Moving to Tucson, Arizona, here’s the real stuff you need to know before moving to Tucson, Arizona.

Hello, my name’s Tyler Ford, Tucson, Arizona with EXP Realty and welcome to this of Living in Tucson, your Tucson real estate connection. And in this episode, I’m going to go over five reasons you may not want to move to Tucson. 

Living in Tucson most of my life, there’s always five common things that people do not like about Tucson, so I’m going to go over those five things and I’m going to throw in a bonus one at the end and talk about some things that you may or may not like about Tucson.

#1 REASON NOT TO MOVE TO TUCSON… IT GETS HOT

Reason number one, I’m going to start with the obvious, is that it gets hot in Tucson. It gets hot in Southern Arizona and it’s the number one complaint about living in Tucson and living in Arizona is just dealing with the heat and the extreme heat usually is from June all the way through mid-September, where the average temperature is going to be over 100 degrees and it can get up to 110, maybe even 115 degrees, so super, super hot, but the one benefit to that is that Arizona doesn’t do daylight savings time. So because of the heat, we Tucsonans utilize the morning hours to get out and do things.

It gets light at about 4:45, 5:00 in the summer months and the mornings are beautiful, so we utilize the mornings in order to deal with the heat to get out, so that’s also a negative too if you like to get your workouts done and things like that, you got to adjust your clock and you’re not sleeping in, in Tucson in the summertime if you want to get things done in the morning just because otherwise, if you wait and by 8:00, 9:00, it’s starting to get super-hot. So the number one reason is the heat and as a result, you got to get up early in order to get things done to avoid the extreme heat.

#2 REASON NOT TO MOVE TO TUCSON… TUCSON’S ECONOMY

The second reason you might not want to move to Tucson is Tucson’s economy. Tucson does not have a lot of high paying jobs. Although that’s slowly starting to change, it’s been a big complaint over the years is just the big companies aren’t here like they are in Phoenix, where Phoenix has a lot more opportunity and a lot more high paying jobs. And especially over the last couple years as home values have appreciated double digits year over year, the income level and jobs in Tucson are having a tough time keeping up with the appreciation rates here in Tucson, so one thing to consider. If you’re able to work remotely, that’s a whole other story, but the actual jobs in Tucson and the economy, it’s one of the things that may not allow you to come to Tucson is the income that you can make.

#3 REASON NOT TO MOVE TO TUCSON… TUCSON’S FREEWAY AND ROADS

The third reason you might not want to come to Tucson is our freeways and roads. Tucson did a very, very poor job early on to anticipate the growth of Tucson to put in roads and a freeway system that would allow people to travel through Tucson quickly and easily. So to get through Tucson, whether you’re going from one end of the town to the next, east to west, north to south, there’s no freeway system that’s going to get you through town quickly. You’ve got to deal with a lot of stoplights and a lot of traffic. And again, Tucson did a poor job just anticipating growth. There is I-10 that goes on the south side and around Tucson.

So if you’re driving through Tucson, it’s not a big deal because you’re just going to stay on the freeway way, but getting in and around Tucson can be somewhat difficult. Especially in the winter months when you got the winter visitors here and our population goes up, driving around town can be a real pain. Also, the roads are not all that great. The summer heat takes a toll on our roads and some of the roads are in rough shape, so that’s the third reason you might not want to move to Tucson.

#4 REASON NOT TO MOVE TO TUCSON… AIR TRAVEL

The fourth reason you might not want to move to Tucson is that if you do a lot of traveling, whether pleasure or work, flying out of Tucson, you’re not going to get a lot of direct flights, so you’re going to have to do some connection typically to get to where you want to go and that’s been another huge complaint over the years. Although, getting in and out of the Tucson airport compared to some other airports is easy relative to your big airports across the country. The downside is you’re going to have to take some connecting flights to get to where you want to go.

#5 REASON NOT TO MOVE TO TUCSON… HOMELESS POPULATIONS

Reason number five, and this reason’s not to judge, but it’s just the reality of Tucson, and that is the transient population has gotten out of hand. And growing up in Tucson, it used to be just isolated to the downtown area and now it seems that transient population, the homeless population, is spread out all throughout Tucson. And in various places, there’s some big homeless camps. So again, it’s the reality of Tucson and a lot of other places across the country. But over the last 10 years, it seems like the homeless, transient population has really gotten out of hand.

#6 BONSUS REASON NOT TO MOVE TO TUCSON… WILDCAT BASKETBALL

Bonus reason number six and that is be prepared. If you’re not a U of A Wildcat basketball fan, you’re going to get sick of hearing Tucson talk about their U of A Wildcat basketball team from November into March Madness. 

So again, Tucson is crazy about their Wildcat basketball and so just preparing you, if you’re coming to Tucson, get ready to be crazy about the Wildcats.