By Scott Gaertner
Lifestyle Contributor
Why I Am Involved With This Paper
My name is Scott Gaertner and I have specialized in the Scottsdale North Real Estate market for longer than I care to admit, but I truly love it. I have always felt that the area has been a bit ignored or overlooked…a hidden jewel in the desert that has never gotten it’s full due. It doesn’t even have its own newspaper! I thought it was time to end this neglect, so I found the best small-town newspaper company in the valley and asked them to consider creating a hyper-local paper exclusively for these communities that I love so much. Welcome to the first edition!
Why I love the Scottsdale North Lifestyle
I discovered the country club lifestyle back in the mid 1980’s when a builder I was working for gave me a membership to a country club as an enticement to take over sales at a struggling community. I had never been around a community focused on lifestyle and sports before, and being an avid golfer and tennis player, I felt like a kid in a candy store. I was immediately hooked because I never felt like I was working! All I was doing was telling people who enjoyed the same things I did about this amazing lifestyle I had discovered. I was just enrolling new friends to come enjoy it with me!
Once I found this secret that developers would pay me to do what I loved doing, I decided to take it up a notch. My next job was selling at the best country club available in the late 1980’s – Desert Mountain. They had three golf courses then! This is when my love affair with Scottsdale North began.
Eventually I decided it was too limiting to represent the lifestyle of just one country club. Since all I wanted to do was to help buyers find their lifestyle niche, I started Scottsdale’s first real estate company that solely represented real estate buyers. While running that company, I had heard about plans for a new lifestyle community called Terravita that was going to be the first “affordable” lifestyle community in Scottsdale. When I discovered the actual details of the community, I quit my day job at the buyer’s agency and went to work selling homes for Del Webb, the developer of Terravita. It immediately became the most successful community in the United States. It was a six to ten-year project that sold out in just 3.5 years. On six occasions, people camped out in our parking lot to earn the privilege of buying a home in one of the new phases. One campout lasted 10 days!
Shortly after Terravita sold out, I was approached by Pulte Homes who had plans to build a community modeled after Terravita. It was located on an extraordinary piece of land right across the street, and it was called Winfield. Winfield was Pulte’s first attempt at creating this type of lifestyle community, and they needed help. It would be smaller and it wouldn’t have golf, but it would have all the other lifestyle components, and the land was staggeringly beautiful with its own mountain preserve. How could I say no?!
Since leaving Winfield in 2001, I have been helping buyers and sellers find their lifestyle niche in Scottsdale North. Recently I have consulted with and become the preferred broker for Shea Homes at another incredible community modeled after Terravita, Trilogy at Verde River. Shea Homes is currently the best builder in this lifestyle space and I loved partnering with them, but not as an employee.
Today I have a team called The Scott Gaertner Group. We are dedicated to helping people find their dream home in a community that best fits their lifestyle. I am hopeful that this newspaper will help more people recognize that Scottsdale North is the place to be!
