Fewer than 600 of the buildings standing in Surprise today went up before 1980. By the county's records, nearly half of the buildings standing in the city today went up in a single decade, the 2000s. A second wave is under way: builders finished more homes in 2025 than in any year since 2005.
The map below shows every subdivision in the city on the year its first homes were built. Press Play to watch the city spread, first west of Grand Avenue, then across the Loop 303 corridor and north toward the hills.
This story has an interactive map. Open it on our website to explore it.
What the records show
Of the 85,187 parcels inside city limits, 71,062 have a building on them, according to the Maricopa County Assessor. By the year each was built:
| Built | Parcels |
|---|---|
| Before 1980 | 575 |
| 1980s | 1,838 |
| 1990s | 11,521 |
| 2000s | 34,226 |
| 2010s | 6,238 |
| 2020 through mid-2026 | 16,664 |
- The peak was 2004, with 7,148 parcels built, then 6,295 in 2005 and 5,153 in 2003.
- The housing crash nearly stopped it. From 2009 through 2016, Surprise added fewer than 550 a year. The low was 2011, with 231.
- 2025 was the biggest year since 2005, with 3,581. 2026 shows 1,503 so far; the assessor adds new homes to the rolls months after they are finished, so that figure will grow.
Population tracked the building: 30,848 in the 2000 census, 117,517 in 2010, 143,148 in 2020, and an estimated 167,000 in 2024.
The land still waiting
The city keeps a map of every large development it tracks. As of its last data update, Sept. 16, 2025, it marks 37 tracts as entitled, meaning the zoning is approved but the homes are not built, and 14 more as proposed.
- Zoned and waiting: about 57,000 homes on about 17,400 acres, all of it inside city limits.
- Proposed: about 22,500 homes on about 14,700 acres, nearly all of it outside the city. Only three of the 14 proposed tracts are inside city limits, with about 1,300 homes, most of them in Surprise 295 (1,185 homes on 296 acres). The other 11, with about 21,200 homes on about 14,400 acres, are unincorporated county land in the area Surprise plans for but has not annexed, by the city's own boundary map and the county Assessor's records. The largest are Lake Pleasant 5000 (9,800 homes on 4,901 acres) and Broadstone Ranch (8,537 homes on 2,914 acres). Three of the 11 list no homes, among them a 3,500-acre BNSF industrial rail facility (CR23-0249).
- Most of the approved land was zoned in the last boom. 26 of the 37 tracts carry case numbers filed from 2000 to 2008, and they account for about 51,000 of the 57,000 homes. The largest, Grand Vista (city case PAD07-228), is 5,496 acres and 16,450 homes, more than a quarter of the approved total on its own.
- Seven projects are headed to the Planning and Zoning Commission. Three of them, pads 3, 4 and 5 at Truman Ranch Marketplace at Waddell Road and Cotton Lane, are scheduled for its Nov. 5 meeting. The others, including a conditional use permit for The Locale across the street, have no hearing date yet.
This story has an interactive map. Open it on our website to explore it.
How we did this
When each neighborhood was built. The city of Surprise keeps a map of every subdivision in town. Maricopa County's property records list the year each home or building went up. We matched the two, so each neighborhood appears on the map in the year its first homes were built. Tap a neighborhood to see the full range of years its homes went up and when most were finished.
A single old farmhouse can sit inside a much newer neighborhood, so we set aside the oldest few homes in each one before picking its starting year. That keeps one early building from dating a whole subdivision.
The map shows 972 neighborhoods, which hold nearly 98% of the buildings in Surprise. A few hundred are left off: some have nothing built yet, and others were redrawn after they were first laid out, so they no longer line up with the county's records.
The map uses today's city limits. A neighborhood built before Surprise annexed it shows up in the year it was built, not the year it joined the city.
What's coming next. The second map shows the land the city lists as already zoned for development or proposed for it. It comes from the city's own development map, last updated Sept. 16, 2025. The acreage, home counts and case numbers are the city's. To tell which tracts are inside Surprise, we laid each one over the city's boundary map and checked the county Assessor's records, which list the city or town that governs every parcel. The two agreed on every tract. Upcoming hearings come from the city's public meeting notices.