1.Turn the custom-home search into a parcel document check
The attraction of a custom-home community is the ability to evaluate a particular lot and house. That also makes community averages less useful. The earlier parcel and association research in this guide remains dated September 2026. For a purchase today, assemble a packet for the exact parcel rather than treating those samples as a current quote for your property.
| Decision | Document to request | Useful question |
|---|---|---|
| Lot and phase | Assessor record, recorded plat and title commitment | Which tract, easement or restriction applies to this parcel? |
| Dues and upcoming costs | Current resale disclosure and assessment statement | What is due now, what changes next year, and what is included? |
| Remodeling or a new structure | Current architectural guidelines and review process | Which drawings, approvals and permits would this specific project need? |
| School and services | District address result and provider confirmation | Who serves this address, rather than this community name? |
The Arizona buyer advisory explains why a listing, a seller disclosure, association governing documents and professional inspections answer different questions. Keep that distinction in your file. A listing can introduce the property, but the recorded restrictions and the current association response determine what you must investigate about the proposed use.
For a vacant lot, draw the project you actually want before asking about approvals: footprint, driveway, outdoor storage, accessory structure and utility connections. Then ask the Town and the association separately which parts require review. A verbal assurance that a lot is custom does not resolve buildability, an easement or an architectural restriction.
For a resale, ask for the assessment statement and the architectural status of existing work before using the house as the model for your own future changes. Keep every reply tied to the parcel and dated. Fees in earlier listings or on an old association page are questions to resolve, not a budget guarantee.
This is a document workflow, not a legal interpretation of a particular declaration. If two documents disagree or an intended use is essential to the purchase, have your transaction adviser obtain the current governing answer before you rely on it.
2.What The Pecans Actually Is, and Where It Sits
The Pecans Homeowners Association Inc. governs a gated subdivision with a 24-hour guardhouse, entered from Chandler Heights Road - the gate is described on the association’s own community-information page. The community sits south of the Chandler Heights and Ellsworth intersection, a location confirmed by local reporting on a July 2020 rezoning of 190 acres at that corner. Every sampled parcel sits in Maricopa County, inside Town of Queen Creek jurisdiction - the pairing that decides which county offices answer your questions and which tax area the Assessor prints on the parcel. The Assessor’s record for the sampled parcel places the community in Section 28, Township 2S, Range 7E.
It is not one plat. The county recorder holds four separate maps for the community, and the lot dimensions and recorded easements that govern a specific home are on the phase map that home sits on, not on anything filed under the community name. So ask for the recorded documents for that phase rather than a generic community packet - and keep that in mind when you compare The Pecans with a builder-developed community such as Legado, where a builder’s collections set the floor plans and the dues.
| Platted phase | Maricopa County Recorder plat number | Year the plat was recorded |
|---|---|---|
| Pecans Phase 1 Replat | MCR 66328 | 2003 |
| Pecans Phase 2 | MCR 80133 | 2005 |
| Pecans Phase 3 | MCR 80134 | 2005 |
| Pecans Phase 4 | MCR 116036 | 2013 |
Two name traps. “Queen Creek Pecans Unit 1” (MCR 15104) is a different, older, mixed-use plat that shares the word Pecans and contains office, commercial and public-facility parcels - it is not part of this gated community. And a claim that The Pecans sits along Rittenhouse Road turns up on secondary sites but could not be corroborated: the Assessor’s own addresses for the four phases are on Pecan Lane, Via de Palmas, Via de Arboles, Sunset Court and Sunset Drive.
The pecan grove: what is documented and what is not
The association’s own site says the community is “nestled within a 30-year-old pecan grove” and was designed to “emulate traditional estate communities.” That phrase is the entire documented trace of the orchard history: no dated news article, Town history page, named farm or planting date supports it, and every other version of the story online traces back to unsourced marketing copy. Treat the grove as the association’s description of its setting, not as verified agricultural history.
The September 2023 aerial shows part of The Pecans around its tree-lined estate streets. Homes, pools and open lots are visible, but the photograph cannot establish current listings, lot boundaries, shared amenities or today’s access through private gates. Use the exact phase plat and property documents for those questions. The photograph does not refresh the dated dues, sales, tax or school research below.
3.How Many Homes Are in The Pecans? The 258 Problem
Nearly every page that describes The Pecans says 258 custom estate homes. That number appears nowhere on the Maricopa County Assessor’s site, nowhere in the county recorder’s plat records, and nowhere on the association’s own website. It is marketing copy that has been copied from site to site.
Counting the Assessor’s own subdivision exports for the four phases, deduplicated by parcel number, gives a different answer: 159 built homes and 19 platted-but-vacant residential lots, or 178 residential lots in all. A further 10 Phase 3 records are associated-parcel ties - suffixed slivers with no street address and a few thousand dollars of value, split among abutting owners rather than buildable homesites - which takes the residential-type total to 188. Add the 96 HOA common-area tracts that can never hold a house and the four phases hold 284 parcels: 178 + 96 + 10 = 284, with no gap and no double-count.
| Source | Figure | What it is actually counting |
|---|---|---|
| Marketing and aggregator sites | 258 custom estate homes | No primary source; not on the Assessor, the Recorder or the HOA’s site |
| Maricopa County Assessor, 4 phases | 178 residential lots | 159 built + 19 platted but vacant; 188 if the 10 associated-parcel ties are counted |
| Maricopa County Assessor, all parcels | 284 parcels | Adds the 96 HOA common-area tracts that can never hold a house |
| The Pecans HOA’s own website | No count published | The association does not state a home or lot total publicly |
That 284 is our own count of the Assessor’s four subdivision exports as of September 2026, deduplicated by parcel number, and it reconciles exactly: 178 residential lots + 96 common-area tracts + 10 associated-parcel ties. Deduplicating is the whole trick - the Phase 2 export header reads 78 while the phase holds 70 unique parcels, because the export repeats rows. If an exact count matters to your decision - for a dues-per-door calculation, say - ask the management company for the number of assessed lots in writing.
4.Lot Sizes, Build Years and What “Custom” Means Here
Sampled parcels run 31,052 to 40,176 square feet, or about 0.71 to 0.92 acre, and the samples come from all four phases, so the band is not one corner of the community. A listed home on Via de Palmas sits on 0.75 acre, consistent with that range. The county publishes square footage lot by lot, so confirm the figure for the specific parcel on the Assessor’s site. For a builder-built alternative, see our guide to Ellsworth Ranch, where three Taylor Morrison collections all list the same $184 monthly dues.
Sampled construction years are 2013, 2013, 2016 and 2022 across different phases - nearly a decade of phase-by-phase building rather than a single mass-built delivery, which is what “custom” means here in practice: a gradual build-out under one rulebook rather than a builder’s production run. That rulebook is the association’s Design Review Committee, whose approval is required for exterior modifications. Ask for the current design guidelines before you plan a color change, a casita, a shop building or a front-yard redesign.
Can you still build here?
Not from a developer. The declarant entity, Pecans of Queen Creek LLC, recorded its common-area deed on February 14, 2017 and today holds one nominal 179-square-foot, $500 sliver at the entrance - no vacant homesite inventory at all, which points to a community that is essentially built out. The 19 platted-but-vacant lots that remain are privately held - individuals, trusts and at least one investment company, Golden Pecan Investments LLC, on the Assessor’s export - so acquiring one is a private resale, not a builder release. If you want a builder’s lot inventory and a warranty, our guide to Queen Creek home builders is the better starting point.
A platted lot is not automatically a buildable lot. Before you buy dirt here, confirm with Town of Queen Creek Development Services what utilities actually reach the parcel, what the current setbacks and height limits are, and whether any of the four phases carries plat-specific conditions - then confirm the Design Review Committee’s submittal requirements with the association separately.
5.What Are the HOA Dues at The Pecans, and What Do They Cover?
The association’s own community-information page states dues of $324.00 a month, due on the first - but labels the figure “for 2023”, and no more recent number is published anywhere we could find. Three separate home listings scraped on September 20, 2026 show $192, $265 and $324 a month. Those three are not confirmations of each other and none of them confirms the association’s figure; they are three listings, each accurate only to itself on that date. A spread like that is plausible where lot types differ, but the association does not publish a fee schedule that would explain it. Treat the spread as a question to ask, not a menu.
What the dues buy is the other half of that question, and the association does not answer it publicly. The only amenities on its own pages are the gated entry with a 24-hour guardhouse and resident gate remotes at $30 each. The splash pad, park, putting green, rose garden, walking and biking trails, playgrounds, basketball courts and multipurpose fields that appear in community-directory marketing are not on the association’s pages, and we could not confirm any of them. Ask the management company which exist, who maintains them and whether the dues cover them.
| Charge | Amount | Source and date |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly assessment | $324.00, due the 1st | The Pecans HOA site - figure labeled “for 2023” |
| Assessment seen in listings | $192, $265 and $324 / month | Three separate listings, per listings scraped Sept. 20, 2026 |
| Late fee | $15 after the 15th | The Pecans HOA site, scraped Sept. 20, 2026 |
| Demand fee | $60 after the 30th | The Pecans HOA site, scraped Sept. 20, 2026 |
| Lien | After 60 days | The Pecans HOA site, scraped Sept. 20, 2026 |
| Gate remote | $30 each | The Pecans HOA site, scraped Sept. 20, 2026 |
| What the dues include | Not published | Association’s financial pages sit behind a resident login |
Arizona planned-community rules place limits on assessments and transaction-service fees. A.R.S. 33-1803(A) generally requires majority member approval for a regular assessment increase of more than 20% over the prior fiscal year; community documents may set a lower limit. Late-charge rules allow longer grace periods in community documents and require an overdue notice before charges are imposed. A.R.S. 33-1806, subsection D, sets an aggregate $400 limit for the covered resale disclosure, lien estoppel and transfer-related services. It also permits up to $100 for rush services required within 72 hours and up to $50 for a document update after 30 days. Legal references checked October 2, 2026.
Ask for an itemized closing statement for the specific parcel. A.R.S. 33-1806, subsection A(4)(e), requires disclosure of the amount and purpose of any declaration-authorized title transfer or similar fee. A fee name or a figure in a listing does not establish whether a charge is lawful or how a statutory cap applies. Have the title company and, if needed, an Arizona attorney review each charge against the recorded declaration and the current statute before escrow closes.
| Community | Monthly dues | Where the figure comes from |
|---|---|---|
| The Pecans | $192, $265, $324 | Per listings (three separate listings); the association’s own site states $324, labeled “for 2023” |
| Madera | $93 - $110 | Per builder community pages (Lennar $93; Ashton Woods $110), by product line |
| Meridian | $102 | Per listings - two separate listings agree |
| Legado | $130 - $149 | Per builder collection pages (Taylor Morrison Capstone $130; Summit $149) |
| Ellsworth Ranch | $184 | Per builder collection pages - three Taylor Morrison collections agree |
| Ironwood Crossing | $225 | Association’s own 2026 rate letter: $158.58 operations + $66.42 sewer |
| Encanterra | $1,800.49 per quarter | Per one listing; layered master, village and club structure |
Two caveats on that table. Only the Ironwood Crossing figure comes from an association’s own published schedule, and only it states what the money buys; the rest are listing- and builder-page derived, so each is accurate to that page on that date, not to the association’s books. And dues inside one named community in this town routinely vary two to four times over by phase or parcel. Our breakdown of Queen Creek HOA fees carries the full community-by-community table with the sourcing behind each figure.
6.What Do Homes in The Pecans Sell For, and What Are the Taxes?
The Assessor’s comparable-sales tables carry four recorded sales for parcels in the community: $1,375,000 (August 2025), $1,900,000 (January 2026), $2,275,000 (April 2026) and $4,200,000 (April 2025). Four transactions are a data point, not a market - they tell you the order of magnitude and nothing about the median. For town-wide context, Redfin put the Queen Creek median sale price at $636,000 on a trailing three-month basis as of September 20, 2026, which is a different kind of home entirely.
Secondary sources do not agree with those recorded sales. One community-directory site advertises an asking range of “mid $800,000s to $1.9 million”, and a single Zillow page shows a $2,782,800 Zestimate (range $2.50M-$3.12M) for a five-bedroom, 7,075-square-foot home on 0.75 acre built in 2013. The first is marketing copy, the second is an algorithmic estimate rather than a sale, and neither is a substitute for a current comparative market analysis on the specific parcel.
A worked property-tax example: the Maricopa side, tax year 2026
The Pecans sits in Maricopa County, so Maricopa County’s 2026 rate table applies. Arizona assesses an owner-occupied home at 10 percent of its Limited Property Value, and in the ordinary case that limited value is the prior year’s value plus 5 percent, limited by full cash value, under A.R.S. 42-13301. That limits valuation growth, not the final bill, and A.R.S. 42-13302 sets a different value in specified cases, such as construction worth at least 15 percent of full cash value, a change of use or a parcel split. The Town of Queen Creek’s primary rate is $1.4648 per $100 of assessed value for tax year 2026 - the Council lowered it from $1.55 in June 2026, and the Town’s release rounds the new rate to $1.46. A home here carrying an LPV of $1,000,000 is assessed at $100,000, or 1,000 units of $100, so the Town’s primary portion works out to roughly $1,465 a year.
The Town’s slice is the small one. For tax year 2026 Maricopa County publishes a combined rate for its Queen Creek + Queen Creek Unified #95 tax area (code 952500) of 7.0790 primary plus 2.6226 secondary per $100 of assessed value; the secondary rate bundles the county’s flood control, library, fire district assistance, water conservation and health care district levies with the community college and school district secondary rates; the Town’s own secondary rate is zero. The same table prints 5.5662 as an approximate residential primary rate, but that column is not a final rate for a given parcel: A.R.S. 15-972(D) caps ordinary state school-tax aid at $600 a parcel, apart from its cooperative provision, so applying 5.5662 to a higher-value home can overstate the credit. Check which tax area the Assessor prints on the parcel before applying either. This is an illustration, not tax advice and not a bill: the Assessor’s parcel record and the Treasurer’s statement govern a specific home, and a CPA is the place for a question about your own situation. The mechanics and the Pinal-side differences are in our property tax explainer.
One dated item to watch: the Town posted a Notice of Intent on September 17, 2026 for a proposed Water Resource Fee that would replace the CAGRD assessment currently carried on about 89 percent of customers’ property tax bills. The proposed Year 1 rate is $3.07 per 1,000 gallons, the public hearing is set for November 18, 2026, and the Town says the first bills carrying the fee would arrive in March 2027 if it is adopted. It is proposed, not adopted.
7.Which Schools Serve The Pecans?
Every sampled Assessor parcel record for the community lists Queen Creek Unified School District #95 as the school district. That is the district; it is not a school assignment. Attendance boundaries are set by address and they move as the district opens campuses, so no website - including this one - can tell you which elementary, junior high or high school a specific Pecans address feeds into today.
The only correct answer is the district’s own address lookup. Run the exact street address through the QCUSD school locator and, if the result matters to your offer, confirm it in writing with the district office before your inspection period ends. Open enrollment into a different QCUSD campus is a separate application through the district, granted only where the requested school has space, and QCUSD does not provide transportation for a student enrolled outside their home boundary.
For context on the district itself: in the Arizona State Board of Education’s FY2025 (2024-25) A-F file, QCUSD carried an A letter grade as a district across 15 rated schools - 10 A, 4 B and 1 C. Charter options sit close by, including American Leadership Academy’s Queen Creek K-6 campus at 19843 E. Chandler Heights Road, the same road as the community entrance, and its 7-12 campus on South Hawes Road. ALA Queen Creek carries an A in that same file, but that is a single combined K-12 entity grade covering both campuses, not a separate grade for either one. Arizona charters must run a lottery when applications exceed capacity (A.R.S. § 15-184). Our Queen Creek schools guide covers the district, the charters and the grades in full.
8.The Custom-Lot Buyer Checklist: What to Verify Before an Offer
A custom home on a three-quarter-acre lot in a four-plat, design-reviewed community has more moving parts than a production home in a single-plat subdivision. Work through this list with your own agent, escrow officer and, where it matters, a real-estate attorney.
- Pull the parcel yourself on the Maricopa County Assessor. Confirm the lot square footage, the tax year’s Limited Property Value, the legal description and which of the four recorded plats the parcel sits on.
- Get the CC&Rs for that specific plat, not a generic community packet. Phase 1 Replat, Phase 2, Phase 3 and Phase 4 are separately recorded maps and can carry different conditions.
- Ask the management company (AAM, LLC) for the current assessment in writing. The association’s published $324 is labeled “for 2023” and its financial pages sit behind a resident login. Ask what the dues include, what the reserve study says, and whether any special assessment is pending.
- Get all resale disclosure, transfer and other closing charges as separate line items. Ask the title company to verify each charge against the recorded declaration and A.R.S. 33-1806.
- Get the contact details from the association itself, not from a listing. Third-party listings and the association’s own contacts page carry different phone numbers for the community’s management, and we are not publishing either as the number to call. Take the current manager, phone number and email from the association’s own contacts page and confirm there before you send anything in writing.
- Get the Design Review Committee package before you plan any exterior work - paint, roof, casita, shop, pool, driveway or landscape. DRC approval is required for exterior modifications, and its timelines belong in your contract dates.
- Verify schools by address, not by community name. Run the address through the district locator and confirm with QCUSD; our guide to verifying school boundaries walks through what to screenshot and keep.
- For a vacant lot, confirm buildability with the Town before you remove contingencies: utilities at the parcel, current setbacks and height limits, permit timelines, and any plat-specific conditions on that phase.
- Budget the holding costs honestly: dues at the high end of the observed range, the Town’s $1.4648 per $100 primary rate plus the county, school and other levies, and the water and solid-waste changes the Town has noticed for a November 18, 2026 hearing.