Picture two homes in McCormick Ranch, both listed at $950,000, both three bedrooms, both a few blocks from a lake. The listing sheets look nearly identical. The monthly HOA line does not. One buyer is looking at roughly $17 a month. The other is looking at $650 or more. Nothing on either listing explains why, because the fee that actually matters here rarely makes it into the marketing copy.
That gap is not a data entry error. It is a structural feature of how McCormick Ranch is governed, and it is the single most common blind spot for buyers who assume "McCormick Ranch HOA" refers to one association with one set of rules and one due.
The Number That Doesn't Show Up on the Listing Sheet
McCormick Ranch operates under two layers of homeowners association, stacked on top of each other, with almost no overlap in what they cover.
The first layer is the McCormick Ranch Property Owners' Association, known to residents as MRPOA. Every property in the master plan belongs to it. For 2026, the residential assessment is a flat $265 a year, with statements mailed in early January and payment due in mid-February. That fee is easy to find because MRPOA publishes it directly and every closing disclosure in the community references it.
The second layer is different for every buyer, because it depends on which of McCormick Ranch's roughly 67 subdivisions the home sits in. Each subdivision runs its own homeowners association, with its own management company, its own budget, its own architectural rules, and its own due. MRPOA does not set these fees, does not standardize them, and does not list them anywhere a buyer would naturally look during a portal search. A buyer has to ask for them by name.
What $265 a Year Actually Buys You
It helps to know exactly what MRPOA's fee covers, because the scope is narrower than most buyers assume. MRPOA enforces the community-wide CC&Rs, maintains common areas, and runs an annual weed control program across both turf and desert landscaping in shared spaces and the City of Scottsdale medians that run through the Ranch. The association also maintains more than 2,500 established trees planted decades ago as part of the original master plan, and it worked from a Landscape Master Plan approved by the City of Scottsdale in 2016 to guide parkway median improvements between Scottsdale Road and Hayden Road.
What MRPOA does not do is govern your specific street, your specific pool, your specific gate, or your specific paint palette. That authority sits entirely with your subdivision's own association. If you want to rent your home short term, repaint your front door, or park a trailer in your driveway, the answer lives in a document MRPOA has never seen and has no jurisdiction over.
The 67 Different Answers to "What's the HOA?"
MRPOA itself maintains a public directory of the management companies running each subdivision. It includes names like Artesia, managed by Artesia Management Co, Belcara, also known as Monaco, managed by Brown Property Management, Casabella, managed by Associated Property Management, Casa Serena, also known as La Mariposa I, which is self-managed, Camello Vista, managed by Tri-City Property Management, and Casa Dia Festivo, managed by Kinney Management. That is six names out of dozens, and each one operates on its own schedule with its own board.
The dues attached to those names span a wide range. A subdivision like Paseo Village runs closer to $200 a year, similar in scale to MRPOA's own master fee. A guard-gated enclave like Las Palomas runs $650 a month or more, because that fee is funding a private gate, a private guard staff, and amenities MRPOA never touches. Sandpiper, a 24-hour guard-gated community inside the Ranch, offers residents access to eight pools as part of its own subdivision amenities, a level of infrastructure that a $265 annual master fee was never designed to fund.
Price alone does not predict which side of that gap a home falls on. A three-bedroom single-family home in a subdivision like Heritage Terrace or Tierra Feliz can land anywhere from roughly $850,000 to $1.25 million depending on updates and lot orientation, while a patio home in Meridian or La Mariposa Villas can start lower, in the $725,000 to $950,000 range. Two homes at similar price points in different subdivisions can carry due structures that are not remotely comparable, and the only way to know before writing an offer is to ask which of the 67 you are actually buying into.
Why the Gap Exists
The reason this structure exists is not an oversight. It is what happens when one governing body is responsible for shared infrastructure across an entire master plan, while another layer is responsible for hyper-local amenities that only a fraction of residents actually use.
MRPOA's incentive is to keep its fee low and broad, because every property owner in the Ranch pays into it regardless of whether they live on a lake, behind a guard gate, or on a plain interior street. Raising that fee to fund a private pool complex in one subdivision would mean charging residents in a dozen other subdivisions for something they never touch. So MRPOA stays narrow by design, covering common ground, medians, and community-wide CC&R enforcement, and nothing more.
The subdivisions, in turn, have every incentive to price their own dues around whatever amenity load they carry. A subdivision with a guard gate and a private pool has real, ongoing costs that only its own residents benefit from, so its association charges accordingly. A subdivision with no shared amenities beyond basic landscaping charges next to nothing beyond its MRPOA obligation.
The result is a master-planned community whose name suggests one governance structure but whose fee reality is closer to 68 separate small associations, each pricing independently, each publishing its own documents, and none of them required to make that pricing visible anywhere a portal search would surface it.
What to Actually Request Before You Write an Offer
Because the sub-HOA layer is where the real financial and behavioral rules live, the due diligence that matters happens at the subdivision level, not the master community level. Before writing an offer in McCormick Ranch, it is worth requesting:
- The specific subdivision's current HOA budget and reserve study, not just the master MRPOA assessment notice
- The subdivision's governing documents and any recorded CC&R amendments specific to that association
- Written confirmation of the subdivision's short-term rental bylaw, since restrictions vary association to association and are not standardized across the Ranch
- The resale disclosure packet the subdivision's management company issues, which typically outlines pending special assessments, litigation, and rule changes
- Contact information for the specific management company handling that subdivision, since MRPOA's own office cannot answer questions about a sub-HOA's finances or rules
A buyer who only reviews the $265 MRPOA statement has confirmed the cheaper, more visible half of the obligation and skipped the half that actually varies.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does MRPOA have access to my subdivision's HOA documents? No. MRPOA governs common areas and community-wide CC&Rs across the master plan. Each subdivision's financials, rules, and disclosure packets are held by that subdivision's own management company, not by MRPOA.
If a listing doesn't mention a sub-HOA fee, does that mean there isn't one? Not necessarily. A listing may reference only the MRPOA assessment because that figure is standardized and easy to cite. The subdivision-level due still applies and needs to be confirmed separately with that subdivision's management company before the fee shows up anywhere official.
If you are comparing homes across McCormick Ranch's 67 subdivisions and want the sub-HOA picture before you write an offer, not after, that is exactly the kind of groundwork Preston Matchett does before a client ever sees a listing. Schedule a free consultation and get the full governance and fee picture for the specific subdivision you are considering, not just the number on the master community's assessment notice.
