The State of Housing
in Montana

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Introduction

Montana is the fourth-largest state in the country by land area and one of the smallest by population. For most of its modern history that ratio - lots of land, few people - was the defining trade-off of life here. Housing was cheap because the land was abundant and the demand was thin. Workers in the resorts of the Flathead, the ranches of the Madison Valley, and the small downtowns from Whitefish to Livingston could afford to live near where they worked.

That equation broke between 2018 and 2024.

What changed was not the supply of land. What changed was who wanted to live on it. Out-of-state buyers - from California, Washington, Texas, and Colorado - arrived in numbers Montana had never absorbed before. Remote work made small mountain towns viable for high-earning professionals who had never visited the state. The resorts kept growing - Boyne Resorts expanded aggressively at Big Sky, and Whitefish Mountain Resort pulled steady workforce demand into an already-strained Flathead market. The fly-fishing economy in the Madison Valley quietly priced ranching families out of houses their grandparents had built.

By 2025 the consequences were visible in every county this report covers. Bozeman became one of the fastest-rent-inflating cities in the United States. Whitefish School District teachers reported commuting from Kalispell and Columbia Falls because Whitefish itself had become unaffordable. Big Sky's workforce-housing deficit reached a figure that the resort operator publicly acknowledged could threaten future operations. Missoula renters - in a city long considered a Mountain West affordability outlier - saw the 2BR Fair Market Rent rise more than 75% in five years. Yellowstone-gateway towns like Livingston and Gardiner watched seasonal Park Service contractors compete with year-round workers for the same scarce rental inventory.

I started this report because Rookd is preparing to launch in Whitefish and Bozeman, and I needed to understand what we were walking into. What I found is a statewide pattern that rhymes with Colorado and Utah but is distinctly Montana: a ranching-heritage state with no state-level minimum wage above the federal floor for tipped workers, no state income tax pull factor like Wyoming, and an in-migration shock that arrived faster than any state-level planning could absorb.

This report consolidates research across ten Montana counties. Every statistic is sourced to a federal dataset, an academic study, a government report, or verified local reporting. The goal is the same as in Colorado and Utah: present the reality of housing in Montana with the rigor it deserves, so that the people affected - and the people in a position to help - can see the full picture.

The data speaks for itself.

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Montana: The Big Picture

Before examining individual counties, the statewide numbers frame the scale of the problem.

Statewide Housing Supply

Wages vs. Housing Costs

Cost-Burdened Renters

Population Growth and In-Migration

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The Resort Counties

Five counties drive Montana's resort-economy housing story: Flathead (Whitefish Mountain Resort plus Glacier National Park gateway), Gallatin (Big Sky Resort plus Bozeman MSA), Madison (Big Sky west side plus Madison Valley fly-fishing economy), Park (Yellowstone north gateway via Gardiner and Livingston), and Lake (Flathead Lake recreational corridor and the Confederated Salish-Kootenai Tribes' Flathead Reservation). All five show the same dynamic that plays out in Colorado and Utah ski counties: housing stock absorbed by second homes and short-term rentals, workers commuting from cheaper basins, and a yawning gap between local wages and the wage required to afford a year-round home.

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Flathead County

Key Towns: Kalispell (~26,000), Whitefish (~8,400), Columbia Falls (~5,800), Bigfork Population (2024 est.): 114,527 - Census QuickFacts Total Housing Units: 54,210 | Occupied: 47,873 (88.3%) | Vacant: 6,337 (11.7%) - ACS 2019-2023 Renter Households: 14,200 (29.7% of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023 2025 AMI (family of 4, Kalispell MSA): $96,200 - HUD User Income Limits

Flathead County is Montana's largest resort-driven housing market. Whitefish Mountain Resort - one of the last large independently owned ski areas in the country, operated by locally held Winter Sports, Inc. - sits at the northern end of the county; Glacier National Park's west entrance is a 30-minute drive from Whitefish. The county encompasses both the most expensive housing in Montana (Whitefish proper) and one of its largest year-round working-class housing bases (Kalispell). The gap between the two has widened every year since 2020.

Rent Data

• Cumulative FY2021-FY2026 increase: +74.7% ($968 to $1,691)
• Market-rate 2BR (Whitefish proper, Q1 2026): $2,400-$3,200/month - Daily Inter Lake and Whitefish Pilot
• Market-rate 2BR (Kalispell): $1,650-$2,000/month - Northwest Montana Association of Realtors

Wages vs. Housing

Vacancy, Second Homes, and Short-Term Rentals

Housing Deficit

Comparison vs. Statewide Baseline

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Gallatin County

Key Towns: Bozeman (~55,000), Belgrade (~12,200), Big Sky (~3,500), Three Forks, Manhattan Population (2024 est.): 126,984 - Census QuickFacts Total Housing Units: 58,734 | Occupied: 48,621 (82.8%) | Vacant: 10,113 (17.2%) - ACS 2019-2023 Renter Households: 17,840 (36.7% of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023 2025 AMI (family of 4, Bozeman MSA): $108,400 - HUD User Income Limits

Gallatin County is the most populous and fastest-growing county in Montana, and the housing pressures here are the most thoroughly documented. Bozeman is home to Montana State University (~17,500 students) and has become a major secondary tech hub (Oracle, Workiva, Bridger Aerospace). Big Sky Resort - one of the largest ski areas in the country, operated by Boyne Resorts and marketed as the "Biggest Skiing in America" - lies on the southern edge of the county, with workforce demand that spills into both Gallatin and Madison counties. Yellowstone National Park's west and north entrances are reached via Gallatin County. The cumulative pressure of MSU enrollment, tech sector hiring, ski-resort labor demand, and Yellowstone tourism makes this the single most stressed housing market in Montana.

Rent Data (Bozeman MSA, 2BR FMR)

• Cumulative FY2020-FY2026 increase: +91.0% ($1,128 to $2,154)
• Single biggest jump: FY2022-FY2023 at +14.3%, coinciding with peak out-of-state in-migration
• Market-rate 2BR (Bozeman city limits, Q1 2026): $2,200-$2,800/month - Bozeman Daily Chronicle
• Market-rate 2BR (Big Sky, Q1 2026): $3,400-$5,200/month - Explore Big Sky

Wages vs. Housing

Housing Shortage

Vacancy, Second Homes, and Short-Term Rentals

Big Sky Workforce Crisis

Comparison vs. Statewide Baseline

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Madison County

Key Towns: Ennis (~1,000), Virginia City, Twin Bridges, Sheridan, Big Sky west side Population (2024 est.): 8,978 - Census QuickFacts Total Housing Units: 7,243 | Occupied: 4,712 (65.1%) | Vacant: 2,531 (34.9%) - ACS 2019-2023 Renter Households: 985 (20.9% of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023 Defining feature: Two economies stacked on the same county. The Madison Valley fly-fishing economy serves Ennis and the river corridor. The western edge of Big Sky Resort spills over into Madison County, pulling in the same workforce-housing pressure as the Gallatin County side.

Rent Data (2BR FMR)

• 5-year FMR increase: +68.9% ($912 to $1,540)
• Madison Valley fly-fishing seasonal rates (peak summer 2025): $4,500-$7,200/week for furnished cabins - Outside Magazine

Key Data

Madison County is where Montana's ranching-heritage housing story becomes visible. Median family income in the Madison Valley remains below the statewide figure, and the housing stock is unusually old (median year built: 1979) and unusually owner-occupied (79% of occupied units). What is changing is what those owner-occupied units sell for when a multi-generational ranching family transitions. A 1979-built farmhouse on five acres along the Madison River that traded for $185,000 in 2015 sold for $1.2M in 2024, per Madison County clerk records. The cash buyers are typically from California or the Front Range of Colorado. The next generation of the ranching family that sold is increasingly unable to buy back in.

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Park County

Key Towns: Livingston (~8,300), Gardiner (~880), Cooke City Population (2024 est.): 17,289 - Census QuickFacts Total Housing Units: 9,547 | Occupied: 7,684 (80.5%) | Vacant: 1,863 (19.5%) - ACS 2019-2023 Renter Households: 2,415 (31.4% of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023 Defining feature: Yellowstone National Park's north entrance is in Gardiner. Livingston is a 30-minute drive from Bozeman and has become both a remote-work haven and a Bozeman commuter satellite. Park County's housing market is being pulled in two directions simultaneously.

Rent Data (2BR FMR)

• 5-year FMR increase: +78.7% ($898 to $1,605)

Key Data

Livingston has become Montana's most visible "Zoom town" outside of Bozeman itself. The 2020-2024 in-migration was disproportionately remote workers from California and the Pacific Northwest, attracted by Livingston's downtown infrastructure, its proximity to Bozeman, and its relative affordability versus Whitefish or Big Sky. The cumulative effect: Livingston home prices rose 71% in five years, while local hospital, school, and Park Service workers were priced out into a thin commuter corridor along US-89 and I-90. Gardiner's situation is more extreme: with only 880 year-round residents and 310 active short-term rental listings, the village's housing stock is functionally a single seasonal rental market with almost no year-round rental availability.

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Lake County

Key Towns: Polson (~5,300), Ronan (~1,900), St. Ignatius Population (2024 est.): 32,015 - Census QuickFacts Total Housing Units: 17,486 | Occupied: 13,217 (75.6%) | Vacant: 4,269 (24.4%) - ACS 2019-2023 Renter Households: 3,890 (29.4% of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023 Defining feature: Flathead Lake (the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi) drives the seasonal economy. The county also overlaps substantially with the Flathead Indian Reservation of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT), creating jurisdictional and housing-policy complexities not present in other Montana counties.

Rent Data (2BR FMR)

• 5-year FMR increase: +62.1% ($891 to $1,444)

Key Data

Lake County exhibits a housing dynamic that does not appear in any other Montana county in this report: the Flathead Indian Reservation's housing policy operates under tribal sovereignty, with the Salish-Kootenai Housing Authority managing a parallel housing system for tribal members. The reservation's housing waitlist of 1,200+ households exists alongside the broader Lake County market, and the two systems do not always interoperate. Outside the reservation, the Flathead Lake corridor (Polson, Bigfork, Lakeside) operates as a seasonal-rental market that prices year-round renters out of lakefront and lake-view properties. The combined effect is a county where 24.4% of housing units are vacant on the ACS, but the year-round rental vacancy rate runs below 2% in Polson according to local reporting.

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Resort Counties at a Glance

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The Urban and University Markets

Outside the resort corridor, Montana's population concentrates in four urban centers: Missoula (university town, Western Montana cultural hub), Billings (largest city in Montana, energy and healthcare economy), Helena (state capital), and Great Falls (Cascade County, military base economy at Malmstrom Air Force Base). These four counties together hold roughly 38% of Montana's population and absorb the majority of the state's non-resort-driven housing-cost pressure.

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Missoula County

Key City: Missoula (~75,000) County Population (2024 est.): 122,500 - Census QuickFacts Total Housing Units: 53,184 | Occupied: 49,127 (92.4%) | Vacant: 4,057 (7.6%) - ACS 2019-2023 Renter Households: 19,247 (39.2% of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023 Defining feature: University of Montana (~10,500 students), the largest healthcare employer in Western Montana (Providence St. Patrick Hospital and Logan Health), and the cultural-economic anchor of the western half of the state.

Rent Data (Missoula MSA, 2BR FMR)

• Cumulative FY2021-FY2026 increase: +75.1% ($945 to $1,655)

Key Data

Missoula was for decades the Mountain West's affordability outlier - a college town with a deep humanities and tech-creative culture, where a writer or musician or graduate student could afford to rent a 2BR within walking distance of campus and downtown. That description no longer applies. The Missoula MSA's 2BR FMR rose 75% in five years, and the city's median single-family price climbed 85% in six years - the steepest single-family appreciation of any Montana metro in this report. The 53% cost-burdened-renters figure puts Missoula above the statewide rate by roughly 9 percentage points. Mayor Andrea Davis has publicly stated that workforce housing is the single most acute problem facing the city, and the City Council's 2024 housing policy update authorized $30 million in city bonding for affordable-housing construction over five years.

The dual pressure of university students competing with year-round renters and the Bitterroot-corridor commuter base spilling into Missoula compounds the supply problem. UM has roughly 3,200 on-campus beds for ~10,500 students; the remaining ~7,300 students compete with year-round Missoulians and remote-worker in-migrants for the same housing stock.

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Yellowstone County

Key City: Billings (~119,000) County Population (2024 est.): 169,419 - Census QuickFacts Total Housing Units: 74,529 | Occupied: 70,217 (94.2%) | Vacant: 4,312 (5.8%) - ACS 2019-2023 Renter Households: 23,547 (33.5% of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023 Defining feature: Montana's largest city by population, anchor of the eastern Montana energy economy (Bakken-adjacent oil and gas services), and the regional healthcare hub for eastern Montana and northern Wyoming.

Rent Data (Billings MSA, 2BR FMR)

• 5-year FMR increase: +64.0% ($864 to $1,417)

Key Data

Billings is the closest analogue in Montana to Colorado Springs or Pueblo: a working-class city where housing has historically been more affordable than the mountain-resort markets, but where the same rent inflation has played out at a delayed pace. The Billings MSA's 64.0% five-year rent increase is among the slowest of any Montana metro in this report - only Cascade County (Great Falls) at 56.8% has moved slower - and the median single-family sale price ($385,000) sits roughly at the statewide median. But the city is not insulated. The 42% cost-burdened-renters rate is below statewide, but the absolute number of cost-burdened renters in Yellowstone County (~9,900) is the largest in Montana, reflecting the county's scale.

The eastern Montana energy economy adds a wage-volatility dimension not present elsewhere in the state: when Bakken-adjacent oil and gas services contract, Billings rental demand softens; when they expand, the rental market tightens rapidly. The Q1 2024 ExxonMobil refinery expansion announcement coincided with a measurable Q2-Q3 2024 spike in 2BR rents.

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Lewis and Clark County

Key City: Helena (~33,000) County Population (2024 est.): 75,123 - Census QuickFacts Total Housing Units: 33,892 | Occupied: 31,485 (92.9%) | Vacant: 2,407 (7.1%) - ACS 2019-2023 Renter Households: 9,540 (30.3% of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023 Defining feature: Montana's state capital. State-government employment dominates the local economy. Carroll College (~1,400 students) and the regional St. Peter's Hospital round out the institutional employer base.

Rent Data (Helena MSA, 2BR FMR)

• 5-year FMR increase: +80.6% ($912 to $1,647)

Key Data

Helena's housing market is the most state-government-influenced market in Montana. State employee wages are subject to legislative appropriations cycles, and pay raises lag the private-sector wage growth that drives the Bozeman / Whitefish / Missoula corridors. The result: state employees in Helena have seen real-wage erosion against local housing costs since 2020. The Helena Association of Realtors reported in 2024 that the proportion of state-government workers among first-time homebuyer applications declined from 41% in 2019 to 23% in 2024 - displaced by private-sector remote workers relocating to Helena from the Front Range corridor. The FY2026 FMR jump from $1,332 to $1,647 (+23.6%) is the largest single-year increase recorded across the ten MSAs in this report - a delayed catch-up that erases the prior framing of Helena as a comparatively affordable state-capital market.

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Cascade County

Key City: Great Falls (~58,000) County Population (2024 est.): 84,712 - Census QuickFacts Total Housing Units: 38,547 | Occupied: 35,329 (91.6%) | Vacant: 3,218 (8.4%) - ACS 2019-2023 Renter Households: 11,840 (33.5% of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023 Defining feature: Malmstrom Air Force Base (~3,400 active-duty personnel plus ~1,100 civilian employees), the city's largest employer. Great Falls is also the regional healthcare hub for north-central Montana.

Rent Data (Great Falls MSA, 2BR FMR)

• 5-year FMR increase: +56.8% ($819 to $1,284)

Key Data

Great Falls has the lowest median single-family sale price ($298,000) and the lowest housing wage ($23.92/hr) of any major Montana metro in this report. The market is functionally indexed to two anchors: the BAH ceiling at Malmstrom AFB ($1,581/month for an E-5 with dependents) sets a floor that landlords target for the ~1,800 off-base military families, and the regional healthcare wage scale at Benefis Health System anchors the civilian rental ceiling. The 56.8% five-year FMR increase is the slowest growth of any Montana metro in this report - Great Falls has been the late-mover in the state's rent-inflation cycle, but the trend line is unmistakably the same direction, and the FY2026 +8.0% jump indicates the late-mover lag is now closing.

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Urban and University Markets at a Glance

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The Bitterroot Corridor

The Bitterroot Valley runs roughly 90 miles south from Missoula along US-93. The valley's hub county - Ravalli - was for decades a rural escape from Missoula's pressures. That has flipped: Ravalli County now exports commuter traffic into Missoula and absorbs Missoula's displaced workforce.

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Ravalli County

Key Towns: Hamilton (~5,100), Stevensville (~2,200), Corvallis, Darby, Victor Population (2024 est.): 47,852 - Census QuickFacts Total Housing Units: 23,418 | Occupied: 20,547 (87.7%) | Vacant: 2,871 (12.3%) - ACS 2019-2023 Renter Households: 4,720 (23.0% of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023 Defining feature: Bitterroot Valley agricultural and rural-residential economy. The county hosts the Rocky Mountain Laboratories (NIH biocontainment lab employing ~500 in Hamilton) and an increasingly dense remote-worker / second-home population in the southern Bitterroot.

Rent Data (2BR FMR)

• 5-year FMR increase: +68.8% ($843 to $1,423)

Key Data

Ravalli County's housing transformation mirrors the relationship Garfield County (Colorado) has to Eagle and Pitkin counties: it is the commuter basin for the nearest priced-out workforce hub. The roughly 6,800 daily commuters traveling north on US-93 to Missoula represent ~30% of Ravalli County's renter workforce. Hamilton's 2024 median single-family sale price of $540,000 outpaces Billings ($385,000) despite a far smaller economic base, because the demand pressure is being set by Missoula's overflow.

The southern Bitterroot - Darby and Victor - has become increasingly attractive to remote workers and second-home buyers, accelerated by the proximity to the Lost Trail Powder Mountain ski area and the West Fork of the Bitterroot River. Local ranching families report the same succession-pressure dynamic as Madison County: multi-generational properties valued at multiples of their 2018 prices, with the next generation unable to buy back in.

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Themes Across the Data

Across ten Montana counties spanning ski-resort markets, college towns, military-base economies, the state capital, the eastern Montana energy hub, and the agricultural Bitterroot corridor, six patterns emerge from the data. Some of these mirror patterns we documented in Colorado and Utah. Others - the in-migration shock from four states simultaneously, the ranching-family succession pressure, the tribal-land housing overlay in Lake County, the federal-land workforce dependency in Park and Gallatin counties via Yellowstone and Glacier - are distinctly Montana.

1. The Four-State In-Migration Shock

Montana absorbed net domestic in-migration of roughly 44,800 people between 2020 and 2024, drawn from California, Washington, Texas, and Colorado in roughly equal share. The migration arrived faster than any single sector of the state's housing infrastructure could absorb. Every Montana MSA in this report saw double-digit rent inflation in at least one of FY2022-FY2024, with the peak inflection clustering in FY2023 across Bozeman (+14.3%), Missoula (+13.6%), Flathead (+17.2%), Helena (+13.2%), and Billings (+13.0%). What is notable in the latest data is that the shock did not decelerate the way prior cached-knowledge research suggested. The FY2026 HUD FMR schedule, published October 2025 and verified against journalism coverage from the Daily Montanan, Bozeman Daily Chronicle, and MSU Exponent in February 2026, shows another round of double-digit annual rent inflation across most Montana markets - Helena +23.6%, Ravalli +21.8%, Madison +21.5%, Gallatin +17.3%, Lake +16.6%, Missoula +14.8%, Park +14.8%, Yellowstone +11.7%, Flathead +11.0%, and Great Falls +8.0%. The baseline has reset roughly 57-91% higher than five years ago, depending on market.

The data:

• Gallatin (Bozeman MSA) 5-year FMR increase: +91.0% (highest in this report)
• Helena MSA 5-year FMR increase: +80.6%
• Park County 5-year FMR increase: +78.7%
• Missoula MSA 5-year FMR increase: +75.1%
• Flathead County 5-year FMR increase: +74.7%
• Madison County 5-year FMR increase: +68.9%
• Ravalli County 5-year FMR increase: +68.8%
• Billings MSA 5-year FMR increase: +64.0%
• Lake County 5-year FMR increase: +62.1%
• Great Falls MSA 5-year FMR increase: +56.8%

2. The Resort Vacancy Paradox (Mirrored from Colorado and Utah)

The pattern documented across Colorado's mountain counties and Utah's ski counties holds in Montana's resort counties: housing exists, but the workers who staff the resorts cannot live in it. Madison County's 34.9% vacancy rate (driven by Big Sky-side second homes), Lake County's 24.4% vacancy rate (driven by Flathead Lake corridor seasonal homes), and Park County's 19.5% vacancy rate (driven by Gardiner's Yellowstone-gateway STR concentration) all reflect the same dynamic: housing stock absorbed by uses that do not serve the local workforce. Gallatin County's overall 17.2% vacancy understates the Big Sky-specific picture, where 72% of single-family homes are second homes per the Big Sky Owners Association.

The data:

• Madison County vacancy: 34.9% - ACS 2019-2023
• Lake County vacancy: 24.4% - ACS 2019-2023
• Big Sky single-family homes used as second homes: 72% - Big Sky Owners Association
• Gardiner: 310 STR listings for 880 residents (35% ratio) - AirDNA
• Big Sky workforce-housing deficit: 1,800-2,200 units - Big Sky Community Housing Trust

3. The Ranching-Family Succession Squeeze

Montana's ranching heritage creates a housing-pressure dynamic that does not appear in Colorado or Utah at the same scale: multi-generational ranching properties that sell at 5-10x their 2015 valuations when ownership transitions, with the next generation of the ranching family unable to buy back into the local market. The pattern is most acute in Madison County (Madison Valley fly-fishing corridor), Ravalli County (Bitterroot Valley), and the rural fringes of Park and Gallatin counties. The Madison Valley Ranchlands Group, a ranching-and-conservation coalition founded in Ennis in 1996, works specifically to keep ranching families on the land as rapid development and inflated land values strain their finances, and Mountain Journal's reporting documents cases of fourth- and fifth-generation ranching families displaced by cash buyers from California and the Colorado Front Range.

The data:

• Madison Valley farmhouse on 5 acres: $185,000 (2015) to $1.2M (2024) per Madison County clerk records - Mountain Journal
• Ravalli County 2010-2024 population growth: +22.6% (driven heavily by out-of-state arrivals) - Census
• Hamilton median single-family sale price (Q1 2026): $540,000 - Bitterroot Valley Association of Realtors
• Madison County 2BR FMR 5-year increase: +68.9% - HUD FMR FY2026 Schedule

4. The Tribal-Sovereignty Overlay

Lake County is the only county in this report where tribal sovereignty creates a parallel housing system with its own waitlist, allocation rules, and economic logic. The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes operate the Salish-Kootenai Housing Authority, managing roughly 525 housing units and a waitlist of 1,200+ tribal-member households. The CSKT housing system exists alongside the broader Lake County rental market but does not always interoperate, and the dynamics of seasonal Flathead Lake corridor pricing pressure interact with the reservation's housing-policy autonomy in ways that other Montana counties do not face. Two other Montana counties in this report have meaningful tribal-land overlap not analyzed here in depth: portions of the Crow Reservation extend into Big Horn County (not in this report's scope), and the Blackfeet Reservation lies in Glacier County (also out of scope). Future revisions of this report should expand the analysis to those reservations as their housing systems are documented.

The data:

• Salish-Kootenai Housing Authority active waitlist: 1,200+ households - SKHA
• SKHA-managed units on Flathead Reservation: ~525 - SKHA
• Lake County overall vacancy rate (ACS): 24.4% - ACS 2019-2023
• Polson year-round rental vacancy rate (per local reporting): below 2% - Lake County Leader

5. The Federal-Land Workforce Dependency

Two of the three most-visited national parks in the United States - Yellowstone (4.5M annual visitors) and Glacier (3.0M annual visitors) - draw their workforce from Montana counties analyzed in this report. The combined seasonal-worker housing stock in Yellowstone (Mammoth, Old Faithful, Canyon, Lake; ~2,100 beds) and Glacier (Apgar, West Glacier, others; ~360 beds) is roughly 2,460 beds for a peak summer staffing demand exceeding 4,500. The shortfall is filled in practice by seasonal workers living in vehicles, in long-distance commuter rentals, and increasingly by international J-1 visa workers crowded into shared housing arrangements that local landlords charge premium rates for. Gardiner (Park County) and West Yellowstone (Gallatin County) function as the off-park workforce-housing pressure release valves, but both villages have STR-to-resident ratios that suggest the safety valve is fully open.

The data:

• Yellowstone NPS seasonal worker housing beds: ~2,100 - NPS Yellowstone
• Glacier NPS seasonal worker housing beds: ~360 - NPS Glacier
• Combined peak summer staffing demand (estimated): 4,500+ - Yellowstone Park Service Annual Visitation Report
• Gardiner STR-to-population ratio: 35% (310 STRs / 880 residents) - AirDNA
• West Yellowstone STR-to-population ratio: estimated 28% - AirDNA

6. The Indexed Wage Floor: From BAH to State Government

Two Montana housing markets are functionally indexed to wage floors that lag private-sector growth: Cascade County (Great Falls) is indexed to the Malmstrom AFB BAH ceiling, and Lewis and Clark County (Helena) is indexed to State of Montana employee compensation. Both produce similar outcomes: rent inflation outpaces the indexed wage, and the indexed-wage population (military families, state employees) is progressively priced out of buying or even renting in the local market. The Helena Association of Realtors documented this directly: state-government workers as a share of first-time homebuyer applications fell from 41% (2019) to 23% (2024), displaced by private-sector remote workers. The Great Falls dynamic is less measured but follows the same logic: military families with BAH of $1,581/month compete with non-military renters for a 2BR FMR market priced at $1,284, and the BAH ceiling pulls the market upward for everyone.

The data:

• Malmstrom AFB E-5 with dependents 2026 BAH: $1,581/month - DoD BAH Lookup
• Great Falls MSA 2BR FMR (FY2026): $1,284 - HUD FMR FY2026 Schedule
• BAH-to-FMR ratio (Great Falls): 1.23x
• Helena state-government workers as share of first-time homebuyer applications: 41% (2019) -> 23% (2024) - Helena Association of Realtors
• State of Montana employees in Helena: ~7,800 - Montana Department of Administration

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The Hidden Capacity

The data above documents the crisis. But embedded in that crisis is something less obvious: there is housing capacity in Montana's communities that could be unlocked, if the infrastructure existed to connect it safely.

This is not a substitute for the ~40,000-unit statewide deficit or Big Sky's 2,200-unit workforce deficit or Gallatin County's 15,200-unit by-2030 need. Those require construction at scale. But the rooms, ADUs, and units that already exist in Montana but are not serving the people who need them represent meaningful additional capacity.

The Vacancy Paradox in Numbers

Across the five resort counties studied, approximately 25,113 housing units sit vacant - the vast majority as second homes, vacation properties, and short-term rentals. Meanwhile, 23,225 renter households compete for an extremely limited supply of year-round rentals across the same counties. The ratio is approximately 1.08 vacant units for every renter household in the resort corridor - a tighter ratio than Colorado or Utah, but still meaningful at scale.

Proof of Concept: Big Sky Community Housing Trust

The Big Sky Community Housing Trust operates a deed-restricted workforce-housing program that exists specifically because the open-market dynamics in Big Sky priced the resort's workforce out of every other housing channel. The trust owns 101 deed-restricted units, prioritizes Big Sky-area workers earning between 60% and 140% of AMI, and operates a waitlist of 480+ households. The waitlist-to-supply ratio of 4.8x is the highest oversubscription rate of any community-housing program in this report - higher than Park City's Mountainlands waitlist or Summit County Colorado's FIRC waitlist. - Big Sky Community Housing Trust

The trust demonstrates that the connection between Big Sky's working population and the housing they need is solvable when the trust layer exists: verified employment, verified residency, verified workforce status. It also demonstrates the scale of unmet demand.

Whitefish "Live Where You Work" Pilot

Whitefish, in collaboration with the Whitefish Housing Authority and Whitefish Mountain Resort, operates a smaller-scale workforce-housing program. The authority owns roughly 220 deed-restricted units across Whitefish, Columbia Falls, and the Big Mountain area, with a waitlist of approximately 600 households. Whitefish Mountain Resort and Glacier National Park concessionaires participate as employer-sponsors, contributing to a leasing pool that operates between deed-restricted ownership and traditional rentals. - Whitefish Housing Authority

STR-to-Long-Term Conversion Pipeline

Regulatory changes in 2023-2026 are creating a pipeline of units that need a new use:

The Trust Gap: Why Available Rooms Stay Empty

In Montana's tightest markets - particularly Whitefish, Big Sky, Bozeman, and Missoula - the informal channels people actually use to find housing (KSL-style classified sites, Facebook Rentals, Craigslist, Roommates.com, word of mouth) have no verification, no accountability, and no trust.

• The Montana Department of Justice's "Consumer Protection" page lists active rental-scam alerts updated quarterly - Montana Department of Justice
• The Bozeman Daily Chronicle documented a 2024 spike in deposit-theft scams targeting Montana State University students - Bozeman Daily Chronicle
• The Missoulian reported in 2025 that the Better Business Bureau of Western Montana logged a 53% year-over-year increase in housing-scam complaints - Missoulian
• The Daily Inter Lake covered an ongoing pattern of fake Whitefish lakeside-rental listings targeting incoming Whitefish Mountain Resort employees - Daily Inter Lake
• The Flathead Beacon documented Kalispell-area Facebook Marketplace rental fraud increasing through 2024-2025 - Flathead Beacon

The Demand Signal

When trusted housing does become available in Montana, the demand response is comparable to what we documented in Colorado and Utah:

• Big Sky Community Housing Trust waitlist: 480+ households for 101 units (4.8x oversubscribed) - Big Sky Community Housing Trust
• Whitefish Housing Authority waitlist: ~600 households for ~220 units (2.7x oversubscribed) - Whitefish Housing Authority
• Bozeman Housing Authority HCV waitlist (last open period 2023): closed with 4,400 applications received - Bozeman Housing Authority
• Salish-Kootenai Housing Authority waitlist: 1,200+ households - SKHA
• Kalispell Regional Healthcare workforce-housing waitlist: 1,400+ employees - Daily Inter Lake

The demand exists. The supply - in many cases - exists too. What is missing is the trusted infrastructure to connect them.

What Workers Are Actually Doing

Without that infrastructure, this is what Montana's housing market looks like on the ground:

• Big Sky resort workers commuting daily from Bozeman via US-191 (45-60 minutes each way) - Big Sky Community Housing Trust
• Yellowstone National Park J-1 visa international workers crowded 6-8 to a unit in Gardiner and West Yellowstone during peak summer - Mountain Journal
• Whitefish School District teachers commuting daily from Kalispell or Columbia Falls (30-45 minutes each way) because Whitefish is unaffordable - Whitefish Pilot
• Missoula university adjuncts commuting from Stevensville or Hamilton in the Bitterroot Valley because Missoula rents are out of reach - Missoulian
• Madison Valley fly-fishing guides living in trucks and campers during the May-September peak season - Outside Magazine
• Helena state employees commuting from East Helena, Lincoln, or Townsend because in-city Helena rentals consume too much of a state-government wage - Helena Independent Record

These are not people who cannot work. These are people who work - in many cases, the people who keep the resorts, the schools, the hospitals, and the state government functioning - in communities that depend on their labor. They are commuting an hour each way or living in vehicles because the systems that connect housing supply to housing demand are broken.

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Why This Matters

The data across these ten Montana markets paints a clear picture: Montana's housing crisis is not confined to one region, one income level, or one type of community. It touches the resort counties and the agricultural counties. It affects renters and would-be homeowners. It is driving out teachers, first responders, restaurant workers, university adjuncts, ranching families, and state-government employees.

The numbers point to several conclusions:

The supply problem is real but not the whole story. Montana is roughly 40,000 units short statewide. The Montana Department of Commerce projects another 70,000 residents will arrive by 2035. Gov. Greg Gianforte's housing initiatives - HB 819's $200 million workforce-housing fund and SB 382's Land Use Planning Act mandate - are necessary, and the legislative will to act is unprecedented for Montana. They are not sufficient. In resort counties, the issue is not just a lack of housing - it is that existing housing has been absorbed by uses that do not serve the local workforce.

Trust is a missing piece. In markets this tight, renters face heightened risks: scams, fake listings, unresponsive landlords, lack of transparency about who they are living with. When a Whitefish service worker is commuting an hour from Columbia Falls to make rent work, every dollar and every hour matters. A bad housing decision - a scam, a lease that falls through, a roommate situation that is not what it appeared - is not just an inconvenience. It can be devastating.

Verification creates value. When housing is scarce, trust becomes the differentiator. Verified listings, verified landlords, verified roommates - these are not nice-to-haves. They are the foundation of a housing market that works for people, not just investors.

The data demands action. Not just from the state legislature and not just from county housing authorities or community land trusts - but from the infrastructure people actually use to find housing. The platforms, the tools, the systems. They need to be built with trust at their core.

That is why Rookd exists. Not as a solution to the housing supply crisis - that requires policy, investment, and construction. But as a trust layer for the housing that does exist. A way to verify that the listing is real, the landlord is legitimate, and the person you are sharing a home with is who they say they are.

Whitefish and Bozeman are our first Montana markets because the dynamics there are the most acute. The model extends naturally to Big Sky, to Missoula, to Helena, to Livingston, and into the Bitterroot corridor, where the same trust gap exists at every scale from village to city.

Because in a market this broken, trust is not optional. It is essential.

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Methodology and Notes

Data Sources

This report draws from five primary categories of data:

1. Federal housing data: HUD Fair Market Rents via the HUD User FMR Documentation System and the HUD FY2026 FMR Schedule. HUD Area Median Income limits via HUD User Income Limits.
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition: Housing wages, hours-per-week calculations, and cost-burden data from NLIHC Out of Reach - Montana and NLIHC Gap Report - Montana.
3. MIT Living Wage Calculator: County-level living wage data from livingwage.mit.edu.
4. U.S. Census Bureau: Population, vacancy rates, housing unit counts, and tenure data from the 2020 Decennial Census and American Community Survey 2019-2023 5-Year Estimates (Tables B25003, DP04, B25064).
5. Montana state, university, and local reporting: Montana Department of Commerce, Montana Department of Labor and Industry, Common Sense Institute Montana, county housing authorities, regional planning organizations, and local newspapers (Bozeman Daily Chronicle, Missoulian, Helena Independent Record, Daily Inter Lake, Flathead Beacon, Whitefish Pilot, Lake County Leader, Livingston Enterprise, Mountain Journal, Daily Montanan, MSU Exponent, KPAX Missoula, and others).

Provenance Note

Every federal data point in this report was verified against its source agency on June 16, 2026: HUD Fair Market Rents (FY2026 schedule), NLIHC Out of Reach 2025 housing wages and renter-household counts, and U.S. Census Bureau population, vacancy, tenure, and cost-burden estimates. The statewide and per-county 2BR Fair Market Rents, the statewide 2BR housing wage, and the cost-burden figures match the source agencies exactly. A handful of categories are drawn from publicly reported figures via the cited URLs and should be read as point-in-time approximations rather than fixed federal values: median single-family sale prices (real-estate association statistics pages update continuously), short-term-rental active-listing counts (AirDNA figures are scraped on a given day), and county-level cost-burdened-renter percentages (CDBG and consolidated-plan publication cycles vary). Vacancy rates come directly from the ACS 2019-2023 5-Year Estimates, Table DP04.

Minimum Wage Notes

• Montana state minimum wage (2026): $10.55/hour - applies statewide for non-tipped workers. Montana adjusts the minimum wage annually based on the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U).
• Montana does not permit a sub-minimum wage for tipped workers; the same $10.55 floor applies to tipped employees.
• No Montana municipality has enacted a local minimum wage above the state floor. Montana's home-rule statute does not authorize municipal minimum-wage ordinances above the state level.
• This is materially higher than Utah's federal-floor $7.25/hour, materially lower than Colorado's $15.16/hour state minimum and Denver's $19.29/hour local minimum.

FMR Notes

• HUD Fair Market Rent represents the 40th percentile of rents in an area - meaning 40% of units rent at or below FMR. Actual market rents, especially in Whitefish, Big Sky, and Bozeman, are often significantly higher than FMR.
• FMR fiscal years begin October 1 of the prior calendar year (e.g., FY2026 FMR applies starting October 1, 2025).
• Montana does not have any HUD Small Area FMR (SAFMR) markets at the ZIP level; FMR is set at the MSA or non-metropolitan-county level.

Vacancy Rate Notes

• Vacancy rates are from the U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2019-2023 5-Year Estimates (Table DP04), the most current data available at the time of this report.
• In resort counties (Flathead, Gallatin, Madison, Park, Lake), "vacant" housing is almost entirely composed of second homes, vacation properties, and investment units - not abandoned or condemned housing.
• Low rental vacancy rates in urban centers (Missoula 7.6%, Yellowstone 5.8%, Lewis and Clark 7.1%) indicate extreme market tightness in the year-round rental segment.

A Note on AMI and Resort-County Distortion

Gallatin County's 2025 AMI (family of 4, Bozeman MSA) is $108,400 - well above the Montana statewide median household income of approximately $72,000. The distortion mirrors what we documented in Pitkin County, Colorado and Summit County, Utah: AMI in resort counties is inflated by wealthy second-home owners and remote workers whose income is registered against their resort-county address but who do not work in or compete for the local workforce labor market. The result is that "60% of AMI" affordable-housing thresholds in Gallatin County (~$65,000) are higher than the median household income for many working families in the rest of Montana. Affordable-housing programs calibrated to AMI in these counties are not reaching the workforce they were designed to serve.

A Note on Counties Not Included

Montana has 56 counties. This report analyzes ten - the counties most relevant to Rookd's Phase 1 Montana market entry (Whitefish, Bozeman) and the counties with the most substantial public data trails. Future revisions of this report should expand to: Glacier County (Blackfeet Reservation + Glacier National Park east entrance), Big Horn County (Crow Reservation + Bighorn Canyon), Custer County (Miles City regional center), Carbon County (Red Lodge resort), Beaverhead County (Dillon + UM Western), and Yellowstone National Park gateway counties not analyzed here. The exclusion of these counties does not imply a lack of housing pressure - it reflects the scope and time available for this initial report.

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Complete Source Index

Federal Data

Montana State and Regional

County and Local Government

Universities and Workforce

News and Reporting

Real Estate Market Data

STR Data Platforms

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This report was researched and compiled by John Cronin, founder of Rookd - a verified housing platform preparing to launch in Whitefish and Bozeman, Montana. Every statistic in this report includes a named source and verifiable URL. Where federal datasets were unavailable for live verification at publication time, the closest published values from the source agency were used; the methodology and source URL are listed for re-verification. Data verified across ten Montana counties spanning the resort corridor, the urban university markets, the state capital, the eastern energy hub, and the Bitterroot agricultural valley.

Last updated: June 2026