Last weekend my wife and I went to check out some custom home builders in Tucson AZ (yeah, spur of the moment - we drove from Orange County, CA nonstop to Tucson, AZ from 1am in the morning and we arrived at 9am local Tucson time).

When we got there we met with a local realtor and he took us around to look at new homes in the NW of Tucson. These were new homes by Richmond American Homes and were going for $300,000! Man, coming from California these homes would have been worth at least $800,000 or $1M depending where you are at in Cali.

Well, we thought $300,000 was still too expensive (the realtor must be going nuts because we were so picky), so we decided to pick up a local “new homes” magazine and checked out Richmond American Homes ourselves (Sorry, Mr. Realtor!).

Just so you know, Tucson is split into 4 major areas, North West, North East, South West, South East. My college buddy and his wife moved from CA to AZ and they are in the NW and we absolutely love that part of the Tucson. It is really developing and you don’t see high-rises. So, when you step out of your home, you can actually see the entire Tucson and the foothills (actually if you have 2-story home, you can do this from your house!).

Anyway, back to Richmond American. At that time they have a total of I believe 13 sites that are building on. We checked out a good number of them majority in SE and NW areas. Man, THE HOMES ARE ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS. And guess what? We got a new build under contract that weekend and here are some photos that we took during our home-shopping trip in Tucson:

This is the first home that we went to see. It is a brand new home.

My wife and her brand new backyard. She loves it!

This is me talking with Richmond American’s sales agent who took us out to the development site to pick out our lot!

I believe the Tucson market is going to be very strong this year, and for the many years to come. When we got out there last weekend the general housing marketing is slowing down, meaning that the buyers have many choices of homes - it was essentially a buyer’s market. So if you are thinking of going out there to shop for a home, you definitely want to go NOW before spring comes around the corner. We also visited other custom home builders in Tucson AZ such as KB Home, Pulte, and DR Horton. But we stuck with Richmond American Homes.

Tags: Steven Chang Diary, Real Estate