1.Where Cortina Is, and Who Built It
The Town of Queen Creek’s own Planning and Zoning record places Cortina at Germann Road and Rittenhouse Road, and geocoding a coordinate inside the neighborhood against the U.S. Census Bureau’s geocoder returns Maricopa County, GEOID 04013 — the Maricopa side of a town that straddles two counties, which matters most to how the property tax bill is assembled.
Cortina was Fulton Homes Corporation’s first master-planned community in Queen Creek. The declaration was signed on December 14, 2001 and recorded by the Maricopa County Recorder on January 16, 2002 as document 2002-0048182. For the wider picture of who builds where, see our roundup of the builders working in Queen Creek.
- Recorded plats: Phase 1A at Book 581, Page 23; Parcels 1 through 4 at Book 581, Pages 24 to 27.
- Lots today: 1,195, per City Property Management when it took over management in 2020.
- Lots in the original declaration: 376, plus the separate Phase 1A tract. The declaration reserved the right to annex more land, which is how 376 became 1,195.
- Median year built: 2005; the earliest recorded sale we could find closed June 21, 2004, builder-to-builder between two Fulton entities (both secondary).
“376 homes” is the count from the 2002 declaration’s first parcels, not the community as it stands. Use 1,195 lots — and note that figure is itself dated May 2020.
2.Is Cortina Gated? Only the Enclave Next Door
No. A full-text search of the recorded Cortina declaration turns up no gate, no guard and no controlled-access provision anywhere in the document. What confuses buyers is Rosewood Grove, a separate 53-home enclave built next door by Rosewood Homes, which is gated and is governed by its own, different CC&Rs. It held its grand opening on March 3, 2017, fifteen years after the Cortina declaration was recorded.
| Attribute | Original Cortina | Rosewood Grove |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Fulton Homes Corporation | Rosewood Homes |
| Gated | No — no gate or controlled-access provision in the recorded CC&R | Yes |
| Governing document | Declaration recorded January 16, 2002 (doc #2002-0048182) | Its own separate CC&Rs — not the Cortina declaration |
| Size | 1,195 lots (May 2020) | 53 homes |
| Opened | Declaration recorded 2002; median year built 2005 | Grand opening March 3, 2017 |
Before you write an offer, read the declaration that actually governs the parcel, by document number. A Rosewood Grove address is not bound by the Cortina declaration, and a Cortina address does not get the Rosewood Grove gate.
If a gate is a hard requirement rather than a preference, that is a different search. The Pecans is the nearest in-silo comparison: its association’s own community page describes a gated entry with a 24-hour guardhouse and publishes dues of $324 a month, a figure that page labels “for 2023” and that no newer published number replaces. Even taken at face value, that is more than three times Cortina’s $92-to-$100 listing range.
3.Cortina HOA Dues, the Transfer Fee, and What Arizona Law Caps
The Cortina Homeowners Association is an Arizona nonprofit corporation, and City Property Management has run it since May 1, 2020, superseding the 2002-era manager named in the original filing. One caution before you go looking: cortinahomeowners.com belongs to a different Cortina HOA, in Glendale, and carries a disclaimer on its own site saying so. We could not confirm a live, dedicated official website for the Queen Creek association, and we could not obtain its own published fee schedule — so the dues below come from listing data, not from the association.
| Charge | Amount | Set or capped by | Basis and date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regular assessment | About $275–$300 per quarter (about $92–$100 a month) | The association | Multiple homes.com listings, scraped September 20, 2026 — approximate, not the association’s own schedule |
| One-time title transfer fee | $1,500 | The association — the authorizing document was not confirmed | Listing record field “HOA Transfer Fee2: 1500.0”, scraped September 20, 2026 |
| Resale disclosure document package | Capped at $400 in aggregate | A.R.S. § 33-1806(D) | Arizona statute, current law as of September 20, 2026 |
| Rush charge on that package | Up to $100 more | A.R.S. § 33-1806(D) | Only where the work must be performed within 72 hours of the request |
| Update to a disclosure 30+ days old | Up to $50 | A.R.S. § 33-1806(D) | Arizona statute, current law as of September 20, 2026 |
| Late charge on unpaid dues | The greater of $15 or 10% of the unpaid assessment | A.R.S. § 33-1803(A) | A payment is deemed late once it is 15 or more days past due |
| Increase to the regular assessment | Not more than 20% above the immediately preceding fiscal year’s assessment without the approval of a majority of the members | A.R.S. § 33-1803(A) | Arizona statute, current law as of September 20, 2026 |
The $400 figure is not a cap on everything you pay the HOA at closing. A.R.S. § 33-1806(D) caps the resale disclosure document package. A separately authorized title transfer fee is only required to be disclosed, under § 33-1806(A)(4)(e) — that $400 does not touch it. Cortina’s listing data shows a $1,500 title transfer fee, which is exactly why the two belong on separate lines of your settlement statement.
The association’s own charges are also time-bound: A.R.S. § 33-1806(E) says those fees are collected no earlier than the close of escrow, may be charged only once to a member for that transaction, and an association that violates the section faces a civil penalty of up to $1,200. For how this compares across town, see our HOA fee breakdown by community — against Ellsworth Ranch at $184 a month across three Taylor Morrison collection pages as of September 20, 2026, Cortina’s $92-to-$100 monthly equivalent sits at the lower end for Queen Creek.
Listings do not all agree on who runs the association. Several name City Property Management; others still name a prior manager, Renaissance Community Partners, alongside the slightly lower $275-a-quarter figure. The cortinahoa.com domain now redirects to City Property Management’s resident portal, which is why we treat City Property Management as current and the other reference as probably stale. The phone numbers attached to those listing records are listing data too, so we do not republish them: take the manager, the phone number and the dues from the resale disclosure package, not from a listing field.
4.What the Dues Buy, and What They Do Not
City Property Management’s own description of the community it picked up in 2020 lists fountains, pools and parks. That is the whole of what the manager publishes. A secondary neighborhood guide goes further and describes Cortina Park with sports courts including basketball, a shaded playground and a private community pool — useful, but not the association speaking.
- Cortina Park — sports courts including basketball, a shaded playground and a private community pool (homes.com neighborhood guide, scraped September 20, 2026 — secondary).
- Kingbird Park — covered picnic tables and open space, under a mile away, but adjacent to Cortina rather than part of it. It is not a Cortina amenity and the dues buy no standing there.
- [The Queen Creek Wash Trail](/things-to-do-in-queen-creek/queen-creek-wash-trail) — about six miles of path, per the Town’s own trails page (September 20, 2026); the neighborhood guide places it south of Cortina. It is a public Town trail, not an HOA amenity, and its published parking is at Mansel Carter Oasis Park and Desert Mountain Park rather than inside the community.
None of that amenity list comes from the association itself. If a specific pool, ramada or court is load-bearing in your decision, ask the management company for the current amenity list and the rules attached to it. Pools in particular come with posted hours and key-fob policies that no neighborhood guide will have.
5.Cortina Elementary and the Higley Unified Feeder Path
Cortina is generally served by Higley Unified School District, not Queen Creek Unified — a real surprise for buyers who assume the town and the district share a name. Cortina Elementary School, at 19680 S 188th St, opened in August 2006 as Higley Unified’s seventh school, and the school’s own page says it serves the Cortina and Sossaman Estates communities. Higley Unified’s boundaries page publishes an interactive zone map and a feeder-pathway chart, but no address-level lookup that returns a school name; the schools on that chart, with their current state letter grades, are below.
| Level | School | Arizona grade, FY2025 | Address |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elementary | Cortina Elementary (Tigers) | A | 19680 S 188th St, Queen Creek, AZ 85142 |
| Middle | Sossaman Middle School (Spartans) | A | 18655 E Jacaranda Blvd, Queen Creek, AZ 85142 |
| High | Higley High School (Knights) | A | 4068 E Pecos Rd, Gilbert, AZ 85295 |
A feeder chart is not a zoning guarantee. It tells you where a school’s students generally go next; it does not establish that any particular address is assigned to any particular school, and boundaries move. Confirm the exact address with Higley Unified before you write an offer — our walkthrough of verifying a Queen Creek school boundary covers how.
Cortina Elementary has held an A letter grade from the Arizona Department of Education since 2017, including FY2025, and took an A+ School of Excellence award in 2014. One detail to confirm with the school rather than a website: the sources disagree on its grade span. The Department’s current school record reflects a preschool-through-grade-eight model, while the school’s own About page says kindergarten through sixth grade and the State Board’s FY2025 A–F file lists K–6. If you have a rising seventh grader, ask the office directly — the answer decides whether the next campus is the elementary or the middle school. For the wider set of options, see our rundown of Queen Creek elementary schools and our guide to the area’s middle schools.
6.What Homes in Cortina Actually Sold For
Redfin’s neighborhood page for Cortina, covering the three-month window ending August 2026, puts the median sale price at $641,690, down 5.6% year over year, on a median of $218 per square foot, down 16.8%, with a median time on market of 53 days against 59 a year earlier. Separately, Redfin counts eleven homes sold in the month of August 2026 against 22 a year earlier. That monthly count is not the sample behind the three-month median — Redfin does not publish the number of sales in the three-month window — but it is the clearest available signal of how thin this neighborhood’s transaction volume is. This is secondary market data, not a county record, and a neighborhood-level median moves hard on a handful of sales.
| Measure | Cortina — Redfin, Aug 2026 | Queen Creek town-wide — trailing 3 months, Sept 20, 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Median sale price | $641,690, three months ending Aug 2026 (down 5.6% year over year) | $636,000 (up 0.7% year over year) |
| Median price per square foot | $218, same window (down 16.8%) | $257 (down 2.7%) |
| Median days on market | 53, same window (59 a year earlier) | About 81 |
| Sale-to-list ratio | 97.7% | 98.0% |
| Share selling above list price | 0.0% | 11.5% |
| Share with a price drop | 42.9% | 42.1% |
Read that as two windows of the same provider rather than a controlled comparison — the town page is a rolling three months as scraped on September 20, 2026, while the neighborhood window closes in August. The pattern worth naming is that Cortina carries a higher median sale price on a lower price per square foot than the town. The tempting next step, dividing one by the other to get a home size, does not work: dividing a median price by a median price per square foot does not produce a median square footage, and Redfin publishes no median home size for either the neighborhood or the town. So the pattern is real and the explanation is not published. Nothing sold above list in Redfin’s August 2026 reading, and Redfin scores the neighborhood 53 out of 100 on its own competitiveness scale.
On lot size, the one source we have argues with itself. The same homes.com neighborhood page that reports a median lot of 6,969 square feet, about 0.16 acre, in its stat box describes Cortina as having quarter-acre lots in its prose. Individual parcels genuinely vary: one corner cul-de-sac lot in a listing record measures 15,390 square feet, about 0.35 acre. Treat 6,969 as the more precise of the two figures, and pull the actual parcel from the Maricopa County Assessor before you rely on either.
7.Getting Around: A Walk Score of 23 and a Recorded Aviation Easement
Redfin scores Cortina 23 out of 100 on Walk Score and labels it car-dependent. That is the honest headline for a mid-2000s East Valley subdivision: apart from the elementary school and the community’s own parks, everything is a drive. There is no transit fallback either — Valley Metro’s own July 2026 system map shows no fixed local bus route anywhere inside Queen Creek town limits, and the only “Queen Creek” on that map is the road name.
The fact almost nobody puts in front of buyers sits in the recorded declaration itself. It discloses that the property lies within Williams Gateway Airport Overflight Area 3 — Williams Gateway is now Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport — and that a recorded aviation easement runs with the land. That is a disclosure inside your own chain of title, not a rumor, and it is worth reading in full before you commit. The Town’s own About Queen Creek page puts Gateway Airport within about ten minutes of Queen Creek and Sky Harbor about 45 minutes away; those are the Town’s town-wide figures, not a measurement from any Cortina address, and neither accounts for peak-hour traffic.
Two things we could not source, and will not guess at. First, a verified mileage or drive time from Cortina to Queen Creek Marketplace: the two share the Rittenhouse Road corridor, and that is as far as the record goes, so measure it yourself from the specific address. Second, Power Road as a boundary of the community — it appears as the cross street on one individual listing, not in any Town document defining Cortina’s edges.
8.What to Verify Before You Make an Offer on a Cortina Home
Everything on this page is either a recorded document, a government record or a dated secondary figure — and several of the numbers a buyer needs are not published anywhere at all. This is the short list to work through with escrow and the district.
- The association’s current dues, in writing. The $275 to $300 a quarter here is listing-derived with an unclear as-of date. No Cortina-specific fee schedule is published that we could locate — the resale disclosure package is where the real number lives.
- The school assignment for the exact address, confirmed with Higley Unified — not from this page, not from a listing, and not from a feeder chart.
- Which declaration governs the parcel. Ask escrow for the recorded CC&R by document number. Cortina’s is Maricopa County Recorder document 2002-0048182; a Rosewood Grove parcel is governed by a different one entirely.
- Every fee at closing, itemized. Separate the $400-capped disclosure package under A.R.S. § 33-1806(D) from the separately authorized title transfer fee, which listing data puts at $1,500 and which that cap does not reach.
- Which taxing districts appear on the parcel’s bill. A line reading “Cortina CFD” exists in Maricopa County rate material, but it has not been confirmed to be this neighborhood, and Goodyear has a community facilities district of the same name. We do not assert that Cortina in Queen Creek has one. Confirm the parcel’s actual districts with the county before you budget.
- Whether the association still regulates the public streets. A.R.S. § 33-1818(B) required any planned community whose declaration predates 2015 — Cortina’s was recorded in 2002 — to hold a membership vote by June 30, 2025 to keep regulating publicly dedicated roadways. If the vote was not held, or did not pass, that authority expired by operation of law. Ask the manager what happened.
- The rental rules in the declaration. Arizona’s short-term-rental preemption, A.R.S. § 9-500.39(A), bars a city or town from prohibiting short-term rentals. It sits in Title 9 and does not preempt an association’s own contractual authority, so whatever the Cortina CC&R says about rentals is what binds you.
- The solar and sign rights you have regardless. A.R.S. § 33-1816 bars an association from prohibiting a solar energy device and allows only reasonable placement rules that do not prevent installation, impair the device’s functioning, restrict its use or adversely affect its cost or efficiency; § 33-1808 protects the American flag, political signs inside the statutory window, and for-sale signs at the industry-standard 18-by-24-inch size. If a seller tells you the HOA bans any of these, read the statute.