Sun City

What Is It Like To Live In Sun City?

Sun City is flat, single-story and built around its own civic association, and that's what sets it apart from every other neighborhood in Menifee. The Sun City Civic Association campus is at 26850 Sun City Boulevard, and the association counts 4,766 residences in the community.

Here's what's actually there. Two pools and a spa, a fitness center, pickleball courts, tournament horseshoe pits, indoor tournament shuffleboard, lawn bowling and a billiards hall. Then an amphitheater, a stage and ballroom, a wood shop, a lapidary room for rock polishing, jewelry and metalwork, and a library. The association keeps an activity calendar for its clubs, and you can find it on their website.

For a walk, the Salt Creek Trail runs right through. Lazy Creek Park and Recreation Center is on Lazy Creek Road, and John V. Denver Park is a small city park on Encanto Drive.

What Is Close By?

McCall Boulevard runs through Sun City and meets the 215 at the interchange by Encanto Drive and Bradley Road. From the middle of the community the freeway is a little over half a mile away as the crow flies, and from there it's north toward Riverside or south to Murrieta and Temecula.

Menifee Global Medical Center is on McCall Boulevard and has a 24-hour emergency department. Loma Linda University Medical Center Murrieta is on Baxter Road in Murrieta.

For dinner close to home, Lady R Bistro is right on Sun City Boulevard. It's newer, and it's our pick for eating out in Sun City.

What Happened To The Golf Courses?

Read the street signs and you'll see the golf names everywhere: Pebble Beach Drive, Oakmont Drive, Pinehurst, Cherry Hills Boulevard.

The courses themselves have changed. The North Course closed in 2017. Cherry Hills Golf Course was sold to Ambient Communities, a San Diego developer, in January 2024 and has stayed closed. In early 2026 the city said no formal development application had been submitted, and any new use would need a zoning change.

If a home backs onto either course, ask me where that land stands before you write an offer. What happens there decides what's behind your back fence.

How Did Sun City Start?

The Del Webb Corporation started building Sun City in 1962, on the model the company had already proved in Arizona: single-story houses on flat, walkable streets, built around a civic association with its own recreation buildings. It was its own town for forty-six years, and it kept the name when Menifee incorporated in 2008 and took it in.

That history is why it looks nothing like the rest of the city. Menifee's other communities are master plans from the last twenty years, with two-story homes, tile roofs and gates. Sun City is sixty years older, and you can tell from the first street you turn onto.

What the Del Webb model really left behind is the Sun City Civic Association, and a listing photo never shows it. Very little of what the association runs exists anywhere else in the valley, at any price. I can't think of another neighborhood around here with a lapidary room for rock polishing, jewelry and metalwork.

Sun City also sits on the Salt Creek Trail, which runs east through Menifee and is shared with the rest of the city, so your walks don't stop at the community's edge. Lazy Creek Park is a short way off the trail.

What Do Homes In Sun City Cost?

These are small single-story houses. Of the 242 Sun City homes that closed in the last twelve months, all were single-story. In the year to August 2026, roughly three quarters of the homes sold were under 1,600 square feet. Of those, about 150 went up between 1962 and 1970, and the rest came over the two decades after.

Now the prices. In the year to August 2026, most Sun City sales closed between $300,000 and $500,000, and none went over half a million. If budget is what decides it for you, this is where the valley still has an answer.

What Should You Check Before Buying In Sun City?

Start with the age restriction and make sure it works for your household. Sun City is a 55+ community under the federal Housing for Older Persons Act, and the association sets the qualifying rules. We don't. They're specific, so clear them before anything else.

Then price out the systems. On a Sun City house built around 1962, look hard at the roof, the electrical panel, the sewer lateral and the original single-pane windows. A home where none of them have been touched is a very different buy from one where all four have been done. Ask what's been replaced and when, and get it in writing.

The original Del Webb floor plans had a carport instead of a garage, and plenty of them along Murrieta Road and Encanto Drive have been enclosed over the years. Whether that work was permitted matters for the appraisal, and Riverside County records will tell you.