.
The sky is the limit on architectural styles in Mummy Mountain Park. The creativity of the homes here is well worthy of the unique surroundings, which they blend into impeccably. You’ll find Modern, Contemporary, Spanish, Santa Barbara, Tuscan, and more, including eclectic homes with touches of all of the above.
The Mummy Mountain Park area stretches south to north from Lincoln Drive to Foothills Drive (Northern Avenue) and west to east from Mummy Mountain to 64th Street.
3,000 square feet is the rare “smaller home” in the foothills, with most homes at well over 5,000. Prices tend to range between $1.5 million to $9 or $10 million.
As of February 19, 2008, there are 16 homes for sale in Mummy Mountain Park ranging from $1,550,000 to $9,250,000, with a 3-acre estate in an adjacent neighborhood at $14,500,000. Since July of 2007, 4 homes have sold for between $1,750,000 and $4,410,000.
Whatever style, size, or value, when you see it you’ll agree: every house in Mummy Mountain Park is a home that’s fit for a king — modern, ancient, or somewhere in between.
Clearwater Hills
One of the Valley’s first gated neighborhoods, the Clearwater Hills community of 191 homes was first formed in the southeastern foothills of the Phoenix Mountain Preserve in 1955. A devotion to the use of natural ingredients in the homes here—stone, wood, adobe—recalls the slow, steady simplicity of vintage Old West living. The open-range feel of the expansive foothills lots contribute greatly to this vibrant effect. Across Tatum Boulevard, the area’s eastern boundary, sits luxurious Paradise Valley Country Club. The north is bordered by East Roadrunner Road and the equally fantastic Tatum Canyon, and the south by Indian Bend and Paradise Hills Estates. (Continued above right.) 
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Homes on Mummy Mountain 
Camelback Inn 
Clearwater Hills 
View from Mummy Mountain
Clearwater Hills homes tend to be on the larger side—at least 4,000 square feet—but are most often well over 5,000, and have sold for between $2 and $10 million. They’re Tuscan, Contemporary, Santa Barbara, Ranch, Spanish, you name it—unique, award-winning, modern masterpieces you’ll just have to see to believe.
As of February 19, 2008, prices of 9 homes for sale ranged from $1,425,000 to $9,900,000, and 3 homes have sold since October of 2007. Sold prices range from $1,740,000 to $2,250,000.
Camelback Country Estates
The Camelback Country Estate homes surround the Camelback Golf Club from Scottsdale Road west to Invergordon (64th Street), Doubletree Ranch Road south to East Hummingbird Lane.
The semi-private club has two 18-hole championship courses: one reserved for club members, the other for club members or patrons of the Camelback Inn resort. There’s also a practice facility with driving range and chipping/putting greens, a 36,000-square-foot clubhouse, and a lounge with outdoor fireside seating: the perfect place to relax and take it all in.
In keeping with the Paradise Valley aesthetic, homes are a colorful mix of styles that blend and contrast beautifully with the low-desert mountain-bed landscape: Spanish adobes, Santa Barbaras, Mediterraneans with red-tile roofs. The rugged elegance of modern contemporaries with splashes of these southwest influences appear here and there, softened by old-growth pine, eucalyptus and palms; archways; gated driveways; fountain courtyards. And patios—this is a place made for patios. After all just a few blocks to the southwest is the greatest show on earth, every day: the sun setting over glorious Mummy Mountain.
Price tags for low to mid-3,000-square-foot homes tend to be between one and two million, with more than 5,000 square feet handily fetching seven or eight.
As of February 19, 2008, the 18 homes for sale in Camelback Country Estates are listed between $1,650,000 and $5,480,000. The 6 homes that have sold since August of 2007 were priced from $1,675,000 to $2,100,000.
To learn more about making Paradise Valley your own home, call me at 602.620.6267 or email me.
Joe Janus, real estate agent and REALTOR® specializing in Homes with Exceptional Style |