Desert Ridge

People who call Desert Ridge home enjoy close proximity to major thoroughfares like Arizona State Route 101 and the Piestewa Highway. The roads in Desert Ridge allow for easy connection to nearby communities like Grayhawk, Paradise Valley Ridge, Deer Valley and Arrowhead Ranch.

Further, families who live in Desert Ridge are close to a number of top-performing public schools. Residents in the community are 30 minutes from downtown Phoenix and all of the shopping, services and amenities that are found there. They also are 19 miles, via Arizona Highway 51 south, from Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport.

Additionally, Desert Ridge offers access to some of the best amenities found in any master planned community in Phoenix. People who live here can easily get to the Marriott Desert Ridge Resort and Spa, which is home to the Wildfire Golf Club.

The Wildfire Golf Club has a 36-hole championship golf course, as well as a day spa, restaurant, bar, swimming pool and conference center. It is also the largest hotel in Phoenix with 950 rooms available.

Homeowners in Desert Ridge also have ready access to a number of upscale, resort-like amenities found within the community itself. These include sports courts, playgrounds, fitness centers, game rooms, swimming pools, a gourmet kitchen and cabanas.

The list of amenities found throughout Desert Ridge can be found on the Desert Ridge Community Association website. This association, abbreviated as DRCA, serves as the community’s homeowners association and manages the daily operations, functions and safety in Desert Ridge.

The DRCA has its own elected board of members, which includes seven fellow community homeowners. Out of the seven members, four serve in the administrative roles of board of director president, vice-president, secretary and treasurer. The remaining three serve as members-at-large.

The DRCA board of directors also employs an onsite management team for tasks like vetting contractors for repairs, maintaining the safety and peace in the community and handling concerns about daily life in Desert Ridge. The management team consists of an executive director, a community relations specialist and a standard and compliance coordinator. It also includes a community association police officer, who is assigned from the Phoenix police department, to patrol Desert Ridge and address specific concerns like criminal activity and crime prevention.

The board of directors also commissions and oversees committees that meet regularly to manage important tasks related to living in Desert Ridge. All homeowners in the community can serve on these committees, which cover areas like:

• Communications
• Design review
• Lifestyles
• Community awareness
• Finance
• Public affairs
• Strategic community planning and parks
• Nominating

Residents can also find forms on the DRCA website for important topics like:

• Architectural approval
• Approved plant list
• Assessment payment options
• Complaint forms
• Dog barking petitions
• Pool guidelines
• Property release forms
• Noise ordinances
• Loud party complaint forms
• Waiver requests
• Change of address forms

The website for the Desert Ridge Community Association is likewise the place where homeowners in the community can go to find out the events going on each month. For example, they can find out the dates and times for the DRCA meetings that are held monthly.

These meetings are open to all homeowners in the community. However, people who are not able to attend can find minutes from them on the DRCA website.

The DRCA also offers a business directory. Residents can find lists of businesses for services like:

• Auto repair
• Pet care
• Financial planning
• Dry cleaning
• Child care
• Real estate
• Pest control
• Restaurants
• Home repair

They can also find a list of nearby medical facilities.

People who are interested in moving into Desert Ridge can find a wide variety of homes from which to choose. The real estate market consists of both attached, such as condos and townhouses, and single family homes. The homes are all spacious and designed for comfortable, modern living in mind.

The median sale price for a home in Desert Ridge sits at around $534,000. The closing prices, however, can range from $379,000 to more than $1.795 million. Closing prices can range from $191,000 to $1.51 million, and home buyers typically pay around $302 per square foot.

Homes for sale in Desert Ridge can span from 800 to more than 7300 square feet in size. They also sit on quarter to five acre lots and have two and three car garages, on average.

It is not uncommon to find homes on the market in Desert Ridge that have as many as seven bedrooms. They can also have anywhere from one to seven bathrooms.

Most homeowners in Desert Ridge pay around $3500 a year in property taxes. They also pay $245 each quarter in assessments to the community association.

Home prices in Desert Ridge have generally held steady over the last year. However, homes are selling faster in the community. It typically takes fewer than 37 days for a listed home to sell, down from 65 days that it took for homes to sell, on average, last year. It is also typical for 40 to 50 homes a month to sell in Desert Ridge.

The appearance of the homes explain in part why homes in Desert Ridge sell so quickly. The outside of the homes feature plaster or stone exteriors. They also have decorative tile or terra cotta rooftops, paved driveways and covered front entrances.

The insides of the homes in Desert Ridge feature upscale designs like:

• Recessed lights
• Fireplaces
• Ceiling fans
• Wood window blinds
• Floating wood floors
• Arched windows
• Tall ceilings
• Formal dining rooms
• Granite kitchen counters
• Wall ovens
• Painted wood cabinets
• Carpeted bedrooms
• Kitchen islands
• Tile bathroom and kitchen floors
• Walk-in bedroom closets
• Quartz bathroom counters
• Studies or dens
• Garden bathtubs
• Large utility rooms with counters and cabinets

Many homes also have large enclosed backyards with high stone or brick privacy fences.

When not enjoying all of the comforts found in their large and upscale homes, residents in Desert Ridge can indulge in any of the resort-like amenities found throughout the community. A number of these amenities are found at the Fireside at Desert Ridge Community Center, which is located on East Lone Cactus Drive in Phoenix.

The amenities found in and around this community center include:

• A swimming pool
• Cabanas
• A splash pad
• Lighted tennis courts
• Basketball courts
• Picnic ramadas
• Playgrounds
• A yoga garden
• A fire pit
• A fitness center
• Multipurpose game and great rooms
• A gourmet kitchen

Even more upscale amenities, however, are found at the community’s own JW Marriott Phoenix Desert Ridge & Spa. The amenities that this world class hotel and resort offers include:

• Day and med spas
• A 36-hole championship golf course
• Five resort-style swimming pools
• A lazy river
• A state-of-the-art fitness center
• Fine dining restaurants
• A conference center
• 252 timeshare units
• 950 luxury hotel rooms

People who live in Desert Ridge can also join the Club at Desert Ridge and gain access to even more amenities. This club offers a number of onsite dining choices, such as:

• Stonegrill
• Twenty6
• Spa Bistro
• Just a Splash
• Roy’s

There is also a Starbucks on the premises of the Club at Desert Ridge.

The Club at Desert Ridge additionally makes available numerous classes that are open to members only. These classes include those for:

• Power walking
• Indoor cycling
• Yoga
• Pilates
• Aqua fitness
• Tai chi
• Core training

The Club at Desert Ridge likewise offers members its Family Escape program, through which they can access numerous youth camp options.

The club likewise makes available town car and bike rentals for members in need of transportation. Several miles of walking trails also surround the club and are available to members for walking, biking, jogging and hiking.

Finally, Desert Ridge is part of the Paradise Valley Unified Public School District, which is headquartered in Phoenix. This school district is one that is well-known for high performance and academic excellence. It offers parents of school-aged children some of the safest and best schools found in the Greater Phoenix area.

Nationally, the Paradise Valley Unified School District gets a grade of B-plus for its overall excellence. It achieves a grade of A in specific areas like academics, diversity and college preparation. It gets grades of B for areas like teacher quality, health and safety and clubs and activities.

Within the state of Arizona, the Paradise Valley Unified School District likewise performs well. In fact, Arizona ranks this district as the eighth best, out of 115 districts, for student athletes. It ranks as the 16th best Arizona public school district overall and as the 37th most diverse school district in Arizona.

The Paradise Unified School District has a total enrollment of just over 31,000 students, spread out among grades preschool through 12th grade and dispersed among the district’s 46 schools. It has a student-to-teacher ratio of 19 students per one teacher, which is just slightly higher than the national student-to-teacher ratio of 16:1.

Further, it makes available several schools that are handy to the Desert Ridge community itself. Parents who live there can send their children to nearby Desert Trails Elementary School, which has a student body of 500 students. They can also send their children to Explorer Middle School and Pinnacle High School, which have student enrollments of 850 and 2600 students, respectively.

The high academic standards that are commonplace in the Paradise Valley Unified School District carry over to its state standardized test results. In fact, these tests prove that 53 percent of students in the district are proficient in reading while 50 percent are proficient in mathematics.

Further, the district graduates 89 percent of its enrolled students from high school each year, on average. This high school graduation rate is four percent higher than the national high school graduation rate of 85 percent.

Last, students who take the ACT college admissions test score an average of 27 on it. This ACT test score average is higher than the national ACT test score average of 20.6.