I'm certainly not an expert on water conservation but being a home owner and real estate investor I do know how water use affects my wallet and the return I get on my real estate investments in Greater Phoenix. 

It's this selfish pursuit to increase profit from real estate investments and decrease the work load involved with maintaining a property that I have transformed several properties from expansive grass to desert landscaping.  

One was our own home which had a large grass yard in the front, like you see in many homes, especially in the established neighborhoods.  I had a very hard time keeping the grass visually appealing.  There were always brown spots somewhere.  In addition the grass got a lot of sun in the summer and needed to be watered a lot to keep it green. 

Finally we decided to put in desert landscaping.  But we wanted not just some barren yard covered with lifeless rocks.  Our goal was to create a lush desert landscape full  of flowers, multiple types of cactus and trees.  It did take some effort to get it done; the transformation was well worth it.  Our water use was reduced to less then half what we paid before, despite having very green lush desert landscaping with a variety of desert plants.  In, fact it's so much more satisfying to walk the yard and enjoy the flowers, cacti, yucca and small bushes.  At all times of the year we have some types of flowers blooming.  Even better is the fact that maintenance has all but disappeared; no more weekly grass cutting sessions, and spewing polluting air from the lawnmower.

We also replaced grass yards in several of our multifamily investment properties.  When we informed our residents that the grass will be removed in favour of desert landscaping the comments we heard most often were, “we love living here because of the grass”, “we’ll probably move out if you get rid of the grass” and so on.   Well, we went ahead and got rid of the grass.  In one case it was 8,000 s.f. or grass yard which disappeared.  There’s a lot of expense to maintain such a yard, with water, seed, fertilizers and weekly mowing.  The grass was replaced with 3 desert trees, like a Palo Brea, and small young desert plants that cost $2-$6 each.  A year later all those plants grew quite large and the entire yard looked much better, more modern and in tune with a modern lifestyle. 

Oh, yeah, 2 years after completing the project the same tenants are still there and now they often complement how beautiful the desert plants look and smell.  The cost to replace grass with desert landscaping returned itself in 14 months.  After that it was just more profit, less hassle and less maintenance.

Some cities, like Scottsdale even have incentives for home owners to remove grass and replace it with desert landscaping, often called xeriscape.  Check with your Greater Phoenix cities water departments for possible incentives.

Check out the Water Use It Wisely website for tips how to conserve water and other resources.