They arrive with a list and a deadline
A property that has been closed up through an Arizona summer produces work. Cooling systems that sat idle, irrigation that failed quietly, pests that moved in, and pool chemistry that went sideways. The owner arrives with several of these at once and limited patience for research.
Whoever they already recognise gets called first. In a compressed window with a queue of tasks, familiarity is not a soft preference, it is the tie-breaker that decides the whole autumn.
Out-of-state targeting is close to uncontested
Valley businesses buy Valley geography, because that is the obvious thing to do. It means the audience is effectively unadvertised to for the months they spend elsewhere, and the cost of reaching them there reflects that.
It is also easy to get wrong. The point is not to advertise a Phoenix business to Minnesotans generally, it is to reach the specific households who own property here and are coming back to it.
Master-planned communities concentrate the effect
A large share of the seasonal population sits inside a relatively small number of developments and age-restricted communities, each with its own boards, newsletters, and internal recommendation channels.
That concentration makes the audience reachable at a sensible cost and makes reputation travel unusually fast inside it, in both directions. One good autumn inside a community tends to produce the next one on its own.