When East Helena approved a 1,500-home development on the old ASARCO smelter site last October, Mayor Kelly Harris said the affordable housing "really represents East Helena's past and brings us into the future." It's a good line, and it points at something buyers comparing East Helena to the rest of the Helena area keep getting backwards.
The assumption is easy to make. A town built around a lead smelter that ran from 1888 to 2001, declared a federal Superfund site in 1984, should be the discount option. Cheaper land, cheaper houses, a stigma baked into the price. That story made sense for a long time. It doesn't anymore, and understanding why tells you more about where East Helena is headed than the median price ever will.
What the Numbers Actually Say Right Now
As of July 2026, portal data put East Helena's median list price at roughly $477,000, at $269 per square foot, with homes moving in a median of 26 days. Compare that to Helena proper, where the median sale price over the three months ending May 2026 sat closer to $415,000, with homes taking about 47 days to sell. One dataset even flagged East Helena as running about 1% above the national average to buy into, which is not the number you'd expect from a town most people still associate with a slag pile.
| Helena (city-wide) | East Helena | |
|---|---|---|
| Price benchmark | ~$415,000 median sale, 3 months ending May 2026 | ~$477,000 median list, July 2026 |
| Days on market | ~47 (May 2026) | ~26 (July 2026) |
| Price per square foot | Not directly comparable | ~$269 |
These aren't apples to apples. One is a closed sale price, the other a list price, and portal methodologies vary. But even accounting for that, the gap runs the opposite direction from what the Superfund history would predict. If anything, East Helena is currently trading at a premium relative to its own reputation.
Here's the mechanism behind that. The land under East Helena isn't controlled by dozens of individual sellers competing to unload cheap lots near an old industrial site. Most of the former ASARCO acreage, more than 4,000 acres total across Montana, is held by a single trustee, the Montana Environmental Trust Group, appointed in 2009 as part of the ASARCO bankruptcy settlement. METG hasn't been dumping that land onto the open market. It's been converting it, parcel by parcel, into the town's civic backbone: East Helena High School, Prickly Pear Elementary, Prickly Pear Park, and a Town Pump store. That's deliberate, controlled supply, not a fire sale. The existing housing stock for sale today reflects a normal, fairly tight small-town market, not a discount built on contamination fears.
The Discount Is Coming, Just Not the Way You'd Think
The cheap housing everyone assumes should already exist is actually still under construction, financially and literally. It's called Rose Hills, and it's the reason East Helena's price story is about to change.
Rose Hills is a planned 1,500 to 1,700 home neighborhood on 250 acres of former ASARCO land south of State Highway 282, approved by the East Helena City Council after more than seven years in planning. The project is being led by Helena Area Habitat for Humanity, with roughly a third of the homes built as Habitat homes and the rest constructed by for-profit builders at market rates. When the price range was first announced, organizers pointed to homes running from under $200,000 to around $750,000, a spread that undercuts East Helena's current market averages at the low end by a wide margin. The plan also includes 46 acres of parks and trails and a town center with room for small businesses and a future elementary school.
Site infrastructure work is expected to begin in late 2026. The first phase alone covers 101 building lots with room for more than 170 homes.
None of that happens without the financing being unusually clever, and that's the part worth understanding if you're trying to figure out what East Helena will look like in five years.
The Financing Trick That Keeps Current Homeowners Out of It
East Helena runs on a $2 million annual general fund budget. There's no version of this project where the city fronts $12 to $17.5 million in infrastructure costs, for water, wastewater, and transportation, out of pocket. So it isn't. Under a financing mechanism made possible by House Bill 505, passed in the 2025 legislature, the city is applying for a municipal bond purchased by the Montana Board of Investments, which also backstops the bond if payments fall short.
The bond gets repaid through a Special Improvement District, which levies an added charge on Rose Hills property tax bills over a 20-year period. Habitat's Jacob Kuntz has been direct about who that charge applies to.
"The bond will not impact the current residents of East Helena."
The logic is straightforward once you see it: because the infrastructure being financed only serves the new lots, only the new lots get billed for it. That's the piece that makes the low end of the Rose Hills price range plausible without cross-subsidizing it off the backs of people who already own homes in town. It also means existing East Helena sellers aren't staring down a tax increase tied to this project. What they are staring down, eventually, is new-construction competition priced well under what the resale market is currently asking.
The Question Nobody's Fully Answered Yet
There's a real friction point sitting underneath all of this, and it's water.
In October 2025, the state denied East Helena's request to claim the former ASARCO water rights for city use. City officials and Habitat maintain that East Helena's existing water rights are sufficient to serve Rose Hills, and Kuntz has said the goal is to deliver a neighborhood that exceeds water standards rather than assume the current capacity is fine. But Rose Hills isn't the only large development in the pipeline. East Helena is also weighing Prickly Pear Estates, a proposed 4,000-home project, on top of Rose Hills' 1,500. That's up to 5,500 new rooftops being discussed for a town whose general fund runs on $2 million a year, without the water rights that once belonged to the site itself.
This doesn't mean Rose Hills won't get built. The bond application, the land, and the community support are all real and moving forward. But if you're weighing East Helena's long-term growth trajectory against a town like Townsend or Three Forks, the water question is the one piece of this story that isn't fully resolved, and it's worth asking about directly if you're planning to buy with resale or long-term appreciation in mind.
If You're Looking at an Older Home in East Helena
Separate from Rose Hills, there's a practical detail current and prospective East Helena homeowners should know about: the EPA's yard soil replacement program is still active in 2026.
As of 2023, the EPA had already removed and replaced contaminated topsoil at 793 residential yards, along with commercial properties, unpaved roads and alleys, parks, and school playgrounds across town. New federal guidance on acceptable lead levels means more yards are being scheduled for replacement, and EPA staff have confirmed homeowners are already signed up for the 2026 field season. The work is free to the homeowner, and the EPA works directly with families on the process.
If you're buying an older home in East Helena, it's worth asking:
- Has this specific yard already been part of the EPA's soil replacement program, and if so, when
- If not, is it eligible, and what does the enrollment process look like
- Are there any groundwater use restrictions tied to the East Valley Controlled Groundwater Area that would affect well installation on the property
None of these are dealbreakers. They're the kind of due diligence questions that separate a buyer who understands the town's history from one who's caught off guard by it later.
What This Means If You're Comparing Towns
If East Helena is on your shortlist next to Helena proper, Townsend, or Three Forks, the takeaway isn't that the Superfund history should scare you off or that it guarantees a bargain. It's that the town's entire growth pattern right now, from its schools to its parks to its next 1,500 homes, is being built directly out of that cleanup settlement. The prices you see today reflect a tight, fairly normal small-town market. The prices you'll see in Rose Hills over the next few years will reflect something else entirely: a purpose-built, separately financed neighborhood designed to hit price points the rest of East Helena currently can't touch.
That's a different kind of opportunity than "cheap because of contamination." It's worth understanding the difference before you make an offer.
If you want a closer look at how East Helena fits into the broader Helena-area picture, or want a straight answer on what a specific property's Superfund history does or doesn't mean for your purchase, Bronda Bowery knows this market from the ground up. You can browse the Helena neighborhood guide or get a home valuation for your own property before deciding your next move. Let's Connect.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is East Helena still an active Superfund site? The former ASARCO smelter property remains under EPA oversight, with cleanup managed by the Montana Environmental Trust Group. Contaminated soil removal and groundwater monitoring are ongoing, and the EPA's sixth five-year review of the site is currently underway.
When will homes in Rose Hills actually be available to buy? Site infrastructure work is expected to begin in late 2026, with the first phase covering roughly 170 homes on 101 building lots. Full buildout of the 1,500-plus home neighborhood is a multi-year project.
Will Rose Hills affect the value of homes already for sale in East Helena? It's reasonable to expect some effect once new-construction inventory at lower price points enters the market, though the scale and timing depend on how quickly the development is built out. The financing structure keeps the infrastructure costs isolated to the new development rather than spreading them across existing homeowners' tax bills.
