Overview of Desert Mountain
Desert Mountain is an over 8,200 acre gated, outdoor recreational community, set in the spectacular High Sonoran Desert of north Scottsdale at an average elevation of roughly 3,000′, in the wondrous state of Arizona. It is bordered on the north by the Tonto National Forest, fourth largest in the country. Taliesin Associated Architects, founded by Frank Lloyd Wright, created the original Desert Mountain master plan in the mid-1980s. A private club, The Desert Mountain Club, was developed as the feature amenity for the community. It was sold to its members in 2010. Golf is the main attraction of Desert Mountain, as it offers six full-length championship Jack Nicklaus Signature golf courses: Renegade, Cochise, Geronimo, Apache, Chiricahua, and Outlaw. A seventh eighteen-hole course, appropriately enough named “Seven”, was completed in February 2019. It is an over-3,000-yard, all par-3 course rated for handicap purposes. Four practice ranges and a state-of-the-art practice, teaching, and club repair facility, the Jim Flick Performance Center, round out the golf facilities. Walkers are welcome, either carrying their own clubs or using a push/pull cart.
Club members enjoy nine private dining venues spread out over seven different clubhouses: Seven, Renegade, the Sonoran Clubhouse, Apache, Cochise-Geronimo, Chiricahua, and Outlaw. All but the Sonoran Clubhouse serves golf activities. The “Sonoran”, as it is known, is the swim, tennis, fitness, bocce, golf croquet, spa, and children’s playground facility. An over twenty-mile hiking, biking, and horseback trail system was developed in 2015 in the mountains at the back of the property using funds donated by property owners as a community asset managed by the HOA. A recently expanded and improved Dog Park is very popular, with dogs and their masters alike. The Club has attracted members and owners from virtually every state in the United States and several foreign countries. Over the years, the community has become widely recognized around the United States and the world as one of the foremost examples of golf course community development anywhere. If you want a luxury residential experience, wrapped up in one of the finest recreational communities in the country, you will have a difficult time finding a better place than Desert Mountain.
As of mid-April 2025, there were approximately 1,507 completed custom homes and 550 semi-custom homes, with another approximately 90 custom homes either under construction or in Design Review. There were approximately 189 custom lots not yet built upon and not owned by a neighbor to protect their views or privacy. With the developer gone, all property sales are on the “resale” market. The Davis Driver Group maintains extraordinary information on all sales, pending transactions, and available properties, in a proprietary inventory management and market research system designed just for Desert Mountain. It has many useful details in it that are not in the local Multiple Listing Service. If you have any questions whatsoever about any aspect of the real estate market in Desert Mountain, we invite you to give us a call and share that question with us.
Location
The community is in a quiet, peaceful setting; the air is clean, the skies dark at night and the climate very comfortable most of the year (with a high about ten degrees cooler than what Phoenix reports, but nighttime lows in the summer approaching twenty degrees cooler than what the city will record). One can normally drive to Sky Harbor Airport from the Front Gate in under forty-five minutes, and the nearest grocery store is just six minutes away. Our Group members know many other residents and Club members and enjoy introducing our new clients to these people, helping them get “plugged in” quickly. It is a friendly place, with people from all over the country and all kinds of backgrounds. You are bound to be able to find some people quickly with whom you will become fast friends, and all of us look forward to helping in that process!
