Courtesy Cort Chalfant

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Despite a slumping new-home market, Rancho Sahuarita has managed to attract healthy numbers of buyers.

Last year the development's sales were up 17 percent, and it was ranked the 11th-best-selling master-planned community in the country by Robert Charles Lesser & Co., a real estate consulting firm.

For the first month of this year, sales stayed about even with those of 2007, but Rancho Sahuarita's share of the metro area's new-home starts doubled to 13.4 percent, the development company reported.

One of the major contributors to the development, Cort Chalfant, senior vice president of The Rancho Sahuarita Co., will be leaving his post next month. The Star talked to Chalfant about Rancho Sahuarita's relative success and about his plans for the future. Here's what he had to say:

A: I moved here from Wilmington, Del., in 1995 to work with a private real estate investment group called Holualoa Arizona. I spent about 6 1/2 years with them. In 2001, . . . I jumped ship and went to work with Bob Sharpe and the Rancho Sahuarita community.

A: We offer tremendous value. This value is driven by the amenities, which are second to none, and the quality of our neighborhoods. We have miles of trails. And now (as of last December) we have shopping in your backyard, literally.

Q: How much lower are starting prices now compared with last year? How are sales agents persuading people to buy now rather than wait to see if prices drop further?

A: New-home prices have probably dropped 10 (percent) to 18 percent in the last 12 months. You still have people moving to metro Tucson, though it's in smaller numbers than in the recent past. You still have situations where families need to downsize or need to upsize.

Q: We've heard a lot about people becoming more concerned about living far away from work with gas prices going up. Has that been affecting sales?

A: If it is, we can't measure it. The shopping, the schools and the recreation are now all very, very close by. With the interstate access that we have, you get better gas mileage driving on a highway than you do on surface streets.

Q: So where are you going and what are you going to do?

A: I'm going to go back to work for the Holualoa Cos. as an asset manager. I'm going to return to my roots in Wilmington, Del., where I will be opening Holualoa's first East Coast office.