A buddy of mine lives in Kalispell. Got up there long before all the wealthy liberals from the West Coast and NY started buying everything in sight. Taxes are going through the roof.
Issue is, the building season isn’t very long, so homes going up takes a while. He was telling me that he and the rest of the locals are really hoping for some really harsh winters to keep all of these folks away. Of course, they’ll show up in their Land Rovers, demanding everything & andything and talk about living that mountain lifestyle, which will be the furthest thing from the way any of then live.
Where I live in eastern Idaho, near the Montana border, we have the same wish...and it happens.
Wealthy nutters visit in the summer, fall in love with the area, sell their place in California, end up with a nice home here on 5-acres with a Billy Goat, then we get a cold snap of -36 with highs at -17.
Next Spring, like wildflowers blooming, up comes the FOR SALE signs and off they go to Sun City, Arizona...thankfully.
We took a short vacation to western Montana a few weeks back. I was absolutely shocked at all the sprawl around Kalispell. Ugh.
I hear it’s bad a bit farther north in Whitefish.
We visited Whitefish a few years back—and I had a chance to talk for a while with one of the locals.
I asked how much snow they got in town in the winter.
The guy was more than six feet tall—reached as high as he could—and said—”more than that”.
;-)