You found the comp. Same floor plan, four streets over, closed eight weeks ago. You go looking for what it actually sold for, and one of two things happens: the price is simply not there, or it is a number so far off that nobody would have paid it.
Neither is a glitch. Arizona records sale prices on one specific form, filed alongside the deed, and state law exempts a long list of transfers from filing it at all. Once you know which form it is and which transfers skip it, both of those confusing results stop being mysteries and start being information.
This is the part of pricing a home that gets handled quietly by agents and appraisers and almost never explained to the person whose money is involved. It is worth understanding, whether you are pricing a West Valley home to sell or deciding what to offer on one.
The price is not in the deed
A deed transfers title. In Arizona it does not, as a rule, announce what was paid. The price lives on a separate document called the affidavit of property value, and the requirement comes from Arizona Revised Statutes §11-1133.
The statute is direct about it. The affidavit applies to "each deed transferring title" and to any contract for the sale of real property. The seller and the buyer jointly certify it, either party's agent may sign for one or both, and it must be on a form approved by the Arizona Department of Revenue.
So the deed goes on record saying who now owns the property. The affidavit goes on record, appended to it, saying what changed hands.
What is actually on the form
The affidavit is more detailed than most people expect. §11-1133 requires, among other items:
- Names, mailing addresses and phone numbers of buyer and seller
- The complete legal description and any situs address
- The date of sale
- Total consideration, the cash down payment, and the type of financing — cash, a new third-party loan, a new seller loan, an assumed loan, or an exchange
- Whether personal property the buyer received is worth five percent or more of the total consideration
- The assessor's parcel number, or the prior parcel numbers for newly created parcels
- Transaction conditions, including any relationship between the parties
- Property use, and for a residential dwelling, whether it will be owner-occupied or rented
Read that list again with a comp in mind. The financing type, the down payment, whether personal property was bundled in, and whether the buyer and seller were related to each other are all on the record. Those are exactly the facts that determine whether a sale price means anything as a comparison.
The statute also says an affidavit is complete when every item is either stated or marked "not applicable." That is why a filed affidavit can be technically complete and still answer very little.
The recorder will not record a deed without it
§11-1133 gives the requirement a hard edge: "The county recorder shall refuse to record any deed" that does not carry a complete affidavit, unless the instrument shows an exemption under §11-1134.
The Maricopa County Recorder's own FAQ describes the affidavit the same way — a form used to record the selling price and date of sale — and states that a deed must include either the affidavit or an exemption code to be accepted for recording.
That single sentence is the whole system. Every recorded deed in Maricopa County carries either a price or a stated reason there is no price. There is no third option.
The transfers with no price behind them
§11-1134 is the exemption list, and it is long. A transfer that qualifies carries an exemption code instead of a dollar figure, and the instrument has to state the specific exemption on its face when it is recorded.
The ones a West Valley buyer or seller is most likely to run into:
- A deed of gift. No consideration, no affidavit.
- A conveyance executed pursuant to a court order. Divorce decrees and probate orders commonly land here.
- Family transfers of residential property for only nominal consideration — between spouses, between parent and child including adopted children and their descendants, between grandparent and grandchild, or between natural or adopted siblings.
- A trustee's deed under a deed of trust's power of sale — the deed that comes out of a trustee's sale.
- A transfer from a person to a trustee, or from a trustee to a trust beneficiary, with only nominal consideration. Estate-planning moves into and out of a family trust.
- A transfer pursuant to a beneficiary deed with only nominal consideration — Arizona's transfer-on-death mechanism.
- A deed that confirms or corrects a previously recorded deed.
- A transfer on a sale for delinquent taxes or assessments, or on partition.
- Transfers for no or nominal consideration between related entities — parent and subsidiary, a member and their LLC, a partner and their partnership, and so on — plus transfers due to a legal name change.
- A quitclaim deed to quiet title, or a quitclaim given for no monetary consideration.
- Government as grantor, seller or purchaser, and leases or easements regardless of term.
Look at what that list is actually made of. Deaths, divorces, estate planning, foreclosures, gifts between family, and corporate housekeeping. Those are the life events that move Arizona real estate without a market price attached, and every one of them produces a recorded transfer that an automated valuation tool may or may not know to ignore.
Why this changes how you price a home
If you are getting ready to list a West Valley home, this is the mechanism behind a conversation you are going to have anyway.
A nearby sale with no price behind it is not a weak comp. It is not a comp. A parent deeding a house to a child, a trustee's deed after a foreclosure, a transfer into a family trust — none of those tell you anything about what a buyer would pay for your house, and an online estimate that quietly folded one of them in is working from a number that was never a market number.
The same goes in the other direction. A sale that did file an affidavit can still be a poor comparison, and the affidavit itself often says why: seller financing, an assumed loan, a relationship between the parties, or personal property worth five percent or more of the total. Each of those can move a recorded price away from what the house alone was worth.
This is a large part of what a comparative market analysis is for — not pulling numbers, but deciding which numbers deserve to count.
Why it changes what you offer
On the buying side the practical use is narrower and still worth having.
When you are handed comps, you are entitled to ask where each number came from. A recorded, arm's-length, conventionally financed sale of a similar home in the same submarket is a strong data point. A number pulled from an aggregator with no recorded price behind it is not the same thing, and the gap between those two is not visible on a map view.
It also explains a thing buyers notice and rarely get an answer to: why one house on a street shows a sale and the one beside it shows a transfer with no price. Usually nothing happened except an estate settling.
How to look it up yourself
Maricopa County makes recorded documents publicly searchable, and you do not need an account or an agent to use it.
The Recorder's office runs a Recorded Document Search that can be searched by last and first name, or by business name for trusts, businesses and HOAs, with recording date available as an optional filter. An unofficial copy of a document can be viewed online. Official and certified copies carry a per-page fee plus a certification charge — confirm the current amounts with the Recorder's office, since fee schedules change.
A workable sequence for one property:
- Get the owner's name or the parcel number from the county assessor's parcel search.
- Search the Recorder's index by that name, narrowed to the period around the sale.
- Open the deed. If an affidavit of property value was filed with it, the price and date of sale are on that affidavit.
- If instead the deed states an exemption code, note it — that transfer has no sale price, by law.
The Recorder's staff will not advise you on which exemption applies to a document, and they are right not to. That is a question for an attorney or a title officer.
What the assessor's number is — and is not
One more number gets mistaken for a sale price, so it is worth separating.
Under §42-13051 the county assessor determines the full cash value of locally assessed property as of January 1 of the next year, using the manuals furnished and the procedures prescribed by the Department of Revenue. The statute directs the assessor to identify property using sources including aerial photography, department records and building permits.
That is a mass-appraisal process run countywide on a statutory schedule. It is not an opinion of what your specific house would fetch next month, and it is not a sale price. Full cash value and sale price are two different numbers produced by two different processes for two different purposes, and treating either as a substitute for the other is how people end up surprised.
What none of this tells you
A recorded price is a fact about one transaction. It is not condition, not finish level, not how long the house sat, not what concessions moved behind the scenes, and not what the market is doing this month. The public record tells you what was paid and when. It does not tell you why, and the why is usually where the value question actually lives.
It is also worth saying plainly: this is general information about Arizona recording practice, not legal or tax advice. A specific transfer, a specific exemption, or a specific estate question belongs with an attorney or a tax professional.
The short version
Arizona puts most residential sale prices on the public record, on one form, filed with the deed. A long list of transfers — gifts, family transfers, trust moves, foreclosures, court orders — is exempt and records no price at all. When a comp looks wrong or looks missing, that is almost always the reason, and five minutes in the county's own records will usually tell you which.
If you are weighing a move in North Peoria, Glendale or anywhere across the West Valley and you want to know which of the nearby sales actually count, that is a conversation worth having before you pick a number.
Frequently asked questions
Is the sale price of a home public record in Arizona?
For most ordinary sales, yes. A.R.S. §11-1133 requires an affidavit of property value to be filed with the deed, and the county recorder will refuse to record a deed without one unless the instrument states an exemption. The affidavit contains the date of sale and the total consideration, and it is part of the public record.
Why does a house near me show a transfer with no sale price?
Because the transfer was exempt under A.R.S. §11-1134. Gifts, court-ordered conveyances, nominal-consideration transfers between close family members, trustee's deeds from a trustee's sale, transfers into or out of a trust, beneficiary deeds, corrective deeds and several entity transfers all record an exemption code instead of a price.
Who fills out the affidavit of property value?
The buyer and seller jointly certify it. Under §11-1133 an agent for either party may sign for one or both, and the form must be one approved by the Arizona Department of Revenue.
Does the affidavit show how the buyer paid?
Yes. The statute requires the cash down payment and the type of financing — cash, a new third-party loan, a new seller loan, an assumed loan, or an exchange — along with whether personal property the buyer received was worth five percent or more of the total consideration.
Does it say whether the buyer and seller were related?
The form requires transaction conditions to be stated, including any relationship between the parties. That is one of the more useful fields on it when you are judging whether a sale was arm's-length.
Can I look up a West Valley property's recorded documents without paying?
The Maricopa County Recorder's Recorded Document Search lets the public search by name or business name and view an unofficial copy of a document online. Official and certified copies carry fees — check the Recorder's current schedule before ordering one.
Is the county's full cash value the same as what a home would sell for?
No. Under A.R.S. §42-13051 the assessor determines full cash value as of January 1 of the following year using Department of Revenue manuals and procedures. It is a countywide mass-appraisal figure on a statutory schedule, not an opinion of what one specific house would bring on the open market.
