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Our method
How We Get Our Numbers
Every price, median and days-on-market figure on our neighborhood guides comes from the same source and follows the same rules. Here's exactly how we do it, so you know what the numbers can tell you and where they stop.
The short version
We use closed residential sales from the Flagstaff MLS. We look at the last 12 full months when a neighborhood has enough sales, and three or five years when it doesn't. We report medians instead of averages, and every figure is dated with the month the data runs through.
Where the data comes from
Our numbers come from the Flagstaff MLS, the shared database local agents use to list homes and record sales. We only count closed sales, meaning what homes actually sold for, not what sellers were asking.
We count residential sales: single-family homes, townhomes, condos, and manufactured, mobile and modular homes. Land and commercial property aren't included. Some sales never go through the MLS, like private sales between neighbors and some builder sales, so they won't show up in our counts.
How we draw neighborhood lines
Each guide's numbers are built on the MLS area that matches the neighborhood, like "170 - Boulder Pointe," or on its recorded subdivision names when the neighborhood is only part of a larger MLS area. Those lines don't always match what locals call a neighborhood, or where an HOA's boundary sits, so each guide tells you what it covers.
The time window
We use the last 12 full calendar months, ending with the most recent month that has closed. For example, a guide dated October 2026 uses sales from November 2025 through October 2026.
Flagstaff has a lot of small neighborhoods, and with only a handful of sales, one unusual home can swing the numbers. So when a neighborhood generally has fewer than ten sales in a year, we look at three years instead, and for a few of the smallest neighborhoods, five years. Every guide says which window it uses.
What each number means
| Number | What it means |
|---|---|
| Price range | The lowest and highest closed prices in the window. |
| Median sale price | The middle sale: half sold for more, half for less. We use medians instead of averages because one big sale can pull an average way up. |
| Middle half | Where most homes landed, from the 25th to the 75th percentile, rounded to the nearest $1,000. We skip it when there are only a few sales. |
| Typical size, year built and lot size | The medians of the homes that sold, so you get a feel for what a normal sale looks like. |
| Days on market | The median of the MLS days-on-market count for each sale. We leave out sales recorded with zero days, which are usually homes entered into the MLS after they had already sold. |
| Home type splits | When a neighborhood has a mix of houses, townhomes, condos or manufactured homes, we report them separately, because a condo and a house down the street aren't comparable. |
The neighborhoods by budget page
On our neighborhoods by budget page, each neighborhood sits in the price range that matches its median sale price over the last 12 months. Where fewer than five homes sold in a year, we use three years of sales, and five years for a few of the smallest neighborhoods. Each card says which window it uses. Neighborhoods with a real mix of home types can show up in two ranges.
Everything else on the guides
Rules, fees and hazard notes come from primary sources, like the City of Flagstaff, Coconino County, Arizona statutes and an HOA's own published documents. When a fact can change, like a short-term rental rule or an HOA fee, we note the month we checked it.
You won't find school rankings or descriptions of who lives in a neighborhood on our guides. We describe homes, land, rules and the market, and leave the rest to you. If schools are part of your search, the school district's own boundary lookup is the right source.
What these numbers can't tell you
- They describe what has sold, not what a specific home is worth today. Condition, updates, views, lot and timing all move the price of an individual home.
- Small samples move around. In a neighborhood with ten sales a year, one or two unusual homes can change the median noticeably from one month to the next.
- They only include sales that went through the MLS.
For a specific home, we pull the comparable sales for that property and walk you through them. That's a different job than a neighborhood snapshot, and it's the one that matters when you're pricing a home or writing an offer.
How often we update
We refresh the guides as new monthly data comes in, and every figure says the month it runs through. Our monthly Flagstaff market report uses Flagstaff MLS market statistics for residential sales in the city of Flagstaff, compared with the same month a year earlier.
Want the numbers for your street?
We're happy to pull the sales behind any neighborhood, or run the comparables on a specific home.