The first 6 months of 2020 are behind us, and what a crazy 6 months it has been. Sitting at the halfway point, I thought it appropriate to look back and see how the local real estate market has fared over these tumultuous months.  

A shortage of supply relative to the demand has been the Bozeman real estate story for a number of years, and a health pandemic didn’t help ease the shortage. From the first of the year through July 1, 649 single family homes were listed for sale in the greater Bozeman area, versus 722 homes listed during the same time last year. This represents a 10% drop in new listings. While it is difficult to track, there is anecdotal evidence that some homeowners that previously planned on selling in 2020 have held off due to concerns over Covid-19.  

Looking at sales, 435 homes sold this year, versus 457 last year. While the number of sales is down, it’s down 4.8% versus the 10% reduction in new listings. As of the date of writing, there are an additional 230 homes pending or under contract, compared to only 182 homes at this same point last year, and 172 the year before.

There are many ways to run the median sold price for Bozeman, depending on whether one includes condos, townhouses, and homes outside of city limits. Looking at just single-family homes both inside and outside city limits, the median sold price continues to climb, sitting at $523,317, a 9.8% increase over the median sold price at this time last year of $476,500. Restricting the data to single-family homes just inside city limits, we see a similar 9.3% increase from $437,000 last year to $477,750 this year.

Looking back further at that area including homes both inside and outside of city limits: From 2016 to 2017, median pricing for single family homes rose steadily by 4.6% from $375,000 to $392,271. However, from 2017 to 2018, it took a nearly 12% rise to $439,325 for the first half of 2018. The median sold price during the first half of 2019 rose 8.4% from the previous year.  

Again, looking at the area just inside city limits, median sold pricing from 2017 rose nearly 12% (1.7%) from $374,250 in 2017 to $418,130 in 2018.  From 2018 to 2019, it rose another 4.5%.

The months’ supply of homes for sale has remained relatively steady, albeit extremely low, hovering around 2.9 to 3 months for the past year. This is the number of months that it would take to sell the homes currently on the market. Some say that a “normal” or “healthy” market would have a 5- to 6-month supply of homes.
Generally, anything below a 6-month supply is considered a seller’s market and anything above a 6-month supply is considered a buyer’s market.  

There has been a lot of talk as to whether the Covid-19 pandemic will actually push more buyers into the Bozeman market as people look to get out of bigger cities and cramped spaces in search of what Big Sky Country offers. To date, we don’t have a great means of tracking this number officially, but again using anecdotal evidence, there is certainly a lot of indicators that our area is continuing to attract out-of-state buyers.

As usual, I have included data for the number of single-family homes sold during the first six months of 2020.

The included data reflects sales of homes in the greater Bozeman area, including Four Corners, Gallatin Gateway, Bridger Canyon, and Bozeman city limits. The data includes home sales reported through the local Big Sky Country MLS, and does not include private party sales, Condominiums, or Townhouses.