Bigfork, Montana and the Flathead Valley is a strong second home market. Though the state of Montana has relatively lower foreclosures compared to the majority of the states, our buyers come from the top ten states with high foreclosure rates. Though our inventories of homes on the market has grown, we are not seeing hugh desperation pricing such as found in Florida, Nevada, Arizona or California.

It depends. In general, buyers are finding it increasingly more difficult to obtain conventional financing; however, this doesn't have to be a deal-breaker. (Check out 'creative financing' for more info.) In some markets, where there's a high number of (pre-)foreclosures/REOs, the property values continue to decline. Yet, in other markets, like in Dallas/Ft Worth, there appears to be no correlation between the property values and the performance of the economy overall; the property values in DFW have only declined about 3% thus far. Recently, lenders have become increasingly more flexible with allowing their borrowers to renegotiate the terms (including interest rate, principal [sometimes], amortization period, etc) of their mortgages. Appraisers have grown increasingly more skittish and extremely conservative on their appraisals.