How Old Are Homes in Phoenix’s Most Valuable ZIP Codes?

The Numbers

64.3%

Built 2000 or later, ranks 11 to 30

Owner homes in the twenty ZIPs just below the top ten: the newest of the five price bands in this analysis.

28.6%

The same share, top ten

21,977 of 76,918 owner homes, against 41.4% across the metro. The comparison with the metro depends on where the top is cut, as shown below.

43years

The spread inside the top ten

The median owner home dates from 1962 in Arcadia’s 85018 and from 2005 in North Scottsdale’s 85262.

The ten most valuable ZIP codes
Where the new houses actually are
How far the top-ten figure holds
Three histories in one price tier
What the value table can and cannot show
What year built can and cannot tell you
House age and refrigerator age, nationally
What that means for a kitchen here
The 2000s homes
Finding the real age of your own machine
Method and limits
Questions
Sources

The Ten Most Valuable ZIP Codes

These ten ZIPs differ widely. The median owner-occupied home ranges from 1962 in Arcadia to 2005 in North Scottsdale, a spread of 43 years inside one price tier. Against the metro median of 1995, five are older, one ties and four are newer. Ranked by median home value.

ZIP and area	Median home value	Median year built, owner homes	Median year built, all housing	Owner homes	Built before 2000	Built 2010 or later
85253 Paradise Valley	$2,000,000+	1986 ±3	1986	6,462	74.4%	12.5%
85262 North Scottsdale	$1,287,300	2005 ±1	2005	6,384	25.7%	28.1%
85266 North Scottsdale	$1,128,500	2000 ±2	1999	5,414	50.7%	14.3%
85377 Carefree	$1,077,500	1987 ±6	1987	1,549	73.9%	7.2%
85255 North Scottsdale	$1,036,800	1999 ±1	2000	14,490	53.4%	15.5%
85259 Scottsdale	$1,011,200	1995 ±1	1994	7,397	75.1%	7.5%
85018 Arcadia, Phoenix	$862,000	1962 ±3	1970	9,918	82.4%	12.1%
85263 Rio Verde	$851,000	2002 ±4	2000	1,820	46.4%	31.5%
85258 Scottsdale	$846,000	1983 ±1	1984	9,413	97.5%	1.2%
85254 Scottsdale	$785,700	1984 ±2	1986	14,071	93.2%	2.7%
All ten together	not published	not published	not published	76,918	71.4%	11.1%
Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler metro	$440,900	1995 ±1	1994	1,260,206	58.6%	15.9%

ACS 2020–2024 five-year estimates. ± is the Census Bureau’s margin of error at the 90 percent confidence level. $2,000,000+ is the survey’s ceiling: the true median in 85253 lies somewhere above it. Below first place the margins of most neighboring ZIPs overlap, so read the order as a group. Tables and limits are under Method.

Where the New Houses Actually Are

Across these 128 ZIPs, pricier tends to mean newer, and the trend breaks at the top. From the lowest band upward the share of owner homes built before 2000 falls step by step: 79.7%, 60.8%, 54.4%, 35.7%. The ten most valuable ZIPs stand at 71.4%. The rank correlation between home value and median year built is +0.31, a moderate lean and well short of a rule.

ZIPs by value rank	Median home value	Owner homes	Built before 2000	Built 2000–2009	Built 2010 or later
1 to 10	$785,700 to $2,000,000+	76,918	71.4%	17.4%	11.1%
11 to 30	$592,100 to $741,700	198,381	35.7%	37.7%	26.6%
31 to 60	$448,200 to $584,000	285,134	54.4%	26.4%	19.2%
61 to 95	$369,200 to $447,900	333,001	60.8%	25.2%	14.0%
96 to 128	$161,500 to $367,000	283,172	79.7%	14.0%	6.3%

Each share is summed from owner-home counts; the lowest band means lowest on this list of 128. The band edges are our own choice. Cut at ranks 11 to 40, 41 to 85 and 86 to 128 instead, and the before-2000 share reads 40.2%, 60.9% and 72.7%, so the trend holds. The break at the top is about new building, and it does not make the top band resemble the bottom: homes built before 1980 are 25.5% of the top band, 7.1% of the next and 50.1% of the lowest. The newest ZIP on the list, 85396 in Buckeye, has a median year of 2013 and ranks 49th by value, at $482,900. The Census tables show this pattern and do not explain it.

How Far the Top-Ten Figure Holds

The top-ten figures depend on how many ZIPs count as the top and on which year is the cutoff. The break from the band below survives both choices: at every cut from one ZIP to ten, the pre-2000 share stays at 50.2% or higher, against 35.7% for ranks 11 to 30. The comparison with the metro is weaker. From the top two through the top six ZIPs, the group holds more homes from this century than the metro does. From the top seven on, it holds fewer.

Group, by value rank	Owner homes	Built before 2000	Built 2000 or later
Top 5	34,299	52.7%	47.3%
Top 6	41,696	56.7%	43.3%
Top 7	51,614	61.6%	38.4%
Top 8	53,434	61.1%	38.9%
Top 9	62,847	66.6%	33.4%
Top 10	76,918	71.4%	28.6%
Ranks 11 to 30	198,381	35.7%	64.3%
Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler metro	1,260,206	58.6%	41.4%

The same top-ten group against the metro, at five cutoff years:

Owner homes built	Top ten ZIPs	Metro
Before 1970	11.8%	12.2%
Before 1980	25.5%	26.4%
Before 1990	45.9%	40.9%
Before 2000	71.4%	58.6%
Before 2010	88.9%	84.1%

Before 1980 the top ten hold no more than the metro does. Their extra stock is from the 1980s and 1990s: 20.4% against 14.4% for the 1980s, and 25.5% against 17.7% for the 1990s. Four of the ten are below the metro’s 58.6% on their own: 85262, 85263, 85266 and 85255. Two others carry much of the weight, with 85254 and 85258 supplying 22,292 of the 54,941 pre-2000 homes. Swap 85254 for 85331, whose value margin overlaps it, and the top-ten share becomes 64.8%.

Three histories in one price tier.

The ten ZIPs share a price tier and very little else. Arcadia’s 85018 is a 1950s place: 4,357 of its 9,918 owner homes, or 43.9%, date from that decade, and 73.7% from before 1980. Its owners hold the older stock too, with an owner median of 1962 against 1978 for renters.

North Scottsdale’s 85262 is a 2000s place: 46.1% of owner homes from that one decade, and 2.1% from before 1980. Scottsdale’s 85258 is a 1980s place, with 52.9% of owner homes from those ten years and 97.5% from before 2000.

Paradise Valley’s 85253 has no single era. Every period from the 1960s through 2010-and-later holds between 12% and 19% of its owner homes.

The Count, Decade by Decade

Owner-occupied homes in each ZIP by the decade they were built, from Census table B25036. These are the raw estimates behind the shares for these ten ZIPs, so those percentages can be checked by hand.

ZIP	2020 or later	2010–19	2000–09	1990–99	1980–89	1970–79	1960–69	1950–59	1949 or earlier
85253	132	676	847	1,134	1,191	1,207	830	404	41
85262	381	1,414	2,946	1,305	201	34	0	22	81
85266	60	713	1,896	2,247	397	101	0	0	0
85377	0	111	293	289	316	316	199	25	0
85255	399	1,841	4,513	6,440	972	223	11	39	52
85259	97	461	1,283	3,673	1,464	242	77	91	9
85018	348	857	542	269	595	1,053	1,699	4,357	198
85263	229	345	401	393	338	105	9	0	0
85258	19	92	124	1,131	4,978	2,932	78	29	30
85254	136	248	573	2,771	5,201	4,378	688	55	21

“1949 or earlier” adds two B25036 lines: built 1940 to 1949, and built 1939 or earlier. These are sample estimates, so small cells carry wide margins, and a zero is an estimate rather than a proof that no such house exists.

What the value table can and cannot show.

Census table B25107 gives median value by decade built, and in Paradise Valley it mostly runs out of room. Owner homes from the 1950s, about 404 of them, and from 2020 or later, about 132, both hit the survey’s ceiling of $2,000,000+. The table cannot say whether those two medians are equal, or which is higher. It shows only that both sit above the ceiling. The one decade with a figure below that line is the 1970s, at $1,808,700 ±$440,517.

Arcadia sits below the ceiling, so its gap is readable. Homes built in the 2010s have a median value of $1,347,400 ±$136,172; homes built in the 1950s, $832,700 ±$44,184. The older house is worth less there, and that median is still close to twice the metro’s $440,900.

The Census does not record why an old house holds such a value. One reading is that owners keep spending on these houses, and the kitchen is one place that money would go. That is our inference. The ACS cannot test it, for the reasons in the next table.

What Year Built Can and Cannot Tell You

Year built is a proxy, not a measure of appliance age. The ACS does not count appliances. It records when a building was first constructed, and it asks only whether a home has a sink with a faucet, a stove or range, and a refrigerator. The ACS never asks their make, model or age.

The question	Does the ACS answer it?
How old is the house?	Yes, as a self-reported sample estimate with a margin of error
Has the kitchen been remodeled?	Not in the ACS, where the year means when the building was “first constructed, not when it was remodeled, added to, or converted.” The American Housing Survey, a separate survey published for the nation and selected metro areas, covers kitchen equipment and home improvements, but not ZIP by ZIP in its published tables
Is there a refrigerator?	Only whether one is present, with a sink and a stove or range
Is it a built-in, and what make?	No
How old is the refrigerator?	No. The closest public figure is national, in the next table
Do the priciest houses in a ZIP match its median?	No. A ZIP median describes the ZIP, and the most expensive homes in it can be much newer or much older

For a machine delivered with the house, year built does give a ceiling: that machine cannot be older than the house, so an original refrigerator in a 2005 home is about twenty-one years old at most. The ceiling says nothing about a machine that arrived later.

House Age and Refrigerator Age, Nationally

Nationally, house age barely predicts refrigerator age. In the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s 2015 household survey, about three in ten homes had a most-used refrigerator ten years old or more, whether the house dated from before 1950 or from the 1990s. The figures are national, from 2015, and cover all refrigerators, not built-ins.

House built	Homes (millions)	Refrigerator 10 or more years old (millions)	Share of homes
Before 1950	20.8	6.3	30.3%
1950–1959	12.6	3.7	29.4%
1960–1969	12.8	3.6	28.1%
1970–1979	18.3	5.1	27.9%
1980–1989	16.0	4.6	28.8%
1990–1999	16.8	5.5	32.7%
2000–2009	17.0	at least 5.0	at least 29.4%
All U.S. homes	118.2	34.1	28.8%

EIA Residential Energy Consumption Survey 2015, Table HC3.3. Each count adds the published rows for 10 to 14, 15 to 19, and 20 or more years; the shares are our division of those rounded millions. The EIA withheld the 20-or-more row for 2000–2009 houses, so that share is a minimum. Houses from 2010 to 2015 are left out because they were too new to compare. The survey covers primary occupied homes.

What that means for a kitchen here.

The national table points away from any easy reading of the ZIP tables above. If a house’s decade said little about its refrigerator in 2015, the median year of a ZIP says less still about the refrigerator in one kitchen. This has not been measured for Phoenix, for these ZIPs or for built-ins, which may be kept or replaced on a different schedule from other refrigerators.

So both directions stay open. A 1962 Arcadia house may hold a machine bought last year, or one from a kitchen redone decades ago. A 2005 North Scottsdale house may hold its first built-in, or a replacement. And a remodel restarts the clock without stopping it: a 1986 house that got a new kitchen in 2006 now has machines twenty years old.

Sub-Zero’s own wording differs by page. Its life-expectancy answer says its products are designed to last “about 20 years on average,” and that the life of any appliance will vary widely with use, ambient temperatures, maintenance, repair history and the failure of parts. Its quality page says “a minimum of 20 years.” Both sentences describe a machine and have nothing to say about a house. What a design life means, and what wears out first.

The 2000s Homes

In some ZIPs much of the housing shares one decade. Among the thirty most valuable ZIPs, these eight hold the largest share of owner homes built from 2000 to 2009, between 45.7% and 69.5%. Those houses are 17 to 26 years old in 2026.

ZIP and area	Value rank	Median home value	Median year built, owner homes	Owner homes from 2000–2009	Share of owner homes
85086 Anthem and Phoenix	28	$598,900	2004 ±1	9,407	69.5%
85083 Phoenix	25	$612,700	2005 ±1	4,150	67.1%
85249 Chandler	18	$660,600	2006 ±1	9,326	61.7%
85297 Gilbert	27	$600,600	2007 ±1	5,339	60.8%
85085 Phoenix	16	$669,100	2008 ±1	3,939	52.7%
85286 Chandler	26	$601,900	2005 ±1	5,550	46.4%
85262 North Scottsdale	2	$1,287,300	2005 ±1	2,946	46.1%
85298 Gilbert	19	$652,400	2009 ±2	5,998	45.7%

The Census does not say how many of these kitchens hold built-ins, or how many have been redone. Any first machines still in these houses span the same ten-year range. What that decision looks like in Gilbert.

Finding the real age of your own machine.

Two dates are the useful start: the year the house was built and the year the machine was made. If they fall within a year or two of each other, the machine may be original to the house. If the machine is years newer, it has been replaced, on its own or in a remodel.

The machine’s date sits on its tag, and the format differs by maker. A Sub-Zero Built-In 600-2 prints the manufacture date on the serial tag. A Viking VCRB built-in begins its serial with the month, day and year it was made. A Monogram serial starts with two letters coding month and year; the year letters repeat every twelve years, so they give a pair of years, and the design of the unit settles which. Where that tag is on each maker.

Then treat the date as context. Our guides reason that the fault matters more than the age: how that decision works in numbers. Buying a house with built-ins? The same two dates are worth having: ten checks before you close.

We work within about 30 miles of downtown Phoenix: the service area. The visit is $119, waived when you go ahead with the repair, and we do not sell refrigerators.

Method and limits.

Dataset. U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, 2020–2024, Detailed Tables, by ZIP Code Tabulation Area. Read November 1, 2026. The analysis is ours; the Census Bureau did not produce or review it.

Tables. B25077 median value, owner-occupied units. B25037 median year built by tenure, used for the owner and renter medians. B25035 median year built, all housing units. B25036 tenure by year built, used for every owner share. B25003 tenure. B25107 median value by year built. B25034 year built, all housing units, as a check: on that table the top ten’s before-2000 share is 69.8% against 60.3% for the metro. The +0.31 is a Spearman rank correlation of median value against owner median year across the 128 ZIPs.

Why owner homes. B25077 covers owner-occupied homes only, while B25035 and B25034 also count rentals and vacant units. In 85255 that is 23,364 housing units against 14,490 owner homes. Comparing owners with owners keeps value and age on the same footing, which is why the owner median leads and the all-housing median sits beside it.

The ZIPs. This list is our selection and differs from the Census definition of the metro. We listed by hand the ZIP Code Tabulation Areas of the Valley’s built-up area, from Buckeye east to Apache Junction and from New River south to San Tan Valley: 129 in all, 128 ranked, because 85309 has no published median value. “Lowest” and “least valuable” mean on this list. These 128 hold 93.4% of the metro’s owner homes. About 40 other ZIP Code Tabulation Areas overlap the metro; none would reach the top ten, and the highest we checked, 85390, stands at $499,200.

The list: 85003, 85004, 85006–85009, 85012–85024, 85027–85029, 85031–85035, 85037, 85040–85045, 85048, 85050, 85051, 85053, 85054, 85083, 85085–85087, 85118–85120, 85140, 85142, 85143, 85201–85210, 85212, 85213, 85215, 85224–85226, 85233, 85234, 85248–85251, 85253–85255, 85257–85260, 85262–85264, 85266, 85268, 85281–85284, 85286, 85295–85298, 85301–85310, 85323, 85326, 85331, 85335, 85338–85340, 85345, 85351, 85353, 85355, 85361, 85363, 85373–85375, 85377–85379, 85381–85383, 85387, 85388, 85392, 85395, 85396. Area names come from postal names and local usage, added by us for readability.

To reproduce it. Open any table at data.census.gov and change the table number or the ZIP in the address. The Bureau’s data API at api.census.gov serves the same tables under the dataset 2024/acs/acs5, and it needs a free key. Figures for the ten ZIPs, the ZIPs in the 2000s table and the metro were read on data.census.gov. The full list came from Census Reporter’s copy of the same release, and the two matched wherever both were read. Every band share is a sum of owner-home counts divided by the band’s total.

Limits. These are sample estimates blended across five years, so homes finished after 2024 are not counted. Year built is self-reported in the survey, and an owner may not know it exactly. A ZIP Code Tabulation Area approximates a ZIP code and does not match it exactly, and its boundary can cross a town line, so 85253 is not identical to the Town of Paradise Valley. A median describes the middle of a ZIP and says nothing about any one house. Nothing here shows that any home holds a built-in appliance of any make.

Questions

How old are the homes in Paradise Valley?

The median owner-occupied home in ZIP 85253 was built in 1986, plus or minus three years, by the Census Bureau’s ACS 2020–2024 five-year estimates. About 38% of owner homes there date from before 1980 and about 26% from 2000 or later, so no single decade defines the ZIP.

Which expensive Phoenix ZIP has the oldest homes?

Among the ten most valuable ZIPs in the Phoenix metro, Arcadia’s 85018, where the median owner-occupied home was built in 1962, plus or minus three years. Of its 9,918 owner homes, 43.9% date from the 1950s.

Are the most expensive Phoenix ZIPs also the newest?

Not at the very top. Across 128 Phoenix-area ZIPs, pricier ones tend to have newer owner homes, and the share built in 2000 or later reaches 64.3% in the ZIPs ranked 11 to 30 by value. In the ten most valuable it is 28.6%, below the metro’s 41.4%. That figure depends on where the top is cut, and the ten differ widely, with median years from 1962 to 2005.

Does the Census say how old my kitchen appliances are?

No. The ACS does not count appliances. It records when a building was first constructed, whatever has been remodeled since, and it asks only whether a home has a sink with a faucet, a stove or range, and a refrigerator. Year built is a proxy for the age of a house and says nothing certain about what is inside it.

Does an old house mean an old refrigerator?

Not by national data. In the EIA’s 2015 household survey, the share of homes with a most-used refrigerator ten years old or more was about 28% to 33% for every house decade from before 1950 through the 1990s. That covers all refrigerators across the U.S., not built-ins or Phoenix. The serial tag gives a machine’s real date.

Where do these numbers come from?

From our own analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, 2020–2024, by ZIP Code Tabulation Area: tables B25077, B25037, B25036, B25035, B25034, B25003 and B25107. The refrigerator figures come from the EIA’s 2015 Residential Energy Consumption Survey, Table HC3.3. The table numbers, ZIP list and calculations are on this page.

Sources

U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, 2020–2024, Detailed Tables: B25077, B25037, B25036, B25035, B25034, B25003 and B25107, read November 1, 2026. Each link opens 85253.
Census Reporter, ACS 2024 5-year release (2020–2024): the same tables for the full list of ZIPs.
U.S. Energy Information Administration, Residential Energy Consumption Survey 2015, Table HC3.3: appliances in U.S. homes by year of construction, most-used refrigerator age.
U.S. Census Bureau, why we ask about plumbing and kitchen facilities: the survey asks about the presence of a sink with a faucet, a stove or range, and a refrigerator.
U.S. Census Bureau, why we ask about year built.
Westchester County Department of Planning, census housing data: the ACS year-built item as first construction, in the words quoted above.
U.S. Census Bureau, American Housing Survey: a separate survey, with tables for the nation and selected metro areas.
U.S. Census Bureau, ACS sample size definitions: margins of error at the 90 percent confidence level.
U.S. Census Bureau, ZIP Code Tabulation Areas: what a ZCTA is and how it differs from a ZIP code.
Sub-Zero, Wolf and Cove life expectancy, on subzero-wolf.com: Sub-Zero products designed to last about 20 years on average, with the caveats on use, ambient temperatures, maintenance, repair history and mechanical failure of part components. Sub-Zero Group, Our Story: Quality, on the same site: “designed to last a minimum of 20 years.” Both read November 1, 2026.
Sub-Zero Built-In (600-2) Series technical service manual; Viking Preferred Service manual SMR-0022, May 2012; GE Consumer Home Services technical service guide 31-9091 (2002): serial tag and date formats, as cited on our design-life guide.

Calculated from these sources and reviewed on November 1, 2026 by Aphelion Appliance Repair, Phoenix. Neither the Census Bureau nor the EIA reviewed or endorsed this analysis. It describes houses and survey answers, not any particular kitchen.

What year is your machine?

Send the model and serial from the tag, and what it is doing. We answer every day, 7am–6pm.

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Pricier Phoenix ZIPs tend to have newer homes, until the very top.