The following explanation of Teacher Planned Communities was provided by Tim Rogers of Century21 Distinguished Properties.
Planned communities have a unique and continuing history in the United States real estate market. The origins of the planned community in the valley date back to a Californian named Simon Eisner. In the mid-1960s, the city fathers of Scottsdale foresaw the tremendous growth to come in the area and asked Eisner to help city planners develop a “General Master Plan” for the city.
The first tangible result of the city’s efforts was the community planned by the McCormick Ranch teacher. The first in the Valley, it was truly a community planned in a master plan, since in addition to the house plans, the city included office parks, recreational parks and shopping centers. The original planners also even incorporated hotels / motels into community plans.
How do you know if you are in a planned community or just a typical subdivision? In general, they are distinguished by the large number of services and amenities, and the huge area of land that the community encompasses in a planned community. For example, due to their large size, teacher-planned communities will incorporate extensive recreational facilities such as lakes, golf courses, and extensive parks with bike paths and jogging trails. Alternatively, the typical subdivision may occasionally have a smaller park or recreation area, and the size of the local neighborhood will be much smaller than that found in a planned community.
The subdivisions will be surrounded by commercial, strip and / or commercial centers in general, but these local services are not part of the original general plan of the subdivision. Builders will build and expect / assume that retail and commercial development will follow. In the master planned community, the city and developers plan and include all of these amenities in the initial stages before a shovel is delivered in development.
However, master planned communities and subdivisions have one thing in common. Due to the sheer size of new home projects in the Valley today, most projects are simply too large for a builder or developer to handle. Usually a group of individual builders / developers will come together and develop ‘localized’ sections of the planned community. A very important benefit of this ‘multi-developer’ concept is that there is almost always a wide variety of building styles, house plans, lot sizes, landscaping styles, and of course.
Pricing options throughout the community. Additionally, each ‘section’ developed by individual builders or a group of builders will have their own unique Codes, Covenants and Restrictions (CC & Rs) that maintain the overall quality and standards of the community.
Chris Fiscelli, writing for the Reason Public Policy Institute, refers to planned communities as “the suburban answer to the dull, detached housing estates that still make up much of the suburban nation of America.” The popularity of the planned community concept is illustrated by the number of homes being built and sold in the valley. It is estimated that nearly 75% of all resale homes that go through our standard escrow / title process in the Phoenix area are in master planned communities.
Recent estimates show that more than 80% of new home construction permits issued by Valley building departments were issued for homes in master planned communities!
