The Flathead Valley area is getting a new semi-professional baseball team!

One of the most common questions I receive from people moving to The Flathead Valley area is, “What is there to do?” There’s plenty! Today I want to discuss what sorts of activities we like to do for fun around The Flathead Valley, including a special new attraction.  

There are excellent skiing mountains in the winter and wonderful fishing spots in the summer. We also are close to Glacier Park if you are interested in hiking and wildlife. Great rodeos come to town, and there are concerts all year round. The range of activities here is great, but there’s a new thing coming to town that may pique your interest. 

We’re getting a semi-professional baseball team called the Glacier Range Riders. Naturally, the mascot will be a mountain goat. The stadium is currently under construction and will be open this summer. It will have 2,500 seats, so there should be plenty of room for a fun crowd. 

"This team could be an anchor for our community."

The first game will be on June 14, and there will be 48 home games. The Range Riders will be the fourth team in the state of Montana, the others being in Missoula, Great Falls, and Billings. They play in the Pioneer League, which is affiliated with Major League Baseball and consists of 10 teams total. 

The tickets become available in February, but you can reserve season tickets now. Just visit www.gorangeriders.com if you’re interested. I believe this team could be an anchor for our community, so I’m excited about their arrival! 

If you have questions about today’s topic or anything real estate-related, please call or email me. I am always willing to help.

Explaining the absorption rate and how it has changed since the pandemic.

If you’ve been following me for a while, then you may be familiar with our market’s absorption rate. However, I haven’t talked about this topic in a while, and things have changed, so today I want to discuss our absorption rate and what it means for the Big Fork area.

First, let’s talk about what an absorption rate is. A good example to use is our grocery stores. Before the pandemic, the shelves were almost always stocked, and you never had an issue buying what you wanted. Now with supply chain disruptions and pandemic regulations, the grocery supply isn’t restocked as often, and many things are more difficult to buy. Once the stores finally do restock, it may only take a week for everything to be gone. The time it takes for the supply to deplete (in this case, one week) is the absorption rate.

Now, let’s apply this concept to real estate. If we look at last month’s market, we can take the number of homes listed for sale and compare it to the number of homes that sold. If the number of homes listed for sale is three times higher than the number of homes that sold, then we would have an absorption rate of three months. However, in a market with low supply and high demand like ours, the absorption rate is usually much lower.

Let’s see how the absorption rate in our market differs depending on the properties’ price ranges. For comparison’s sake, I’ll include the numbers from 2017 as well:

$0 to $400,000

2017: Two to five months

2021: Less than one month

$400,000 to $750,000

2017: Six to 12 months

2021: Two to three months

$750,000 to $1,000,000

2017: Over a year

2021: Three to five months

$1,000,000 to $3,000,000

2017: Two to four years

2021: Four to seven months

$3,000,000

2017: 11 years

2021: Around one year

As you can see, the pandemic and its effects have lowered our absorption rate way below average. This means it’s a great time to sell your home since there are tons of buyers and not enough supply to meet the high demand. If you have any questions about today’s topic, please call or email me. I’d love to help you.

Today we’ll give a recap of how our real estate market fared in 2021.

Hopefully your 2022 is already off to a great start! Today we want to recap how our market fared in 2021 and share some data and interesting things that happened during the year.

Cited below for your convenience are timestamps that will direct you to various points in the video. Feel free to watch the full message or use these timestamps to browse specific topics at your leisure:

0:01 — Introducing today’s topic

0:29 — Flathead and Lake Counties

2:26 — Flathead Lake

5:53 — Echo Lake and Lake Blaine

7:18 — Swan Lake and Swan River

9:26 — Ashley Lake, Bitterroot, McGregor, and Foys Lake

10:50 — Whitefish Lake

11:24 — Wrapping up

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us via phone or email. We look forward to hearing from you.

Does your insurance policy detail unoccupied/vacant exclusions?

Today’s topic is for people who have seasonal homes in the area and are leaving or have already left. While I was going over the insurance renewal for my home, I stumbled across an exclusion in the policy for vacant and unoccupied residences. Today I’ll share what that exclusion is and what you need to know about it.

There are two key words to define. ‘Vacant’ means that all furniture and other evidence of someone occupying the home has been removed. ‘Unoccupied’ means that the home is furnished but no one is living there currently. The exclusion regarding these homes says if the home is vacant or unoccupied for more than 90 days, the coverage on the insurance policy is reduced down to 60%. 

When might this come up? For example, if you’re selling your home and have already moved all the furniture out, it might be that you need to have a friend stay in the house and document that they stayed there. Why? Well, if the home caught on fire, and the question came up of how long it has been since somebody was last there, you might get reduced coverage.

Be sure to check your insurance policy to see if it details any unoccupied/vacant exclusions.

Years ago, when I was selling a house, I suddenly got a notice from the insurance company saying that it needed to be occupied in order to maintain our current coverage. We had to rent out the home to avoid losing coverage.

Ultimately, check your insurance policy to see if it details any unoccupied/vacant exclusions. If you have any questions about today’s topic or anything else to do with real estate, give us a call or send us an email. We’d love to help you.

Here’s the latest news that proves just how inaccurate Zestimates are.

Some of you may have heard the recent news about Zillow. I’ve made videos about their various online services in the past and how they affect the market, but I wanted to talk about this most recent one.

Zillow had been using their Zestimate to make offers on homes the AI told them would be a good value. It tried to factor in appreciation, the cost of repairs, and the cost to sell. They had been doing this for a while and had become a big real estate company. However, they announced that this fall that they would put it on ice and analyze what went wrong.

We always knew Zesitmates were unreliable, but now history proves it.

One source I had said they were losing around $80,000 a house. Fairly recently, they announced that their whole iBuyer platform, as these sorts of online cash offers are called, would be abandoned. That caused quite an uproar, and some of you might’ve seen that Zillow’s stock dropped 25%. Also, around 25% of their employees were laid off.

We’ve always talked about Zestimates being unreliable. Zillow admits this themselves because they have a state-by-state reliability chart below the page that gives the Zestimates. History now shows that the best source for your home value is a person who can keep their finger on the pulse of the market.

I hope this was interesting and helpful. There’s probably more news to come about this whole situation. If you have any questions or are looking to buy or sell, feel free to call me.

Here are all the latest numbers from our residential waterfront market.

Today I’m sharing our third-quarter real estate market report for 2021. All our numbers are reflective of an extremely strong market. However, there’s very little for sale across the board, whether you’re looking for a home or vacant land. 

You can watch my full market update, or you can skip around to each topic using the timestamps provided below:

0:00 — Introduction to today’s topic

0:50 — Flathead Valley overview of actives, solds, and pendings

2:30 — Flathead Lake homes overview

3:25 — Flathead Lake vacant land overview

4:45 — Flathead Lake condos overview

5:45 — Echo Lake and Lake Blaine homes overview

6:20 — Echo Lake and Lake Blaine vacant land overview

7:05 — Swan Lake overview

7:45 — Swan River overview

8:35 — West Lakes homes overview

9:00 — West Lakes vacant land overview

10:05 — Whitefish Lake overview

11:05 — Lake Mary Ronan overview

11:50 — Wrapping up

If you have any questions or a topic you’d like us to cover in a future video, please let us know via phone or email. We’ll do some research and answer your questions or make a video about what you’d like to see. Just let us know how we can help you.

Here are all the latest numbers from our residential waterfront market.

Here’s an update on the most popular 10-year investments today.

Today I’m following up on a video blog from about a year ago. In that video, I covered what you should do with your money when you sell. I brought up an article by Bankrate which looked at the popularity of different investments that you’d hold for 10 years, and real estate was on top. I just received an update on that same topic, and I thought it would be interesting to cover.

Real estate is still No. 1, but it was much more popular with younger people. Stocks and bonds used to be the No. 2 option, but now it’s cash. People might be waiting to see how the economy does, but they also might be looking for good buying opportunities in real estate since cash is so strong in transactions.

Real estate is still the No. 1 long-term investment.

Gold stayed pretty steady. Bonds used to be No. 4, but they lost their spot to Bitcoin, going from 7% in popularity to 4%, while cryptocurrency jumped from 4% to 9%. I frankly don’t know much about cryptocurrency, but it’s pretty interesting that people feel it’s a good long-term investment. 

I always find it a little interesting to see how people are handling their wealth, and I hope you do too. If you have some questions about this survey or anything related to real estate, feel free to give me a call. I’d be happy to pass along more information.

Here are the 10 big rules surrounding the 1031 tax-deferred exchange.

Today I want to talk about the 1031 tax-deferred exchange. As the market gets stronger and people are willing to sell, I’ve been asked about it a lot. There are 10 rules to follow with 1031 exchanges that we’ll go through in detail today.

Cited below for your convenience are timestamps that will direct you to various points in the video. Feel free to watch the full message or use these timestamps to browse specific topics at your leisure:

0:09 — Introducing today’s topic

1:06 — No. 1 Once you close, you have 45 days to identify replacement properties

1:49 — No. 2 The three property rule

2:16 — No. 3 The 200% rule

2:49 — No. 4 Close on 95% of properties if over 200% value

3:39 — No. 5 Closing doesn’t mean you can identify more properties within 45 days

4:08 — No. 6 The property needs to be properly identified

4:40 — No. 7 Who receives the identification?

5:29 — No. 8 Replacement properties must be the same value as identified properties

6:18 — No. 9 Identified construction costs can be covered by your facilitator

7:16 — No. 10 Facilitator funding for replacement closing

7:58 — Wrapping up

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me via phone or email.

Here’s your midyear 2021 Flathead area real estate market update.

Today, I’ll be going over my 2021 second-quarter market report. The market still looks to be moving very fast, so I’ll jump right in with what you need to know right now. 

Below, I’ve included timestamps for each area I cover in the video: 

0:44 — Overall market for Flathead and Lake Counties

1:30 — Flathead Lake looks strong 

3:08 — Swan Lake and Swan River 

4:29 — Echo and Blaine Lake

5:11 — Foys Lake

5:51 — Ashley Lake

6:31 — Bitterroot Lake

7:11 — McGregor Lake

8:00 — Wrapping up and interesting facts 

10:08 — Contact info 

If you’d like to know more about any of the properties mentioned in this video or have real estate questions in general, do not hesitate to reach out to us. We’d love to hear from you.