Can anyone tell me what parts of AZ are safe?

Question

I am planning on moving to AZ within a year. I heard Mesa,Chandler, Gilbert, and Buckeye is a good place to live. Also how bad are the scorpians?

Answer 1

NOT Mesa. Unless your Mormon or poor. Sorry Mesa people -it's true.

Chandler & Gilbert are newer area & affordable - try not to go too far south. You'll be getting cheaper homes & new, but in undesirable areas - mainly farm community.

Buckeye is growing as well. People are telling you these areas bc altho they used to be bad news hey are now expanding & renovating like crazy. People equate good w/ new - not always so be careful.

If you go West to Glendale, Peoria or Phoenix - go as North as possible. If you go East to Scottsdale stay north of Shea, East of the 101.

That should help - look at a map & figure out the zips that correspond or talk to a realtor (even if you aren't buying) for more info.

I have lived in AZ my entire life (31 yrs) & have NEVER seen a scorpion.

Answer 2

Chandler, Gilbert and Scottsdale are the best places to live. If you live in a centralized area scorpians shouldnt be too bad. Especially during winter. They come out in the summer though. I live in Chandler. Its a new development so we see a lot of scorpions during the summer. All these cities have its ghetto areas but overall are great areas to live in.

Answer 3

Gilbert is the best place to live out of those choices. Most of Mesa is trashy, with lots of illegals. Parts of Chandler are nice, but the downtown area of Chandler is very rundown, and low income. Try south of Gilbert area, into Queen Creek, its booming and growing. Buckeye is also growing.
Scorpions are not a big problem in the developed areas. But if you are moving into the subdivisions that are newly developed, you will find some of those little boogers!

Answer 4

As you can tell by the previous answerer, Gilbert is full of skinheads, Mesa indeed has a large hispanic population, but there's no way to know if they're illegal unless you go checking their IDs, Chandler is the best and most expensive place, there's not really a big problem with scorpions or snakes unless you live in the middle of no where, but we do find alot of spiders.

Answer 5

You have to be very careful when making broad judgements about entire communities. All of the ones mentioned above are very large in area (dozens of square miles or larger) and contain a very wide range of areas from nice, safe middle-class family neigborhoods to low income, run down, higher crime areas. You can find both good and bad areas in ALL of them. In fact, they all kinda merge together and if you were to come out here and drive from Mesa to Chandler to Gilbert, you probably could not even tell when you had left one and entered the next - there really is not any glaring difference.

The one possible exception are the handful of entirely brand new towns that were built entirely from scratch out of the desert within the last 10 years and contain almost entirely new homes and neighborhoods (such as Queen Creek and Maricopa). However these are not necessarily ideal places either - they are very far away from anywhere and this is where much of the infamous sub-prime lending mortgage boom took place and they are now getting hit with lots of foreclosures and then problems that go with it including abandoned houses, rapidly declining house values, and a big rise in rental properties.

As far as scorpions go... there does not always seem to be logic to where they show up. It is certainly true that newly developed areas see more of them, but it is NOT true that being in old developed neighborhood away from open space makes you safe. I live less than 100 yards from South Mtn and never found a single scorpion in my house - my boss lives 3 miles further away in the middle of a big old developed neighborhood and he find 2-3 a month.

If you are looking for a place to live in Arizona than really (after price, of course) you should be considering communities and areas based on the type of life-style you lead and where you are planning on working. The Phoenix area has very little public transportation and a traffic problem that is starting to rival that of LA. If you are going to be working in Mesa, you do NOT want to live in Buckeye or visa-versa unless you enjoy spending 10 hours a week in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

As far as life-style goes, here is my take on the different areas:
- Gilbert, Mesa, Chandler, Glendale and much of Buckeye and Tempe are mostly established middle-class family towns (although they all also have nicer and less-nice areas).
- Because of ASU, Tempe has a bit of the college culture with more festivals, nightlifes, sports, etc around the university.
- Scottsdale is the trendy spot for art galleries, expensive resturants and night-clubs. It has poor and middle class neighborhoods too, but is better known for expensive homes and a party spot for 20 and 30-something professionals.
- Phoenix is huge in area and contains a wide range of run-down and middle-class neighborhoods. The downtown and South Phoenix areas contain some of the more impoverished and run-down areas, but both places have seen a lot of rebuilding and renewal in the last few years and you will now have new expensive up-scale places right next to run-down slums.
Queen Creek, Maricopa (to a certain degree Buckeye) - Real Estate boom towns originally aimed at working class and middle class families, but now suffering the effects of the mortgage collapse.

My advice - figure out where you will be working first - after that you will be able to find just about any sort of neighborhood you want inside of any of the above towns if you look around.

Answer 6

1 in 200 homes visited by scorpions a year the outskirts have more cause they've encroached into desert area.. me I'd live downtown Phx. Tempe, Mesa areas.. more urban...

Answer 7

you're finding to spend a minimum of two,500 a month in basic terms for hire in a house and around a million,500 for an house. i might say in case you may not handle to pay for that it relatively is relatively useful tochronic extra to paintings.