Is Arizona a Non-Disclosure State? No — So Why Is Your Zestimate Still Wrong?

No. Arizona is a disclosure state, and this is checkable: what a home sells for here becomes public record. Arizona law requires an Affidavit of Property Value — sale price included — to be recorded with most deeds (A.R.S. §11-1133), and the Maricopa County Recorder publishes it; when an affidavit was recorded, you can pull the selling price straight off their website. The companies that maintain the actual non-disclosure lists — ATTOM, Redfin, HomeLight — count roughly a dozen states that hide sale prices, Texas, Utah and New Mexico among them. Arizona is not on any of those lists.

I'm leading with that because the myth gets repeated constantly, including by people in my business, and because it is a comforting explanation for a number nobody likes: if the Zestimate is wrong, it must be blind. It is not blind. It can see closed prices here. It is a model — and what a model handles worst is not last month's closed sale. It is the market your house walks into the day it lists.

So this page will not tell you what your home is worth. It tells you what your home is competing with, from the live ARMLS feed, with the receipts attached.

#Why is your Zestimate off on your Goodyear house?

Because an automated estimate is a comp model, not a buyer. It can see what nearby homes closed for. It cannot see your roof age, your upgrades, your deferred maintenance, or which lot backs the arterial — and it weighs none of what this page is about: what is sitting on the market against you right now, and how stale it is.

And I'll be straight about what this site can and can't show you. The live ARMLS feed behind our home search carries 23,358 active listings across 187 cities as of August 10, 2026 — and only what is on the market right now, because closed and cancelled records get purged on every sync. That is an IDX licensing scope, not Arizona law. I cannot publish a sold price, a sale-to-list ratio, or an absorption rate on this site, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

What I can do is show you the market your house is being measured against, which is the thing no automated estimate is actually looking at.

#Who pays closing costs in Arizona? Whatever the contract says

That is not a dodge — in Arizona these are allocated line by line in the purchase contract, and every one of those lines is negotiable: title and escrow, recording, prorated taxes, HOA transfer and disclosure fees, and any seller concession toward the buyer's costs. A national average does not price your deal. Ask the escrow officer for a seller net sheet built on your actual contract terms.

One local line item worth planning for: HOAs are close to universal out here. 96.9% of Goodyear's 577 active listings carry an HOA, along with 94.9% in Surprise, 93.5% in Waddell and 91.6% in Buckeye (ARMLS live feed, August 10, 2026). An HOA in the deal means transfer and disclosure fees to allocate. I won't quote HOA dollar figures, because the feed stores monthly, quarterly and annual fees in a single column with no frequency field — a median across those would be meaningless, so we don't publish one.

#How many homes am I competing with in my city right now, and how long have they been sitting?

Active listings across the 14 West Valley cities we track total 5,850, against 3,824 in the city of Phoenix. By city: Surprise 1,157, Buckeye 922, Peoria 834, Glendale 791, Goodyear 577, Sun City 408, Avondale 265, Litchfield Park 246, Waddell 184 (ARMLS live feed, August 10, 2026).

Now the number that actually changes a pricing conversation — how old the standing inventory is. Median days on market so far, for homes still active: Buckeye 61, Surprise 60, Goodyear 65, Peoria 67, Sun City 73.

And the share sitting 90 days or longer: Sun City 44.1%, Litchfield Park 39.0%, Surprise 37.6%, Goodyear 37.1%, Buckeye 36.0%, Waddell 29.9%. Across the metro, 495 active listings have been on the market more than a year. (Small-city percentages move fast — Waddell has 184 actives and builders there list in batches, so one release crossing the 90-day line can swing its share overnight.)

Read that carefully, because I want to be precise about what it is. This is the age of homes that have not sold. It is not how long homes take to sell — I can't publish time-to-sell, for the reason above. What it tells you is how much aged competition your listing walks into on day one, and in most of the West Valley better than a third of the shelf is stale.

#Am I competing against builder inventory?

In much of the West Valley, yes — in Buckeye, 342 of the 922 active listings were built in 2025 or later, and most of that new inventory is the builder selling it directly (ARMLS live feed, August 10, 2026). How builder representation, co-op and model-home registration actually work is its own subject, and I wrote it up separately: do you need your own agent to buy new construction in Arizona?

#Is my house in the Luke AFB noise contour or an accident potential zone, and what do I have to disclose?

Under A.R.S. §28-8484, the disclosure duty for military airport proximity sits with the seller. ARMLS points to §28-8461 for the definitions and states the Luke Air Force Base territory runs ten miles north, south and west of the main runway centerline, and four miles east.

The complication ARMLS flags is that there is no standard form for it. Disclosure runs off the maps maintained by the Arizona Department of Real Estate, which means it falls to you and your agent to check the map and document what you found.

If you own in Litchfield Park, Goodyear, Surprise or El Mirage, do that before you list, not during escrow. And know what you're up against for information: nearly everything written about this — ARMLS's trade blog, the Arizona REALTORS' REALTOR Voice, WeMAR's government affairs page, law-firm posts — is agent-to-agent or lawyer-to-lawyer. Almost none of it is written for the homeowner.

#Why nobody can honestly quote you a tile-roof cost or lifespan

An honest dollar figure would depend on your roof's size, pitch, underlayment and tile condition, and an honest lifespan on which of those got maintained. So instead of a number, here is the transaction view.

What matters in a deal is roof age, because it lands in three places at once: whether your buyer can bind homeowner's insurance, whether an FHA or VA appraiser calls for repairs, and how the inspection negotiation goes.

Roof age tracks build year, and build year out here is not one number. The median active listing was built in 1972 in Sun City, 1986 in Phoenix, 1991 in Glendale, 2005 in Peoria, 2016 in Goodyear, 2021 in Buckeye and 2025 in Waddell (ARMLS live feed, August 10, 2026). That is a 53-year spread inside one drive. If your house sits on the older end of it, get the roof documented before an inspector does it for you.

#Are there any homes for sale in my city with no HOA — and does that make mine rare?

Rare is a countable thing, so here are the counts. Right now there are exactly 10 single-family homes for sale in Goodyear without an HOA, out of 548 active single-family listings. Litchfield Park has 29 of 227. Surprise has 32 of 1,044. Buckeye has 62 of 893. Wittmann is the outlier at 50 of 71.

Other things that are scarce, by count (ARMLS live feed, August 10, 2026):

• Under $300,000. Goodyear has 14 active listings under $300K out of 577. Waddell and Tolleson have zero. Sun City has 257.
• Anything attached. Buckeye, Goodyear, Avondale, Waddell and Tolleson have zero active condo or apartment listings between them, and Buckeye has just 8 townhomes.
• Pools. 42.3% of Glendale's active single-family listings have one, against 10.2% in Buckeye.
• Three-car garages. 57.1% of Waddell's active single-family listings and 56.8% of Litchfield Park's, against 19.7% in Phoenix.
• Owned solar. Panels the seller actually paid off are their own scarcity story out here — we counted those too, city by city.

If your house is one of those 10, or holds the only pool on its Buckeye street, that's a pricing argument with a number behind it instead of an adjective.

#What sellers get wrong about all of this

Two things.

The first is arguing with the Zestimate. It isn't the market, it isn't the buyer, and it doesn't write offers. It also isn't nothing, because your buyer will see it. The move isn't to be angry about it. The move is to know your actual competing inventory well enough to talk past it.

The second is reading a lower price per square foot as a knock on your house. Buckeye's median active single-family listing is 2,014 square feet at $221.36 per foot. Phoenix's is 1,914 square feet at $295.81. Phoenix costs 33.6% more per foot for a smaller house (ARMLS live feed, August 10, 2026). That is not Buckeye being discounted. That is the position — and it only works as an argument if somebody frames it for the buyer.

#What to do next

Go look at your competition before anyone quotes you a price. Open the search, filter to your city, your price band and your bed count, and sort by days on market: vwagents.com/search. The homes still sitting past 90 days are telling you exactly what not to do.

Then check the ADRE airport maps if you're anywhere near Luke, and pull your roof and HOA paperwork together while you're at it.

Then we should talk about the number, because that is the one part of this that shouldn't come from a website. Call or text me at (623) 336-6040, or start with the Goodyear area page.

— Charles

Every listing count on this page came from the live ARMLS feed behind our home search, pulled August 10, 2026, and it changes weekly. Counts cover active listings only — closed and cancelled records are purged on sync, so nothing here reports a sold price, a sale-to-list ratio or a time-to-sell.