Economic Outlook Seminar

Where Housing Is Headed: How Will Today’s Imbalances Be Resolved?

Things that can’t go on forever usually don’t. But if you are millennial waiting for housing prices to crash so you can buy a home, you might have a long wait. The notion that today’s housing price situation is a bubble waiting to break is belied by the fact that housing prices have increased faster than median income almost anywhere for more than 20 years – that includes most places in Montana.

So where is housing going? It’s a critical question being faced by communities everywhere as sky-high housing costs have affected everything from labor markets to public services. That’s why we’ve returned to a focus on housing as a theme for the 2022 Economic Outlook Seminar – to try to understand where we are going and what action steps we can take to get to a better place.