There Are Only 2 States Where It’s Harder to Buy a House Than in Montana Right Now

We all know buying a house in Montana has become difficult, but the latest study shows it's gotten extreme.

Even if you're not looking at the data a person can see from the home prices that things have gotten pretty wild. Recently, we looked at what $1M would buy in some of Montana's cities. A decade ago you might have thought a million-dollar home in Montana would have been a mansion, but now they look more like houses.

READ MORE: Montana $1,000,000 Homes for Sale 

How Hard It Was to Buy a House in Montana in January 2024?

Only two months ago, a study looked at how difficult it was to buy a home in every state by comparing the home prices to the income in each state. Homebuyer.com provided those rankings and at that time, Montana was ranked 41 out of 50 for cheapest places to buy a house (i.e., it's not cheap).

How Hard It Is to Buy a House in Montana in March 2024?

Now, the real estate website Agent Advice looked at census data and the Zillow Home Value Index and also reviewed the income-to-home price for each state. Their data suggests things are even worse than we thought.

Montana ranks 3rd overall as one of the "least affordable (places) to save for a house deposit," according to Agent Advice. But the astonishing thing is which two states share the top three with Montana: California (ranked 2nd) and Hawaii (ranked 1st).

When Have Montana, California, and Hawaii Topped the Same List?

Can you think of a time when these three states were all ranked together...for anything?

Even though the incomes and home values were higher in Hawaii and California, the ratio of income to home value is what put Montana so close to the top of the list.

The places with the best ratio of income to home value were Kansas (3rd) Iowa (2nd) and West Virginia (1st). Not long ago, it would have been more common to find any ranking where Montana and West Virginia were close together on a list.