The market is down three tenths of one percent. That's how much the price of a single family home in the Bozeman area changed over a full year, with the August median at $786,625 against $789,000 a year ago.
Be careful with that number, though, because the areas underneath it went in completely different directions. One town out here appreciated more than 11% this year while the city sitting right next to it came in 5.5% lower, in the same month and the same set of closed sales. And if you own a condo or townhome and you've been thinking about listing this fall, there's a number in this data I want you to hear first. That number is 51 days.
Rather listen than read? Both halves are on camera: the September market update and the luxury update.
The short version
The valleywide median has gone almost nowhere for four years, and which part of the valley your house sits in decided your entire year.
Single family homes are going under contract in 13 to 17 days at 98 to 99% of asking, so you get about two weeks of real attention when you list.
Above $1.5 million there are 246 listings and 27 August sales, which is roughly nine months of supply and the only genuine buyer's market in the valley.
Prefer to watch?
The general update, area by area:
And the luxury breakdown above $1.5 million:
What is the Bozeman real estate market doing right now?
The Bozeman area median single family price sat at $786,625 in August, down 0.3% year over year, which continues a plateau that started in 2023. Underneath that flat headline, Belgrade appreciated 11.6% while Bozeman city limits and the surrounding county area both posted median declines driven by far fewer closings rather than by falling values. Single family homes are selling fast, condos are taking three times as long, and the luxury tier has tipped to buyers.
Is this the crash people have been waiting for?
That answer depends on what a house here sold for since 2006. Back then a typical home went for right around $200,000, and it held within about fifty grand of that straight through the crash that flattened much of the country. By 2020 it had risen to roughly $410,000.
Then came the part everybody remembers, where in three years it went from $410,000 to $775,000. Almost double in under thirty-six months. And then it stopped. 2024 came in around $778,000 and 2025 finished at about $785,000, so that's three full years where the gap between the highest and lowest figure is about 1%.
If you've been waiting for this market to break, it already did whatever it was going to do, and what it did was stop going up without ever really coming back down. There's been four years of that now, so a number down three tenths of a percent in August is basically the same market sitting where it's been sitting.
The month the median and price per square foot disagreed
Something about a flat year like this confuses people, and it's worth understanding before we go area by area, because it explains almost everything below.
Across every property type in the Gallatin Valley, the August median sale price was $[CONFIRM], up 2.8% from last August, which on its own is a decent year. In that very same month, price per square foot dropped 1.6%. Those two are supposed to move together.
So what happened? The things selling changed. Price per square foot tells you what a foot of house costs. The median is different: line up every sale that closed in a month from cheapest to most expensive, and the median is whichever one lands in the middle. If a handful of large houses close in a given month, that middle sale sits higher and the median goes up, even though nobody's house gained a dollar. Fewer big sales and it comes down the same way. Keep that in mind, because it explains four of the five areas below.
Valleywide single family: the most accurate number here
The one place both numbers agree is single family homes valleywide, down three tenths on the median and half a percent on price per square foot, across 96 closed sales. For the most part I'd call that the most accurate figure in this entire update.
Inside Bozeman city limits: 40% fewer sales
So why is the city down 5.5% when the valley as a whole is flat? Here's the number to think about. Twenty-nine houses closed inside Bozeman in August, and last August it was forty-eight. We lost roughly 40% of the sales out of a single month.
When that many sales drop out, the median lands wherever the remaining houses happen to sit, and that's how the city ended up at a median of $779,000, down 5.5% from last year, while price per square foot inside Bozeman moved less than 1%. If you own inside the city and saw that 5.5% and figured your house gave back $40,000, I don't think that's what happened. And if you're on the other side of it, waiting for the city to keep sliding, I'd look hard at that price per square foot before deciding to wait longer.
One thing in the Bozeman data genuinely moved, though. Houses inside the city went under contract in 14 days in August where last year it took about 30, and they sold for 98.9% of asking. Far fewer sales are happening in town, and the ones that do happen are happening fast, so don't plan on having much time to think about whether to make an offer.
The surrounding Bozeman area and its $1.3 million median
Cross the city line into the county ring that wraps around Bozeman and more houses sold out here in August than sold inside the city, thirty-four against twenty-nine. That catches people off guard, and it's worth knowing if you've been searching only inside city limits and wondering why so few options come up.
The median out here was $1.3 million, the highest anywhere in the valley by a wide margin, and it's down 13.3% from last August. Same story as the city, only on a bigger scale, since price per square foot out here costs about 1.2% less than a year ago. That 13.3% drop is sitting on top of a market that barely moved on what houses are actually worth.
Buyers should know one more thing about this area, which is the pace. It would take about five and a half months to sell everything currently listed out here, against about four months in town. That's the widest market for buyers in the valley outside some of the small towns, so if you want selection and a little room to negotiate, I'd be looking in the county areas around Bozeman before looking downtown.
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Belgrade did something no other town did
Ten minutes north, both of Belgrade's numbers went up. The median single family price came in just under $614,000, up 11.6% from last August, and price per square foot rose 5.5% over the same year. Those numbers come off twenty-three closed sales, so this isn't a thin sample.
That means the median didn't move because the mix of houses changed. This is a market where houses are simply worth more than they were a year ago, and Belgrade is the only place in the valley I can say that about this month.
It's also the fastest market out here, with homes going under contract in 13 days against 31 a year ago, and sellers getting about 98.7% of what they list for. So the town people have been calling the affordability option for a decade is, this month, the strongest performer in the Gallatin Valley. If you're a buyer treating Belgrade as a fallback, take another honest look. And if you already own there, you've had a better year than the valley headline is telling anybody.
Manhattan and Three Forks: thin samples, real closings
Further west the samples this month are thin, so let me be direct. Manhattan closed five homes in August at a median of $680,000, and Three Forks closed four at a median of $432,000. Those are real closings and the numbers are small, because five sales and four sales aren't a real read on a market. I won't tell you Manhattan appreciated 26% off five sales.
What I will tell you is that Three Forks at $249 a square foot is still the least expensive place to buy anywhere in the Gallatin Valley, by a fairly wide margin.
Condos and townhomes: the 51 day problem
Here's the 51 days I mentioned at the top. That's how long it took to sell a condo in this valley in August, where a house took an average of 17. Inside the city limits the spread is even wider, at 57 days for an attached home against 14 for a single family home, and the condo figure is up 58% from where it was last year.
Pricing held up fine through all of that, with the valley median for a condo at $499,000, down 3.1%, while price per square foot actually went up 1.2%, which by now you know is the mix of homes changing rather than prices moving. So on the attached side I plan around the wait far more than the price. Listing a condo this fall, that's the difference between pricing where it will move and watching it sit into November.
The luxury market: 246 listings, 27 sales
Above $1.5 million, 246 homes are listed in Gallatin County right now and last month twenty-seven of them sold. At the rate these are actually selling it would take about nine months to clear every one, which makes the top of this market the hardest place to be a seller anywhere in the valley.
For context on what nine months means: under four months of supply and a seller sets the terms, and past six months it flips to buyers. So while the rest of the valley sits in a range where nobody has much of an edge, the top has genuinely tipped, and it tipped toward buyers. Shopping above $1.5 million, you have more room to work with than you've had in a long time.
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The 40% gap between asking and paying
Line up all 246 listings by price and the one in the middle is asking just under $2.9 million. Assess the twenty-seven that actually sold and the median came in a little over $2 million. Those two are about 40% apart, which is a lot of asking price with no buyers behind it.
Is that a real gap or a few overpriced listings dragging the numbers around? Days on market is where you see it. Homes sitting on the market right now have been listed a median of 90 days, and the ones that sold in August were at 25. What moves at the top of this market moves quickly, and a lot of what's listed isn't moving at all.
What luxury sellers actually walked away with
I pulled the original asking prices on all twenty-seven sold listings, rather than the final list price, because a lot of these got repriced along the way and the final number hides that. Measured against original asking, sellers got a median of 96.7%. Eleven of the twenty-seven got full asking or better, which is a healthy share, and four closed below ninety cents on the dollar. The worst of those was a home on Spruce Cone up in Big Sky that came out just under $2 million after originally asking $2,400,000.
Volume also sits lower in the range than most people assume. Twelve of the twenty-seven closings landed between $1.5 and $2 million, so nearly half of everything that sold in August, and only four sales in the whole county cleared $4 million.
Why the high end never had the run-up you remember
Here's what surprises people, and it's the reason I break these out separately. Going back to 2020, the valley median for a single family home was around $410,000, and three years later it was about $775,000, so it nearly doubled. Over that same stretch the median sale above $1.5 million went from roughly $1.9 million to $2.2 million, which is about 14% in three years.
Being honest about why that is, the $1.5 million line doesn't move. So as everything underneath got more expensive, houses that used to go for $900,000 crossed over and joined the pool, which pulls that median down. The top of the market absolutely appreciated, and the middle of the pool just keeps getting refilled from underneath.
Through August of this year, the median above $1.5 million is $2.2 million against just under $2.1 million over the same eight months last year. So the top of this market is up 5% on the year.
Big Sky, which stays out of the valleywide numbers
Big Sky closed thirteen homes in August at a median just under $1.5 million, and I keep those out of every valleywide figure above on purpose. It's genuinely a separate market with a different pool of buyers and different forces acting on it, and folding thirteen sales at that price into a countywide number would throw off everything else.
Above the $1.5 million line up there, the median came in right around $2.5 million, about 25% higher than the Bozeman area's luxury number. There's also something odd at these price points this month, since above $1.5 million the condos are pricing above the houses, which is the reverse of everywhere else. Keep in mind those numbers come off a handful of closings, and in Big Sky a lot of the high-end condos are simply worth more than single family homes.
More deals started in August than reached closing
Pending sales are the best answer we have for where this goes from here, and this month they say something the closings don't. More people went under contract in August than last year. New pendings across the valley were up 15.1% while closed sales finished 19.2% below last August. On the single family side, pendings were up almost 10% while closings fell 23%, and condo pendings were up almost 30%.
Meanwhile the number of homes for sale is down 9.4% from last year, and at August's pace it would take a little under five months to sell everything listed right now, where a year ago it was closer to four. That went up because sales slowed while the listing side stayed about where it's been all year.
So August was a month with more people going under contract than getting to the closing table, which is another reason we may need another month to see what that median price really does.
What I'd do with this, depending on your side of the table
Here's the two-week window I mentioned at the start. Selling a single family home, this is a faster market than the flat headline suggests: 14 days inside the city of Bozeman, 13 in Belgrade, 17 valleywide, with sellers getting between 98 and 99% of asking. You get about two weeks of real attention when you list, and pricing high to wait for the right offer doesn't work in your favor inside that window. Price your home where the most similar recent sale actually closed.
Selling a condo or townhome runs on a different clock. Plan on about sixty days and build that into your calendar before you list rather than finding it out three weeks in.
For buyers, the selection is outside Bozeman city limits right now, at five and a half months to clear what's listed against four months in town, and nobody has much of an upper hand in that kind of market. Belgrade is the exception, so go in knowing it's the tightest market in the valley and price your offer accordingly. Above $1.5 million, write the offer you actually want to write rather than the one you think they'll accept, because the median seller in August took about 97% of original asking and roughly one in seven took less.
Listing at that price point, look hard at the 25 day figure. What sells up here sells fast, and it sells fast because it came out priced where a buyer would say yes right away. That $18,950,000 sale is the clearest version, the most expensive home to close in this county in August. It sold for exactly what the seller was asking and it took 46 days. Nobody negotiated on that one, because it never got listed asking for negotiation. The homes stacking up at 90 days are the ones that opened high and expected the market to come find them, and with 245 other options out there, it won't.
Does the valleywide median hold up?
It doesn't. What it's made of is one town that genuinely appreciated, alongside a city and a surrounding area where median prices dropped because far fewer houses closed. This is the plateau that started back in 2023, still holding underneath the entire market.
The cleanest way to look at it: a house at the Belgrade median is worth about $614,000 today, and a year ago that same middle-of-the-market Belgrade home was closer to $550,000. So an owner out there picked up something like $64,000 in twelve months, though some of that is new construction mix. That's the only place in this valley where I can say it and have both numbers back me up.
Four years now, the valley median has gone almost nowhere, and in that fourth year the thing deciding how your year went is which part of the valley your house is in. Whatever you do, don't price your home off the valleywide median. Look at your specific city and your specific property type.
Your home is probably the biggest single piece of equity you own, and what you do with it comes down to understanding the numbers that actually apply to your house rather than the headline. That's exactly what I built the Montana Move Method for.
September 2026 Bozeman market: quick answers
What is the median home price in Bozeman right now?
The Bozeman area median single family price was $786,625 in August, down 0.3% from $789,000 a year earlier. Inside Bozeman city limits specifically the median came in at $779,000, though that drop reflects 40% fewer closings rather than falling values.
Is the Bozeman housing market crashing?
Prices have been effectively flat for four years, with 2024 at about $778,000 and 2025 finishing near $785,000, a spread of roughly 1%. The market stopped climbing after the 2020 to 2023 run without coming back down, which is a plateau rather than a decline.
Which part of the Gallatin Valley appreciated this year?
Belgrade was the only area where both the median and price per square foot rose, up 11.6% and 5.5% respectively across 23 closed sales. That sample is large enough to show real value gains rather than a change in the mix of homes selling.
How long do homes take to sell in Bozeman?
Single family homes went under contract in 14 days inside Bozeman, 13 days in Belgrade, and 17 days valleywide in August, at 98 to 99% of asking price. Condos and townhomes took 51 days valleywide and 57 days inside the city.
Is it a buyer's market in Bozeman?
Above $1.5 million it is, with 246 listings against 27 August sales and roughly nine months of supply. In the everyday market there's just under five months of supply valleywide, which is a range where neither side holds a clear advantage.
Why did the median drop while price per square foot stayed flat?
The median reflects whichever sale lands in the middle of a month's closings, so when large sales drop out of the mix the median falls even if no home lost value. Price per square foot measures what a foot of house costs, which is why it's the better read when closing volume swings.
What do these numbers mean for your house?
The valleywide figure almost certainly isn't your number. Book a call with me and I'll pull the closed comparables for your specific area and property type, which is the only version of this data that should inform what you do next.
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Note: Montana is a non-disclosure state, so sale prices are not public record and cannot be shown by consumer sites. All figures above come from closed sales in the Big Sky Country MLS.
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