Redfin says North Scottsdale home prices are having a remarkable year. Zillow, tracking the same stretch of desert, says the typical home there is worth less than it was twelve months ago. Both numbers are accurate. They are just measuring different things, and the gap between them traces directly back to a construction site at Hayden Road and Loop 101.
The Two Numbers That Do Not Agree
Over the three months ending May 2026, North Scottsdale's median sale price ran $1.3 million, up 18.2 percent from the same stretch a year earlier, with price per square foot at $479, up 6.4 percent, according to Redfin. Homes sold in that window took about 61 days on average, and 602 changed hands in May alone, up from 498 the year before.
Zillow's home value index tells a different story for the same corner of the map. Its estimate for the 85255 zip code, which sits inside North Scottsdale, puts the typical home at $1,156,459, down 3.8 percent over the past year. Citywide, Zillow shows a similar pattern: Scottsdale's typical home value sits at $782,937, down 5.8 percent, even as Redfin's citywide median sale price rose 9.1 percent to $954,000 over that same three-month window.
| Metric | Source | Window | Figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median sale price, North Scottsdale | Redfin | 3 months ending May 2026 | $1.3M, up 18.2% YoY |
| Price per square foot, North Scottsdale | Redfin | Same window | $479, up 6.4% YoY |
| Typical home value, 85255 | Zillow ZHVI | Trailing 12 months | $1,156,459, down 3.8% |
| Median sale price, Scottsdale citywide | Redfin | 3 months ending May 2026 | $954K, up 9.1% YoY |
| Typical home value, Scottsdale citywide | Zillow ZHVI | Trailing 12 months | $782,937, down 5.8% |
Redfin's neighborhood boundary for North Scottsdale and Zillow's 85255 zip line are not drawn identically, but they overlap enough that both are describing largely the same buyers and largely the same houses. The divergence is not a boundary artifact. It is a mix problem, and it is more pronounced in North Scottsdale than anywhere else in the city.
What a Median Actually Prices
A median sale price tells you what sold. It says nothing about what your neighbor's identical house from 2011 is worth today unless your neighbor's house happened to be part of that sample. A home value index like Zillow's tries to estimate the worth of the existing housing stock as a whole, whether or not any given home sold this year.
When a wave of new, higher-priced units enters the sales pool, the median climbs even if the value of every previously existing home stays flat or slides. That is not a trick. It is arithmetic. And North Scottsdale has a specific, nameable reason a wave of higher-priced new construction is entering the pool right now: Cavasson.
The Corridor Doing the Pulling
Cavasson is Nationwide Realty Investors' 134-acre mixed-use district at the northwest corner of Loop 101 and Hayden Road, originally announced as a $950 million project back in 2018 and approved by Scottsdale's city council on a 5-2 vote. At full buildout it is planned to include 1.8 million square feet of office space and 1,600 residences alongside hotels, retail, and restaurants.
The residential side is where the median math gets interesting. A cluster of new-construction projects is landing in the sales data at price points well above what most of North Scottsdale's existing housing stock trades for:
- Toll Brothers at Cavasson, a gated condo community at 7620 E Cavasson Blvd, announced in April 2026. Toll Brothers' own release describes three-story units ranging from 1,965 to 2,672 square feet, with 2 to 4 bedrooms, two- and three-car garages, and private rooftop terraces, starting in the upper $900,000s, with sales expected to open in late 2026.
- BB Living at Cavasson, a 191-unit for-rent townhome development that developer BB Living submitted to Scottsdale's Development Review Board in late 2024 for a site near Legacy Boulevard and Miller Road. That parcel was originally planned for a 400-unit project called Grayhawk Residences at Cavasson under a different developer and builder, but no building permits were ever filed and the plan was shelved before BB Living picked it up, according to Arizona Builder's Exchange reporting.
Neither project is speculative land banking at this point. Toll Brothers paid $28 million for an 11-acre parcel near Hayden Road and Legacy Boulevard to build its condo community, and BB Living has an active application in front of Scottsdale's Development Review Board.
The Employers Behind the Concrete
New residential supply at this scale usually needs a demand story to justify it, and Cavasson's own office buildout supplies one. Meritage Homes anchors a five-story, 150,000-square-foot building on site, and the Arizona office of the MLB Players Association operates out of the same district. A master plan built around 1.8 million square feet of office space alongside 1,600 residences is a bet that the people filling those offices want to live within a short drive of them, not a condo project built ahead of any employer base.
That sequencing, office and hospitality first, residential now catching up, is why the new units are landing in the sales data as a cluster rather than trickling in one at a time. The corridor is filling in the order it was planned, and the residential phase happens to be arriving in the same window Redfin and Zillow are both measuring.
A rising median in a market flooded with new luxury inventory is not proof that every home got more valuable. It is proof that different homes are selling.
One Discrepancy Worth Flagging
Not every source agrees on what Toll Brothers at Cavasson will actually cost. The company's own April 2026 announcement lists condos starting in the upper $900,000s. Other market trackers following the same project put the range closer to $1 million to $1.2 million for comparable square footage. The spread likely comes down to base price versus a realistic finished price with lot premium and design studio selections, which Toll Brothers explicitly offers on site. Either figure sits well above the $479 per square foot North Scottsdale is currently averaging, which is the point: whichever number turns out to be accurate at closing, it pulls the neighborhood's median upward on its own.
Pricing an Offer Near Hayden and the 101
If you are comparing North Scottsdale to other Phoenix-area luxury corridors, the corridor-wide median is the wrong number to anchor an offer to if the home you are evaluating is a decade-old resale a mile from Cavasson. A few adjustments matter more than the headline figure:
- Comp against homes of a similar age and finish level within a half-mile to a mile radius, not the zip code average, since new-construction sales at Cavasson are currently doing the heavy lifting on that average.
- Watch price per square foot rather than sale price alone. At $479 currently, a listing priced meaningfully above that on a resale home is asking a buyer to pay a new-construction premium for an older structure.
- Expect more negotiating room at the top of the market. Listings above $1.5 million have generally been sitting longer than the 61-day North Scottsdale average, giving buyers in that tier real leverage that the median figure alone does not suggest.
- Remember that Arizona has no real estate transfer tax, a 2008 constitutional amendment that bars any new tax on the sale of real property, so closing costs at any price point in this corridor will run through title, escrow, and prorated property taxes rather than a transfer levy.
FAQ
Does the BB Living rental project affect resale values nearby? For-rent communities typically do not enter resale comp sets directly, since they are not sold as individual units. But 191 new rental units absorb rental demand that might otherwise push renters toward buying, which is a demand-side effect worth watching over the next year or two rather than an immediate comp issue.
Is Cavasson inside the North Scottsdale boundary Redfin uses for its market reports? Cavasson sits within the 85255 zip code and within the broader area most agents and portals refer to as North Scottsdale, though exact neighborhood polygon lines vary by data provider. The overlap is close enough that Cavasson sales are almost certainly contributing to the North Scottsdale figures Redfin publishes.
When will Toll Brothers at Cavasson actually start selling? The company's own April 2026 announcement targets late 2026 for the sales launch. That puts the first closings, and their effect on the sales mix, within the next two to three quarters from today.
If you are trying to figure out what a specific North Scottsdale address is actually worth, separate from what a zip-code average says it should be worth, that is the kind of read Kevin Owens and ARC° Partners do for a living. Make a Move when you are ready to price it correctly the first time.
