A surge in interest thanks to the hit series is ramping up homebuying in the state and worsening affordability challenges for first-time buyers
The combination of remote work and people fleeing cities with strict pandemic regulations helped to shape housing markets in many regions of the United States. This includes Montana, where locals watched out-of-town buyers flood the market.
Dave Krueger, a mortgage broker at Montana Family Mortgage, has seen it firsthand in the major cities of the state, including Missoula, where his business is located. He said that affordability challenges are making homebuying difficult, particularly for first-time buyers.
“With the rate environment and the rates being higher, it's very difficult now, especially in a lot of the populous areas, to buy a home,” Krueger told Mortgage Professional America. “First-time homebuyers are really getting pushed out of the market.”
As people sought to escape the big cities in 2020 when the pandemic struck, one area that caught their attention was a place spotlighted in a popular television series.
“When COVID hit and we had everyone want to get the heck out of all of the big cities, people started to realize, ‘Hey, this Montana place is pretty cool,’” Krueger said. “’We've seen a series called Yellowstone that looks neat.’ And they came up here and realized it is what they projected it to be. This is like God's country. This is like paradise up here.”
First-time buyers turning to assistance
While out-of-state buyers found a great new place to live, they also ate up a lot of the housing inventory, which caused prices to increase.
“That's wonderful for the transplants, and not so wonderful for a lot of people who live here,” Krueger said. “We have seen a very large rise in house prices over the last probably six or seven years. When you look at a place like Missoula to get an entry-level first-time homebuyer, two-bedroom, one-bath, small house, you're probably looking at every bit of $450,000, sometimes $500,000.
“For that first-time homebuyer who's 26 years old and doesn't make great money, that's simply not achievable in most cases.”
Krueger said that due to increasing prices, many first-time homebuyers require additional assistance to purchase a home successfully.
“What I have seen in the last six or seven years in Montana is a reduction of first-time homebuyers being able to buy the houses unaided, meaning they don't have a gift from parents,” he said. “A lot of our first-time homebuyers do have gifts. They do have co-signers. They do have other circumstances that allow them to buy that house.”
The surge in population, which has caused local prices in major cities to skyrocket, has left long-time residents frustrated.
Steve Marks (Ohana Mortgage Solutions) is successfully utilizing multigenerational mortgage loans in Hawaii, where cultural norms often include multi-family living arrangements, to help first-time homebuyers qualify for mortgages they otherwise couldn't. https://t.co/jzdqjxSdKl
— Mortgage Professional America Magazine (@MPAMagazineUS) July 23, 2025
“That's a change in the market and a frustration point for a lot of Montana residents with just how high the prices are now,” Krueger said. “Couple that with the high interest rates, and it's difficult to buy a place. I mean, we're in little Missoula, Montana, and there are decent places that are going for $700,000 or $800,000 that seven or eight years ago would have been $300,000.
“There's just been a pretty big change, I think, equal shares COVID and the series Yellowstone, with pushing people into the state.”
Serving those who serve
One of Krueger’s focuses is VA loans. He also lends to borrowers who work in other service industries, and he’s seen many of those people struggle with housing affordability.
“VA is my number one product by far, but I work with a lot of police, teachers, nurses, firefighters, educators,” he said. “And the challenge is, I've had nurses that make, you know, $90,000, they have some student loans. They can't qualify because they can't even buy a basic starter home or starter townhome in the city, because of what the prices are.
“The term that gets floated around every now and then is ‘Poverty with a view.’ And sometimes that's true. I mean, the wages aren't bad, but when you go to buy a house, man, it's tough.”
He said some local credit unions offer products that claim to better serve those who work in service industries, but those offerings can sometimes be worse in the long run.
“You get some credit unions that say, ‘We’re going to give you these incentives because you guys are awesome,’” Krueger said. “’So here you go, no mortgage insurance,’ to try to help people. The frustrating part of that is that then economics takes over and they realize, ‘Oh yeah, we’re not going to charge mortgage insurance, but we are going to raise the rate by 0.5%.
“And that’s the frustrating part, because there’s really no good programs out there that just simply provide a tangible benefit without a catch.”
Not only are local credit unions the ones he’s trying to compete with, but also large national lenders who have large advertising budgets and flood the market to win business. Despite the size of his competitors, Krueger is competing by providing excellent customer service.
“My office is very, very small,” he said. “We have the most five-star Google reviews in the entire state of Montana, and we are tiny. But the challenge is, Rocket Mortgage spends millions of dollars in advertising across the nation every single month. I can’t compete with that advertising, so I rely on word-of-mouth advertising. But when someone doesn’t know, and they just look at the billboards, listen to the radio, and look at TV, the big conglomerates win all day long because the little guys, little family-owned businesses, can’t compete with it.”
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