Missoula Housing Market “Back to Normal”

For the first time in 5-years, home prices in Missoula have not only hit a "flat spot" but have actually dropped slightly.

That's the upshot of the 2025 report from the Missoula Organization of REALTORS®.

Median home prices had climbed rapidly in recent years, especially after the post-pandemic boom, hitting a high of $562,400 at the end of 2024. However, that number had pulled back to $550,000 at the end of this past December. Sales volume also increased, showing the availability of more housing units on the market.

     🏡 MOR's Mandy Snook says that shows the market is stabilizing.

"After the housing bubble in 2009, we saw both prices and volume decrease. Now we see the opposite. Volume has increased while prices have stabilized.

It's more of a normalization of activity. More homes are selling, they're concentrated and slightly more attainable price points. The shift where buyers are active is what influences the median."

Realtor Brint Walberg explained that housing supply is also back to normal, with several neighborhoods hitting what he's called a "healthy" level of a 6-month supply of homes.

"We have an increase of buyer activity, around more affordable, attainable price points relative to Missoula's market. And we're seeing in some of these neighborhoods that supply is tight. People are trying to get in there. It is a more competitive area."

That's different if you focus on homes listed over $1,000,000, however, where there's a "oversupply" of homes out to 13-months. The most sales activity has been in the rapidly growing Sx͏ʷtpqyen neighborhood west of Missoula, largely driven by the recent building boom.

"$600,000 and under in Missoula, still stay, it's in the normal range, but you're kind of starting to flirt with under supply. People are trying to get into housing at or under these price points." - Brint Wahlberg, MOR

"Markets are cyclical," Snook adds. "We see that over time, and you just have to ride it out sometimes, and it's really nice right now for both buyers and sellers for the market just to feel more normalized."

READ MORE: Montana Closes In on Least Affordable Homes List

Big winds in the east

It's going to be another day of brutal winds as Eastern Montana is getting blasted, with National Weather Service forecasters, the worst of the gusts are yet to come on Thursday. And they could last into Friday.

Many locations were seeing maximum wind gusts as high as 60 miles per hour along the Rocky Mountain Front, and across Central Montana into the afternoon. Dozens of locations have already topped 50 on Wednesday.

And NWS forecasters in Great Falls believe it will get worse on Thursday, especially on the Front. Heart Butte, East Glacier, Browning, and Babb have a 90% plus chance of winds exceeding 75 miles per hour. High wind warnings have been posted for nearly all of Central Montana, into the southwest part of the state.

Downing confident of Stillwater future

Representative Troy Downing is hopeful that the Trump Administration's decision to impose a duty on palladium will provide the market changes needed to get the Stillwater Mine back in operation.

The mine has been closed for more than a year, largely because the operation couldn't compete with Russian palladium, which is being dumped on the market. Downing hopes the duties will bring a market adjustment,

"We don't want market manipulation. We want equilibrium. We want it to go where it actually, you know, will go naturally, where the markets drive it," Downing said in an interview with Montana Talks this week. "And that is at an economically feasible point for them to start pulling it out of the ground in Montana again. The only place in America, in the United States, that pulls platinum and platinum out of the ground."

So I'm feeling pretty good that we're going to get to the economic position globally that allows them to start rehiring those miners. And I know there were 700 plus that were laid off, and hopefully we can get them back to work."

     ⛏️ Palladium prices have been lower since the duty was imposed 2 weeks ago.