Living in Sedona, AZ

Yavapai / Coconino Counties

Sedona is genuinely, honestly not a conventional full-time relocation market the way most other Tier A cities in this dataset are, and this file discloses that directly. Roughly 26% of Sedona's homes are not occupied by full-time residents, and licensed short-term rentals alone made up 16.8%-20% of the single-family housing stock as of the sources reviewed -- a real, structural fact about who actually lives here and how the local housing market functions. What justifies Sedona's Tier A placement despite a tiny full-time population (roughly 9,700-10,800 depending on source) is a real, massive, disproportionate economic and search-identity footprint: an estimated 3.2-3.5 million visitors a year, spending roughly $750 each on average, fueling a tourism industry cited at $1 billion, supporting more than 10,000 jobs and over $240 million in wages across more than 1,000 small businesses -- visitors generate 77% of the city's own sales and bed tax revenue. Sedona's identity centers on its red-rock buttes and canyons and a genuine, named 'vortex'/wellness-tourism draw layered onto that scenery, distinct from a generic 'pretty mountain town' claim. Housing runs among the most expensive of any place built in this dataset relative to population -- sources disclose a real spread from roughly $1.1M to $1.36M for the citywide median, with condos running far cheaper (~$570K) than single-family homes (~$1.695M) -- consistent with a market shaped heavily by second-home, investment, and lifestyle buyers rather than median-income full-time movers; notably, median household income ($73,738) actually runs BELOW the national median despite these extreme home prices, a real tension worth naming rather than smoothing over. Sedona genuinely straddles the Coconino/Yavapai county line, a real administrative split. On hazards, Sedona carries real, specific, documented wildfire history: the 2014 Slide Fire in Oak Creek Canyon burned more than 21,000 acres -- the largest fire in Coconino National Forest history at the time -- and forced evacuation of 326 homes and businesses; Sedona is also named specifically in current reporting on northern Arizona's wildfire-insurance non-renewal pattern (see arizona.js), facing real premium increases and non-renewals alongside Flagstaff and Prescott in this same batch. Crime data, by contrast, reads favorably: both violent and property crime rates run 33-38% below national averages. The local school district (Sedona-Oak Creek Unified, C+ Niche grade, 693 students) is genuinely small and modestly rated, consistent with how few families with school-age children actually relocate here full-time.

Explore Sedona in depth

• Moving to Sedona: Pros, Cons & What to Know
• Cost of Living in Sedona
• Housing Market in Sedona
• Buying a Home in Sedona
• Renting in Sedona
• Taxes in Sedona
• Homeowners Insurance & Natural Hazard Costs in Sedona
• Climate & Weather in Sedona
• Jobs & Economy in Sedona
• Schools in Sedona
• Crime & Safety in Sedona
• Healthcare in Sedona
• Traffic & Transportation in Sedona
• Best Areas to Live in Sedona
• Pros and Cons of Living in Sedona
• Retiring in Sedona
• Who Should / Shouldn’t Move to Sedona

Housing

Taxes

The tradeoffs

Who this fits

Best for: Retirees, luxury/second-home buyers, and outdoor-recreation or wellness-tourism-minded movers who specifically want red-rock scenery and are financially positioned for Sedona's real, extreme housing costs -- not a typical median-income, full-time family relocation market.

Maybe not for you if: Families prioritizing a strong, larger school district, buyers on a median income who need housing costs to track local wages (Sedona's own median household income runs below the national median despite its extreme home prices), and anyone specifically wanting a conventional, primarily-full-time-resident community rather than one where roughly a quarter of homes serve tourism/second-home use should weigh those realities carefully before relocating.