Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Don't Shoot The Piano Player

Don't Shoot The Piano Player

The house

and the land it was built on

seemed to die all at once,

but at night

you can still hear the music play

Some place just beyond the veil

the Party goes on without end.

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Bozeman Property values on the rise again. Good news or Bad news ?



  So I am a homeowner, or I share ownership with my mortgage lender. So I like seeing my homes value getting back to the value I paid for it  7 yrs ago. There is a huge building boom both in commercial real estate and housing.

    The question is what and where the jobs are in the valley and is the income  growth keeping up with ownership costs and the rising city and county tax rate. I'm not sure. A lot of this  residential growth appears to be rental units and small condos. Are these being built  for  long term [population or for the people building the very housing they live in ?




The median sale price for a home in Bozeman has jumped $16,000 to $345,000 between the second and third quarters of the year, according to the city’s community development department.
The increase, community development director Wendy Thomas said Monday, comes as the city’s housing market climbs out of the recession spurred by the 2008 financial crisis. Median housing prices have climbed steadily since 2009, according to data compiled by the Gallatin Association of Realtors.
That data, Thomas said in a written report to the Bozeman City Commission, indicates that single-family homes are no longer affordable for families making less than the median income of $68,200 for a family of four.
“I think it knocks even more people out of the pool,” Thomas said, saying that a family’s income is often a limiting factor on their ability to secure a mortgage.
    The question is what and where the jobs are in the valley and is the income  growth keeping up with ownership costs and the rising city and county tax rate. I'm not sure. A lot of this  residential growth appears to be rental units and small condos. Are these being built  for  long term [population or for the people building the very housing they live in ?

In 2013, 839 single-family homes were sold in the Bozeman area, an 80 percent increase over 462 in 2009, according to the realtors’ association. In the first nine months of 2013, 680 were sold.