San Manuel: The Copper Town Selling Homes at Half the County Median
San Manuel closed 44 home sales at a $179,500 median in the year to September 2026, every one built 1954–1971. What the copper mine sale means for the town.
A 1950s Pinal County company town about 50 road miles from Tucson closed 44 sales in a year at $139 a square foot, while a Vancouver explorer agreed to take over the mine that built it.
Every one of the 44 homes that closed in San Manuel over the twelve months ending September 30, 2026 was built between 1954 and 1971, by LiveBy's aggregate of MLS records, and the median one was built in 1954 itself. That is not a coincidence of the data. San Manuel, an unincorporated census-designated place in Pinal County about 50 miles northeast of downtown Tucson by road, was laid out in the 1950s as a master-planned company town for the Magma Copper Company, built by Del Webb years before his company started on Sun City. The median home there sold for $179,500 — less than half the $365,000 Pima County median over the same twelve months. The mine that justified the town closed in 1999. This July, its owner agreed to sell what is left of it.
- 44
- Residential closings in San Manuel, October 2025 through September 2026, up from 34
- $179,500
- Median sale price, against $365,000 across Pima County
- $139
- Median price per square foot, 36% below Pima County's $218
- 1954
- Median year built of the homes that sold; the newest was 1971
- 63 days
- Median days on market, against 38 in Pima County
- 18
- Active residential listings on October 10, about 4.9 months at this pace
One Build-Out, Seventy Years Later
In most Tucson-area markets a buyer chooses between decades of construction. In San Manuel there is essentially one. The Census Bureau's latest five-year estimate puts the median year built for all of the town's housing at 1957, and the 18 listings active when this was pulled run only from 1953 to 1982. The median home that sold had 1,314 square feet, against 1,776 across Pima County, and closing prices ran from $64,000 to $248,500. The town sits at about 3,450 feet.
Are San Manuel Home Prices Rising?
Closings rose from 34 in the prior twelve months to 44, a 29% jump on a small base. The median sale price rose 3.5%, from $173,500 to $179,500. The median price per square foot went the other way, from $148.47 to $139.01, while the median home that sold grew from 1,152.5 to 1,314 square feet. Those are independent medians over two different sets of sales, so read them as a change in what sold rather than a precise per-foot price drop. What is not ambiguous is the pace. The median home spent 63 days on the market, up from 46, and 28 of the 44 sellers — 63.6% — cut their asking price before closing, against 44.1% a year earlier and 43.1% across Pima County. Homes sold at 96% of their final list price, two points below the county's 98%.
Who Is Buying the Old San Manuel Mine?
On July 2, 2026, Faraday Copper, a Vancouver-based exploration company, signed a definitive agreement to acquire 100% of BHP's San Manuel property: the legacy San Manuel Copper Mine, including the San Manuel and Kalamazoo deposits, the plant site, the closed tailings storage facilities and surrounding BHP-owned land. Faraday pays in shares equal to 30% of the company on a fully diluted basis and assumes all of the property's liabilities, including environmental and closure obligations. The property sits beside Faraday's Copper Creek project and adds about 27,000 acres of private land with access to road, rail, gas and power. Faraday's shareholders approved the share issuance on August 25 with 99.97% of votes cast, and the company said it expected to close by the end of the third quarter. As of October 10, Faraday's news page had not announced a closing. Faraday describes a staged path — copper cathode first, then open-pit sulphides, then underground — but it is an exploration company, and neither release announces a production decision, a start date or a hiring figure.
What to Weigh Before an Offer or a Listing
For a buyer, the trade is plain: about $139 a square foot, 36% under the county median, for a house that is likely around seventy years old and a drive of about 50 miles to downtown Tucson. On a home that age, ask for the age of the roof, the plumbing, the electrical panel and the cooling system in writing, and schedule the inspection early in the inspection period. The negotiating room is real: with 18 active listings against about 3.7 sales a month, supply sits near 4.9 months, inside the four-to-six-month band this site treats as balanced, and 8 of those 18 listings had already been reduced. For a seller, the clearest number is that the median active asking price, $165,000, sits below last year's $179,500 median sale — the listings competing with yours are priced to move, and a list price set above them is the one that ends up reduced. For an investor, treat the mine sale as a headline rather than a payroll. No figure here assumes it will change demand, and nobody should underwrite a purchase as though it already has.
A Company Town Without the Company
San Manuel was built so that a mine would have somewhere to house its workforce, and it has spent a quarter century as a town whose reason for existing shut down. What it has become instead is a housing market priced at less than half the county median, built almost entirely in one generation, and getting busier and slower at the same time. Until something changes that, the market San Manuel actually has is small, old, and priced at half the county next door.
Sources
LiveBy — Closed-sale statistics, property type Residential, San Manuel census-designated-place boundary (5e78a3cf77d381411861b883), interval 2025-10-01/P1Y — accessed October 10, 2026 (44 closings; $179,500 median and $64,000–$248,500 range of close prices; 1954 median and 1954–1971 range of year built; 1,314-square-foot median living area; $139.01 median price per square foot; 63-day median days on market; 28 of 44 sales with a price reduction; 0.96 sale-to-list ratio). LiveBy's responses credit MLS of Southern Arizona (MLSSAZ) and Arizona Regional MLS (ARMLS).
LiveBy — Closed-sale statistics, same boundary and arguments, interval 2024-10-01/P1Y — accessed October 10, 2026 (34 closings; $173,500 median close price; 1,152.5-square-foot median living area; $148.47 median price per square foot; 46-day median days on market; 15 of 34 with a price reduction).
LiveBy — Active-listing statistics, property type Residential, status Active, same boundary — accessed October 10, 2026 (18 active listings; $165,000 median list price; 1953–1982 range of year built; 8 of 18 reduced).
LiveBy — Closed-sale statistics, property type Residential, Pima County boundary (5afc4af02f86c27281e528b1), interval 2025-10-01/P1Y — accessed October 10, 2026 (13,403 closings; $365,000 median close price; $218.01 median price per square foot; 1,776-square-foot median living area; 38-day median days on market; 43.06% price-reduction share; 0.98 sale-to-list ratio).
U.S. Census Bureau — American Community Survey 2020–2024 five-year estimates, table B25035 (Median Year Structure Built), San Manuel CDP, Arizona (place 0463540) — api.censusreporter.org/1.0/data/show/latest?table_ids=B25035&geo_ids=16000US0463540 — accessed October 10, 2026 (1957 median year built, margin of error ±2).
Faraday Copper — "Faraday Copper Signs a Definitive Agreement to Acquire BHP's San Manuel Property in Arizona, Creating a Multi-Asset Copper District in the USA" — faradaycopper.com/news-releases/faraday-copper-signs-a-definitive-agreement-to-acquire-bhps-san-manuel-property-in-arizona-creating-a-multi-asset-copper/ — published July 2, 2026, accessed October 10, 2026.
Faraday Copper — "Faraday Copper Shareholders Approve Share Issuance in Connection with the Acquisition of the San Manuel Project" — faradaycopper.com/news-releases/faraday-copper-shareholders-approve-share-issuance-in-connection-with-the-acquisition-of-the-san-manuel-project/ — published August 25, 2026, accessed October 10, 2026.
Faraday Copper — News Releases, 2026 — faradaycopper.com/news-releases/2026/ — accessed October 10, 2026 (no closing announcement listed).
Arizona Public Media — "The Buzz: Revitalizing San Manuel" — azpm.org/s/96879-the-buzz-revitalizing-san-manuel/ — modified June 23, 2023, accessed October 10, 2026 (company town for the Magma Copper Company; master-planned community built by Del Webb before Sun City).
KJZZ — "San Manuel's fortune was once tied to copper mining. Some want marijuana to be its revival" — kjzz.org/content/1850123/san-manuels-fortune-was-once-tied-copper-mining-some-want-marijuana-be-its-revival — published June 21, 2023, accessed October 10, 2026 (the mine's 1999 closure).
U.S. Census Bureau — Geocoder, geographies by coordinates (Census Designated Places and Counties layers) — geocoding.geo.census.gov/geocoder/ — accessed October 10, 2026 (San Manuel CDP, place 0463540, in Pinal County). OpenStreetMap / Project OSRM — driving route from downtown Tucson (32.2217° N, 110.9265° W) to central San Manuel (32.6091° N, 110.6415° W) — router.project-osrm.org — accessed October 10, 2026 (79.2 km, about 49 miles). U.S. Geological Survey — 3D Elevation Program point query service — epqs.nationalmap.gov — accessed October 10, 2026 (3,447 feet at 32.6045° N, 110.6334° W in central San Manuel).
Percentage changes, the 36% per-square-foot gap and the months-of-supply figure are arithmetic on the figures above. MLS records for a closed period keep changing for weeks after it ends, so a re-run of any query here may differ slightly. This post is for informational purposes only and is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to purchase real estate. Kyle Berglund and Tierra Antigua Realty fully support and comply with the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Opportunity Act.
Topics
- San Manuel
- Pinal County
- Home Prices
- Days on Market
- Copper Mining
- Faraday Copper
- Affordable Homes
- Community Spotlight