Pull up three different sites and ask what a home in Livingston, Montana costs right now, and you'll get three different answers moving in three different directions. Redfin says the median sale price fell 16.4% year over year to $439,000 in the three months ending May 2026. Zillow's home value index puts the average at $545,296 as of June 30, 2026, down just 1% over the same stretch. Movoto shows the August 2026 median list price at $680,000, up 13% year over year. Same town, same summer, three headlines that can't all describe the same market trend.
None of these numbers is wrong. That's the part worth sitting with before you use any of them to decide whether Livingston is a bargain, a bubble, or somewhere in between.
Two things are happening at once
The first is that Montana is a non-disclosure state. The actual sold price of a home here is only available to licensed agents through the MLS, not published in public county records the way it would be in most other states. Sites that build their estimates from public deed data have to model or infer what a home actually sold for. That's a fundamentally different exercise than pulling a confirmed closed price directly from the Big Sky Country MLS, which is the source local market reports rely on. When a portal's estimate and an MLS-sourced closing price disagree, it isn't necessarily an error on either side. They're answering slightly different questions using different raw material.
The second is volume. Livingston sold 28 homes in May 2026, barely up from 27 in the same month a year earlier, according to Redfin's own count. Local market reporting on the area has flagged this directly: because inventory is thin, a single new-construction development closing several units in one month can swing the citywide median noticeably, in either direction, without reflecting any real shift in what an individual home is worth. A market this size doesn't have the statistical mass to smooth out a lumpy month. Bozeman, with a far deeper pool of monthly closings, absorbs an unusual sale without much notice. Livingston doesn't have that luxury.
Put those two mechanics together and you get exactly what showed up in the search results this month: three sites, three methodologies, three numbers, none of them dishonest, none of them describing the same thing.
"Livingston" isn't always the same boundary
There's a third wrinkle underneath the first two, and it's the one buyers miss most often. When a source says "Livingston," it isn't always drawing the same line on the map. Redfin's figure is for the city of Livingston. Zillow's is tied to ZIP code 59047, which pulls in a bit more surrounding area. A February 2026 market snapshot from ERA Landmark Real Estate, sourced from Big Sky Country MLS Area 6, reports on Park County as a whole, where roughly 170 single-family homes sold in the trailing year at a median just under $600,000, a figure that includes Paradise Valley acreage and Emigrant properties well outside city limits. Meanwhile, a separate Park County-focused market report puts the first-quarter 2026 median for a single-family home inside Livingston proper at $580,000, down about $9,000 from the same quarter a year earlier.
Those two numbers, one for the county and one for the city, land close together by coincidence more than by describing the same pool of homes. Widen or narrow the boundary and the median moves for reasons that have nothing to do with appreciation or depreciation.
What your money actually buys, by segment
If the citywide median is the wrong number to anchor on, the right approach is to look at what's selling inside each product type. Recent local market data breaks it out this way:
| Property type | Recent price signal | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Condo or townhome | Flattened around $425,000 since early 2023 | The most stable segment, largely new construction inventory |
| Single-family home, city limits | $580,000 median, Q1 2026 | Down slightly year over year, includes both historic remodels and newer builds |
| Land | Median list $225,000, median sale $270,000 | Sale price running above list, but listings have stayed near 50 for five straight years |
| Paradise Valley, Mill Creek, Pine Creek new construction | Starts near $400,000, runs into multi-million dollar territory | Widest range in the market, reflects acreage and finish level as much as location |
The condo and townhome number has barely moved in three years, which makes sense given how much of that inventory is coming from a small handful of active builders rather than resales trading hands under pressure. The land figure tells its own story: sale prices are consistently outrunning list prices in a market where the supply of buildable lots has been stuck near the same low count since 2021. That's a seller's dynamic hiding inside a category most buyers don't think to check separately.
Why the historic district muddies things further
Livingston carries four districts on the National Register of Historic Places: Westside Residential, Eastside Residential, B Street, and the Downtown business district. A remodeled historic home inside one of those boundaries and a new-build condo on the edge of town are both counted in the same "single-family" or "residential" bucket by most portals, despite following completely different cost structures, renovation timelines, and buyer pools. The city's Downtown Master Plan, a community planning process led by Crescendo Planning and Design that kicked off in late summer 2023, exists precisely because downtown Livingston is trying to balance preservation of that historic stock against pressure for new development, and that tension shows up in pricing long before it shows up in any zoning decision.
Meanwhile, a city-run Wellness Center under construction at the corner of Gallatin and North M Streets, on track for a February or March 2027 opening, is one more sign that development activity right now is reaching beyond the historic core. New construction landing in a different part of town than last month's closings is exactly the kind of detail that can shift a monthly median without anyone in the market actually paying more or less for a comparable house.
What this means if you're actually comparing Livingston to Bozeman or Belgrade
Bozeman doesn't have this problem to the same degree. Its condo and townhouse inventory alone outweighs single-family inventory citywide, and median condo prices sit near $500,000 within city limits, according to the same ERA Landmark market snapshot. With that much monthly volume, one unusual closing barely nudges the average. Livingston, by contrast, is small enough that a single subdivision's closing schedule can look like a market swing.
If you're weighing Livingston against a neighboring town, a few questions will tell you more than any single median:
- Is the number for the city, the ZIP code, or the county MLS area?
- Is it built from confirmed MLS closings or from a public-record estimate, given that Montana doesn't disclose sold prices publicly?
- Which property type is driving the number this month, condo, single-family, or land?
- How many transactions is the figure actually based on?
Ask those four questions and a $439,000 headline and a $680,000 headline stop looking like a contradiction. They start looking like two different slices of the same small, uneven market.
A few common questions
Is Livingston actually cheaper than Bozeman right now? On the one segment that compares cleanly, condos and townhomes, yes. Livingston's have held near $425,000 since early 2023, while Bozeman's median condo price sits near $500,000 within city limits. Single-family comparisons are murkier, since the two towns' reports don't always draw from the same geography or property mix.
Why do online home value tools disagree so much specifically in Livingston? Montana's non-disclosure status means sites relying on public sale records have to estimate rather than confirm, and Livingston's low monthly transaction count makes any estimate more sensitive to which few homes happened to close.
What's the most reliable way to track pricing here? Confirmed MLS data segmented by property type and submarket, rather than a single citywide average pulled from a portal, gives a truer read on where the market actually sits.
If you're trying to figure out what a specific price point actually buys in Livingston, whether that's a historic remodel near downtown, a new townhome close to the Wellness Center project, or acreage out toward Paradise Valley, that's a conversation worth having with someone who reads the MLS data directly rather than a citywide average. Carissa Maus works this market segment by segment and can walk you through what the current numbers actually mean for your search. Schedule a free consultation to get a read on the specific corner of Livingston you're considering.
