Are Super High Housing Prices in Montana Caused by Legal Weed?

Are stoners driving up home prices in Montana?

The question may seem far-fetched, but an interesting new report indicates home prices in states with legal recreational marijuana sales have climbed substantially higher than in states that have not "freed the leaf."

Affordable housing in Montana is a thing of the past.

First-time home buyers are looking at $300,000 for a very modest, small home in a well-established Billings neighborhood. If you're lucky. A decent family home is easily $500,000 and if you want a shop and a half-acre lot anywhere close to Billings prepare for a couple hundred thousand more. Good luck finding a home in Bozeman or Missoula for under a million. Who can afford that? Cannabis consumers can, according to Clever, a real estate data group.

A $50,000 price bump.

Homes in legal weed states cost more and saw more dramatic price increases than in non-legal recreational cannabis states according to the data.

 From 2014 to 2023, home values climbed an average of $48,983 more in states with recreational cannabis, compared to states without recreational cannabis.

For states with over-the-counter sales of cannabis, the average home price is now $417,625 — 41% (or $122,287) higher than in non-recreational states, where the average home price is $295,338. States with medical-use-only marijuana laws also so an increase in home prices, but not as dramatically.

Maybe because nobody wants to live in Iowa, North Dakota, or Kansas?

We're not 100% convinced that the correlation of high home prices in Montana is directly related to legal weed. Most of the states that still outlaw cannabis are not exactly super desirable places to live. Almost all of them are in the Midwest and Southeast.

It should also be noted that a few states where home prices are exploding do not have recreational marijuana. Idaho, Utah, and Florida have seen a huge influx of newcomers and inflated home prices and all of those states remain teetotalers when it comes to legal herb for recreational purposes.