National

New homes on the range: Weary city dwellers escape to Montana, creating a property gold rush

By Lisa Rein
Oct. 20, 2020 at 11:30 p.m. EDT

BOZEMAN, Mont. — The four-bedroom contemporary just west of town smelled of fresh paint, flooring, sealant and new beginnings. The Bridger Mountains beckoned against an azure sky off the back deck, and Robert Carder, Montana's newest transplant, couldn't contain himself. ... “This is your new home, Conner!” he exclaimed to his 57-pound Australian cattle dog, whose paws were slipping on the wood floor in the living room. Carder spread his arms wide. “How much bigger is this than the picture?” he asked his wife, Valentina, confirming what the couple from Los Angeles already knew.

Their living room didn’t just seem bigger than the photos on Zillow that had led them to make a $559,000 offer after 24 hours in Montana, a place they had never been. The 2,300-square-foot house was twice the size of the two-bedroom condo they sold in Brentwood, Calif., before packing their cars and driving 16 hours northeast, released from the confines of the coronavirus pandemic and the jobs Robert had grown to hate and Valentina had lost.

This was the 19th walk-through their broker, Charlotte Durham, had done for out-of-state clients since Montana’s virus shutdown ended in late April and its real estate market flipped into hyperdrive. Buyers fleeing New York, Los Angeles and other densely populated U.S. cities say they want to leave the coronavirus clusters and social justice unrest behind. .... Even as the state’s fierce winter looms, the transplants are pushing house prices to record levels. Some are offering millions of dollars in cash for houses and land they have seen only on the Internet.

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Montana has remained a mystery to most Americans, even though it boasts some of the most magnificent scenery in the West. But as the pandemic has taken hold across the United States, what once were rural outposts here have turned into boomtowns. ... These arrivals are not just tourists visiting Yellowstone National Park or looking for a wilderness vacation. This is a stampede of transplants descending in Porsche Cayennes and Teslas with cash offers. It’s multimillionaires grabbing up luxury ranches to serve as second or third homes. It’s buyers with more modest resources looking for a way out. It’s city dwellers seeking bare land in Montana’s wilderness to serve as insurance policies for America’s uncertain future.

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Charlotte Durham, an owner-broker for Big Sky Sotheby’s International Realty, shows clients a listing in Bozeman in the Black Bull community, a private golf course a few miles west of downtown. (Tony Bynum for The Washington Post)

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The median price of a single-family home around Bozeman vaulted $94,000 from July to August, to $710,000, according to the Gallatin Association of Realtors, which tracks sales in the city of 52,000 and the surrounding valley, the state’s fastest-growing region.

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Lisa Rein
Lisa Rein covers federal agencies and the management of government in the Trump adminstration. At The Washington Post, she has written about the federal workforce; state politics and government in Annapolis, and in Richmond; local government in Fairfax County, Va. and the redevelopment of Washington and its neighborhoods. Follow https://twitter.com/Reinlwapo