On a Tuesday morning at the Encore Club, the 15,000-square-foot clubhouse sounds like several rooms at once. Pickleball thwacks travel in from the courts. A movement studio thumps faintly through the lobby wall. Two cyclists rinse off near the pool deck, talking through a route they just rode along the Eastmark trail spur. Out the long window, the Eastmark Great Park is filling with school-age soccer practice. Eastmark’s K-12 schools sit across the road, and Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport blinks on the horizon to the south. The two demographics do not share a fence, but they share a master plan.
That is the editorial fact that defines Encore at Eastmark. It is a 970-home 55+ active adult community embedded inside a 3,200-acre master plan. The other neighborhoods in that master plan are built for young families. The dynamic is unusual in the Valley. Encore is not surrounded by other 55+ resorts. It is surrounded by Eastmark’s family streets, walking trails, and elementary schools. Residents say that gives the community a different texture than a stand-alone retirement village would. This page walks through what Encore offers in 2026: how the homes and amenities are structured, what the cost stack looks like in a now-resale market, and how to plan a productive first visit.
Encore at Eastmark opened in March 2015 under AV Homes, the original developer behind the floor plan portfolio. Taylor Morrison later acquired AV Homes and finished the build-out under its own brand. The final phases released through 2024, after which the community moved fully to a resale-only market. The result is a single-product 55+ enclave with one architectural identity, one shared clubhouse, and a clean line where Encore ends and Eastmark begins.
Residents notice that the line is permeable in the directions that matter and firm where it should be. The Encore Club is age-restricted and members-only for Encore households. The Eastmark Great Park, the master-plan trail loops, the Steadfast Farm, and the retail and dining along Ray Road are open to everyone in Eastmark, including Encore residents. That structure gives 55+ buyers a private clubhouse, a private pool, and a private events calendar. It still places them inside a master plan with a working farm, a main street, and a roster of community festivals. An age-restricted enclave on its own would not produce that broader programming.
Encore’s resident profile in 2026 leans toward two cohorts. The first is in-state buyers downsizing from larger East Valley homes. The second is seasonal residents from the Upper Midwest, Pacific Northwest, and Western Canada who treat Encore as a winter address from October through April. The single-story floor plans, lock-and-leave landscaping, and short distance to Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport make the community workable for households that fly in for the season and lock the door for the summer.
Encore at Eastmark’s floor plan lineup spans both builders. AV Homes contributed the original early-phase designs, and Taylor Morrison added later-phase plans named after dances and cities. Plans range from roughly 1,339 square feet at the smallest to about 2,915 square feet at the largest. Configurations span two to four bedrooms, two to two-and-a-half baths, and two- or three-car garages. Every home is single-story and built on flat lots. The lots face the Eastmark trail network, the Encore amenity perimeter, or interior streets that loop back to the clubhouse.
The plan names borrowed from dances and cities — Rumba, Lindy, Charleston, London, Sydney, Athens — give buyers a vocabulary for comparing inventory. A “Sydney on the Eastmark trail side” reads differently than a “Rumba on an interior cul-de-sac.”
The plans share several architectural through-lines. They feature open-concept great rooms, kitchens designed as the household’s social center, owner’s suites separated from secondary bedrooms, and large covered patios sized for year-round outdoor living. Bonus rooms, dens, and flex spaces appear on most mid- and upper-tier plans. Buyers can convert a third bedroom into a hobby room, study, or guest suite without remodeling. Two-car garages are standard. Three-car configurations are available on the larger plans. The third bay suits buyers who want to keep a golf cart, a workshop bench, or an extra vehicle inside.
The shift from new-construction to resale-only is the most practical fact about the 2026 market at Encore. Buyers no longer choose lot positions or design center finishes from Taylor Morrison. Instead, they evaluate homes that other residents have already finished. Variation between two listings of the same plan can be substantial. One Lindy may have a fully extended patio, plantation shutters, and a kitchen island upgrade. Another two streets over may carry original builder finishes. Resale buyers should plan to walk multiple homes of the same plan to calibrate what the going rate buys.
The Encore Club is the social and recreational heart of Encore at Eastmark and the single most important asset in the resale value of any home here. The clubhouse runs roughly 15,000 square feet under one roof and packs an indoor-outdoor amenity stack that compares favorably to clubhouses two and three times its size at older Mesa retirement communities.
Indoor amenities include a state-of-the-art fitness center, a movement studio used for yoga and aerobics classes, a billiards room, an arts and crafts studio, a library, a ballroom for community events, locker rooms with day-use storage, and a casual cafe space where residents stop for coffee between classes. The outdoor side of the clubhouse opens onto a resort-style heated pool, a separate spa, an event lawn, and an outdoor patio with firepits. Tennis courts, dedicated pickleball courts, and bocce courts sit just off the main clubhouse footprint. The whole assembly is purpose-built for an age-restricted community. The social life happens at the clubhouse. The workouts happen on the way in or out.
Encore’s outdoor sport mix leans into pickleball more than tennis. This mirrors the wider trend in Arizona 55+ communities since the mid-2010s. Multiple pickleball courts host morning round-robin play, evening league nights, and ladder competitions. Residents organize all of this through the activity director’s calendar. Tennis courts share the footprint and run busier in the cooler months. Bocce, often described as the social lubricant of the community, runs casual nightly games in the cooler months and league play on a posted schedule.
The resort pool serves three populations in one footprint. Lap swimmers come early morning. Aqua fitness classes run mid-morning. Casual swimmers and floaters arrive late morning through afternoon. The spa runs hotter and is the de facto post-game gathering point for pickleball and tennis players. The event lawn handles outdoor concerts, food truck nights, and the larger holiday gatherings. Those events fill the indoor ballroom in winter and spill outside in spring and fall.
The interior amenity rooms get heavier use than first-time visitors expect. The arts and crafts studio runs scheduled classes and open-studio time. The billiards room is a daily gathering point. The library doubles as a quiet room and a small meeting space. The cafe is, by most accounts, where residents who would not otherwise meet end up sharing a table and trading a phone number.
Encore at Eastmark runs its social calendar through a full-time activity director rather than a strictly volunteer-led model. The director coordinates a roster of charter clubs and special interest groups: book clubs, card-game groups (canasta, bunko, bridge, and poker rotations), a bicycling group, a hiking group, a wine club, a women’s group, a men’s group, and seasonal programming around the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and the December holidays. The director-led model means new residents need not wait for a volunteer to organize an interest group. The framework exists, and joining is a matter of showing up.
The model produces a calendar that fills out faster than at older communities, where new clubs require a critical mass of resident champions before they launch. Encore’s calendar reads more programmed than improvised. That is a feature for some buyers and a tradeoff for others.
Encore’s seasonal rhythm peaks twice. Winter and spring carry the heaviest event load: holiday parties, seasonal-resident welcome-back gatherings, charity drives, and a thick run of pickleball and bocce competitions. A second peak runs through October and early November as the activity director re-launches club seasons after the summer slowdown. Summer programming runs lighter and skews indoor and aquatic.
Residents arriving without an existing social anchor typically find a circle through one of three doors. The first is a sport-anchored entry through pickleball or bocce. The second is a hobby-anchored entry through the arts and crafts studio or the cafe. The third is an interest-group entry through book clubs, wine groups, or card rooms. The director-led structure makes the entry less awkward than at communities where breaking in requires a volunteer’s permission.
Encore at Eastmark sits on the southeast edge of the City of Mesa, inside ZIP 85212. It occupies the far-east Mesa desert fringe where the urban Valley starts to thin into Queen Creek and Apache Junction beyond. The Superstition Mountains stand on the eastern horizon. Eastmark Parkway, Ray Road, Signal Butte Road, and Ellsworth Loop frame the master plan. Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport sits about two miles south. It offers a regional alternative to Phoenix Sky Harbor for inbound and outbound flights. The Loop 202 Santan Freeway connects Encore to central Mesa and beyond when buyers need to cross the Valley.
The 3,200-acre Eastmark master plan around Encore is the larger story. Eastmark is built around a 100-acre-class central park, a working farm called Steadfast Farm, a multi-use trail network, a main-street retail spine along Ray Road, and award-recognized K-12 schools including Eastmark High School and BASIS Mesa. Arizona State University’s Polytechnic Campus sits just south near the airport. That lends the area a not-quite-suburban character. For Encore residents, this adds up to amenities a stand-alone 55+ resort would not deliver: a working farm, a main street within a golf-cart ride, university lectures open to the public, and trail miles connecting the residential side to the parks and retail.
Practical drive times from Encore are easy to summarize. Ten minutes reaches the Gilbert Gateway Towne Center for big-box retail and casual dining. Fifteen minutes reaches downtown Mesa. Twenty-five minutes reaches Tempe and Sky Harbor. Thirty minutes reaches north Scottsdale. Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport handles direct flights to most of the Mountain West and Pacific Northwest — a meaningful logistical fact for Encore’s seasonal-resident population.
Healthcare access from Encore at Eastmark anchors on Banner Gateway Medical Center. The full-service acute care hospital sits about four miles west on Higley Road in Gilbert. Banner Gateway co-locates with the Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center. That gives Encore residents a tertiary-cancer-care anchor on the same campus as their primary acute-care hospital. The arrangement is unusually concentrated for a Valley 55+ community. Mountain Vista Medical Center to the northwest provides a second hospital option on the Power Road corridor for residents who prefer a closer central-Mesa facility.
Outpatient and primary-care infrastructure runs through Banner Health Center locations along Power Road and Ellsworth Road. Urgent care clinics line Ray Road and the Gilbert Gateway. A growing roster of specialist offices fills the Queen Creek and east-Mesa medical corridors. Those corridors have expanded with the population. Mayo Clinic Arizona in north Phoenix remains the academic-medicine anchor for residents who want a major-system second opinion or complex referral. The drive is long enough that most routine care stays closer to Encore.
Encore at Eastmark layers daily wellness programming over that medical infrastructure through the Encore Club fitness center, movement studio, and aquatic facilities. Aqua fitness classes, low-impact strength sessions, balance-and-mobility classes, and stretch programming all run on a posted schedule. The model is consistent with what AARP and other senior-health organizations describe as cost-effective preventive care for 55+ residents. The recipe combines a clubhouse-anchored daily exercise routine with primary-care access close enough to drive.
Routine specialty care — dermatology, ophthalmology, cardiology follow-ups — splits between in-person visits at the Banner system and telehealth. Telehealth has become standard practice for Encore residents managing chronic conditions. Most residents end up with an in-person primary care relationship inside the ten-minute drive radius. They pair that with a telehealth specialty roster reaching across the Valley.
The financial side of Encore at Eastmark in 2026 has three working parts that buyers should price separately. The first is the resale home price. Prices vary significantly by floor plan, lot position, finish package, and view. Eastmark trail-adjacent and corner-lot homes generally carry premiums. Interior cul-de-sac homes price below. Buyers should treat the headline list price as the starting point of a calibration exercise rather than the answer.
The second part is the Encore sub-association assessment. This dues line covers the Encore Club operating budget, the activity director’s salary and programming budget, the pool and spa, the courts, and the front-yard landscaping that gives Encore its uniform curb-appeal character. The third part is the Eastmark master association assessment. Every household across the 3,200-acre master plan pays it. The master assessment funds the Great Park, the trail network, common-area landscaping outside Encore’s perimeter, and the master-plan event programming. Buyers see two assessment lines on a closing statement. Both should be confirmed in writing before contract.
The split structure produces a useful clarification. The Encore sub-association assessment buys the 55+ amenity envelope. The Eastmark master assessment buys the broader master-plan envelope. That broader envelope includes the trails, the parks, the retail-adjacency, and the events. An age-restricted enclave alone could not justify those amenities on its own budget. The two assessments together produce a total monthly carrying cost in line with comparable East Valley 55+ communities. The line items split differently than at single-HOA communities such as Sunland Village in central Mesa or Sunland Village East off Farnsworth Drive.
Encore homes sit in Maricopa County for property tax purposes. Arizona’s senior property valuation protection option may apply for income-qualifying owners over 65 who have held their primary residence for at least two years. The program limits the assessed value used for tax calculations rather than the tax rate itself. Buyers should evaluate eligibility against current state criteria before assuming any specific outcome.
Encore at Eastmark is an age-restricted community where at least one resident in each home must be 55 or older, in compliance with the federal Housing for Older Persons Act. The neighborhood is the 55+ chapter of the larger Eastmark master plan.
Encore residents typically pay two assessments: a sub-association fee that covers the Encore Club, landscaping, and 55+ programming, plus the broader Eastmark master association assessment. Prospective buyers should confirm current dues with the HOA office or a community specialist before contract.
Pets are permitted under the community’s CC&Rs, which follow standard active adult guidelines for cats and dogs. Owners should review current pet policies, leash rules, and any size guidance with the HOA before move-in.
Encore is an HOA-managed community with controlled-access amenities at the Encore Club rather than a guard-attended gated entry. The 55+ enclave sits inside the larger Eastmark master plan, which uses standard public roads and trail networks.
Banner Gateway Medical Center sits about four miles west of Encore at Eastmark, and the co-located Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center is on the same campus. Additional urgent care and primary care options line the Power Road and Ellsworth Road corridors within a ten-minute drive.
A productive first visit to Encore at Eastmark in 2026 separates into three drives that fit comfortably into a half-day window. The first stop is the Encore Club. Buyers can walk the fitness center, the movement studio, the cafe, and the pool deck at full speed. That gives a sense of how the social calendar runs in real time. The second stop is the central park and the trail loop that connects Encore to the main-street retail along Ray Road. That walk shows how master-plan amenities supplement the 55+ amenity envelope. The third stop is a guided drive through the resale inventory. The drive works best with a buyer’s agent who knows the floor plan vocabulary and can call out trail-side versus interior-cul-de-sac differences in real time.
Buyers should arrive with a short list of questions that the page above can frame but only the visit can answer. How does the activity calendar read in person on a midweek morning? Which floor plans hold their resale value best on the trail-adjacent streets? How much do the two assessments total at current dues, and what is the Encore HOA’s reserve study saying about future increases? Is the buyer comfortable with a 55+ enclave whose immediate neighbors are family streets rather than other retirement communities? The honest answers come from the tour, the walk, and the drive, not from the listing photos.
The Encore at Eastmark resale market is small enough that timing matters. It is large enough that patience pays. Buyers comparing Encore against other East Valley options should also tour at least one Trilogy at Power Ranch in Gilbert floor plan for a builder-volume comparison. Consider CantaMia at Estrella in Goodyear or Solera at Johnson Ranch in San Tan Valley if the embedded-enclave structure is a feature rather than a curiosity. The full directory of Mesa 55+ communities is the right next stop for buyers who want to triangulate Encore against the rest of the city’s inventory. The regional 55+ index covers the Valley at large.
For current resale listings, scheduling notes, and a community specialist who knows the Encore floor plan portfolio, contact our Mesa 55+ team directly. Worth reading before the tour: the City of Mesa parks and recreation pages, the Banner Gateway Medical Center campus overview, and the Maricopa County Assessor senior valuation protection page. AARP’s pre-move financial checklist for 55+ buyers pairs well with the visit.