Arnulfo Arias

About Arnulfo Arias:

Arnulfo Arias is one of the nine corregimientos of San Miguelito and carries the name of Arnulfo Arias Madrid, three times president of Panama. Law 21 of 27 June 2000 split it from José Domingo Espinar, at the same time as Rufina Alfaro, and made La Felicidad, in the Mano de Piedra sector, its seat. Pedregal, already in the Panamá district, lies to the north; Belisario Frías is to the west, Rufina Alfaro to the east, Belisario Porras to the southwest and José Domingo Espinar to the south. The Vía Juan Meloni is the road that ties it together, passing the entrances to El Valle de Urracá and Mano de Piedra and carrying the Torrijos Carter internal buses and the MetroBus that runs from Mano de Piedra to Albrook.

The 2000 law lists the communities one by one: part of Roberto Durán, El Valle de Urracá, Loma Bonita, El Vallecito, La Paz, Buena Vista, La Felicidad, El Futuro, Colinas del Golf, Cerro Cocobolo, Altos del Sol, Palma de Oro, the Sun Village estate and PH Villa Sol, along with an Emberá settlement known today as Emberá Purú. Mano de Piedra shares its name with the ring nickname of Roberto Durán, and the sector named after the boxer runs partly into the corregimiento. Children go to public schools such as the Martin Luther King school in Mano de Piedra and the Valle de Urracá school. For anyone who works elsewhere in the city, the day starts and ends at the Mano de Piedra bus terminal, and that is the routine the cable car is meant to change.

The ground is steep, and the rainy season is when you see it. In June 2024 a landslide before dawn in Sector 6 of La Paz, in Mano de Piedra, trapped a family who were later rescued, and slides have damaged other homes in Mano de Piedra in heavy rain. Height also decides water pressure. On Cerro Cocobolo there have been long spells when the supply stayed in the lower part of the network and families filled containers at communal standpipes, so a reserve tank and pump are a real feature here, not an extra.

About 31,400 people lived in Arnulfo Arias at the 2023 census, almost exactly the figure of 2010. The corregimiento holds two quite separate housing markets within a few streets of each other. In El Valle de Urracá, La Paz or Cerro Cocobolo a three-bedroom house can sell for a fraction of what a house costs in Colinas del Golf, a gated estate with a pool and sports court next to Brisas del Golf. On top of that sits the cable car, whose route now governs what can be done with property along a strip that runs right through Mano de Piedra and El Valle de Urracá.

Houses in Arnulfo Arias:

In the hillside barrios most homes are one- or two-storey houses that their owners have built and extended over the years. In El Valle de Urracá you will find three-bedroom, one-bathroom houses of about 120 m² with a wide terrace, a small garden and a covered parking space, priced in the tens of thousands of dollars. Lot lines and access change from one house to the next, so walk the street, look at the slope behind the house and ask how water reaches the tank. In Colinas del Golf the stock is estate housing: three-bedroom houses of around 220 to 255 m² with two and a half bathrooms, a depósito and a terrace, on streets such as Calle Canterbury and Calle Manchester. Prices there move into the low hundreds of thousands, still below what larger houses for sale in San Miguelito ask on the Brisas del Golf side.

Rentals in Arnulfo Arias:

The rental market is small and made up of whole houses for rent in Arnulfo Arias on long-term leases. In Colinas del Golf, three-bedroom houses of around 300 m² come up for rent in the high hundreds of dollars a month, with the estate’s pool and sports court included. In the hillside barrios, some houses are offered for sale with rooms already built for letting. If you rent a room or an annex there, find out whether it has its own electricity meter and its own share of the water tank before you agree a price.

FAQ:

• I found a house a few streets from the future Mano de Piedra station. Can the cable car affect the sale?

  Yes. Executive Decree 13 of 26 November 2025 drew a 6.7 km influence polygon along the route, covering all six stations, and inside it any sale, mortgage, construction, alteration or change of land use needs the express no-objection of Metro de Panamá before it can be approved. If the state needs the land for the works, it pays the value the property had when the decree took effect. The final alignment and the clearance the cabins need above the roofs are still to be fixed, so a house that is not next to a station can still sit inside the corridor. Get written confirmation of where the lot stands before you pay a deposit.

• The seller says the Municipio gave him the lot. What should I check?

  Whether the adjudication was ever completed. In 2008 the Municipio de San Miguelito adjudicated lots in 20 de Diciembre, Palma de Oro and Buena Vista under the national land-titling method, and gave each adjudicatee up to three years to pay the lot price to the municipal treasury. Ask for proof that the price was paid, then confirm at the Registro Público that the finca exists, is registered in the seller’s name and is free of liens. A house sitting on a lot that was never fully titled cannot be mortgaged.

• How serious are landslides on the hillside streets?

  Serious enough to inspect for. Slides have damaged houses in several sectors of Mano de Piedra during heavy rain, including La Paz in June 2024. Look at the cut slope behind and above the house, the retaining walls and the drainage, visit after a downpour, and ask the neighbours whether the slope has moved before.

• How do I get into the city without a car today?

  By bus. MetroBus runs a route from the Mano de Piedra terminal to Albrook, where Line 1 of the Metro starts, and the Torrijos Carter internal routes use the Vía Juan Meloni through El Valle de Urracá. Once the cable car opens, the plan is a ride from Mano de Piedra or El Valle de Urracá down to Line 2 at Cincuentenario.

• Can a foreigner buy a house in Arnulfo Arias?

  Yes, on the same terms as a Panamanian, with the finca registered at the Registro Público in your own name or in that of your company. A local lawyer should run the title search and, here, also check the lot against the cable-car polygon.