Big Horn (MT) Investor Pulse Report (2025-Q4)

Landlords in Big Horn County, MT, collectively own 385 Single Family Residential (SFR) properties, constituting 36.0% of the county's total SFR market of 1,069 properties. This indicates a significant presence of investor-owned housing.

Individual landlords are the predominant owners, controlling 304 (79.0%) of the investor-owned SFR properties, far surpassing the 100 properties (26.0%) held by company-owned entities. This highlights the mom-and-pop nature of the investor market in Big Horn.

The ownership structure is further solidified by the entity count, with 347 individual landlords compared to 74 company landlords, resulting in a ratio of nearly 4.7 individual landlords for every company landlord in the county.

A striking finding is that 100.0% of investor-owned properties (385 properties) were acquired with cash, with no financed properties recorded. This points to a highly de-leveraged and possibly more resilient investor base.

Furthermore, 369 of the 385 investor-owned properties are rented, indicating that 95.8% of the investor portfolio is non-owner-occupied and actively generating rental income. This strongly confirms a rental-focused investment strategy in Big Horn County.

While individuals dominate property counts, the number of properties per entity differs; 347 individual landlords own 304 properties (average 0.9 properties/landlord), whereas 74 companies own 100 properties (average 1.35 properties/landlord), suggesting companies, though fewer, hold slightly larger portfolios on average.

A critical finding for Big Horn County is the complete absence of landlord acquisition data across all provided timeframes, including Q4 2025, the full year 2024, and the 2020-2023 pandemic era. This suggests a halt in investor buying activity or extreme data scarcity.

Similarly, there is no recorded average acquisition price for landlords or traditional homeowners for any quarter. This lack of data prevents any analysis of pricing trends or comparisons between landlord and homeowner purchasing behaviors in the county.

The data shows zero distinct SFR properties purchased by landlords in Q4 2025 and earlier periods. This indicates a highly illiquid market where new acquisitions by investors are not occurring, or are negligible to the point of not being recorded.

Without any price data, it is impossible to determine if landlords typically secure discounts relative to traditional homeowners in Big Horn County, unlike national trends that often show a landlord price advantage.

The lack of quarterly acquisition price trends means no assessment can be made regarding price appreciation or decline from pandemic-era levels to the current quarter for either investor type.

The absence of data for both individual and company landlord acquisitions means no insights can be drawn regarding differential pricing strategies or market activity between these owner types.

This overall lack of acquisition and pricing data points to a market where investor turnover or new entry has been extremely low across all recent periods, impacting market dynamism.

The Q4 2025 data reveals a complete lack of purchasing activity in Big Horn County, with 0 total SFR purchases recorded by any buyer type. This indicates an exceptionally quiet or illiquid market.

Correspondingly, landlords made 0 purchases in Q4 2025, representing 0.0% of the market. This reflects a period of absolute dormancy for new investor entries or portfolio expansions in the county.

As there were no landlord purchases, both mom-and-pop landlords (Tiers 01-04) and institutional investors (Tier 09) show 0 properties purchased. This means 0.0% of landlord purchases came from any tier, highlighting the frozen market.

The absence of any purchasing data extends to the number of active entities as well, with no new landlords (Tier 01) entering the market in Q4 2025. This indicates a lack of new investment interest.

With no Q4 purchases, the average properties per entity by tier is also 0, further emphasizing the non-existent buying activity in Big Horn County for the current quarter.

This zero-activity pattern stands in stark contrast to more dynamic real estate markets, suggesting unique local conditions or data limitations in Big Horn County that limit investor transactions.

The complete absence of activity means no tiers exhibit concentration of Q4 activity, as there simply wasn't any. The market appears to be in a holding pattern with no new investments recorded.

Mom-and-pop landlords (1-10 properties, Tiers 01-04) collectively dominate Big Horn County's investor market, controlling 369 properties, which represents an overwhelming 93.9% of all investor-owned SFR housing. This signifies a highly decentralized ownership structure.

Within this mom-and-pop segment, single-property landlords (Tier 01) form the backbone, owning 267 properties and making up 67.9% of the entire investor-owned portfolio. This demonstrates the prevalence of first-time or small-scale investors.

In stark contrast to the small landlord dominance, institutional investors (Tier 09, 1000+ properties) hold no properties in Big Horn County, accounting for 0.0% of the investor-owned market. This indicates that large-scale corporate players are not active in this specific region.

The distribution shows a clear long-tail effect, with even mid-size landlords being rare; the next largest tier, small-medium (11-20 properties), holds only 23 properties (5.9%), and medium-large (51-100 properties) has a minimal 1 property (0.3%).

The data shows a total of 393 properties distributed across the active tiers in this section. For Tier 01, there are 267 entities each with 1 property, indicating a 1:1 entity-to-property ratio, which is characteristic of first-time landlords.

Similar to other sections, there is no acquisition price data available for any tier (All Time, Q4, 2024, 2020-2023). This prevents analysis of how portfolio size correlates with pricing power or acquisition strategies.

The absence of acquisition data over time also means it's impossible to track how tier distribution might have evolved, as new purchases by specific tiers are not recorded.

While individual investors overwhelmingly dominate in the smaller tiers, particularly single-property holdings at 226 properties (81.0%), a notable crossover occurs in the 'Small landlord (6-10)' tier. Here, companies become the majority owners, holding 15 properties (93.8%) compared to just 1 property (6.2%) for individuals.

This crossover indicates that as portfolios grow from 1-5 properties, corporate ownership begins to play a more significant role, especially moving into the 6-10 property range, despite the overall market being individual-dominated.

Individual investors maintain a strong majority in the 'Two-property (2)' tier with 21 properties (60.0%) versus 14 properties (40.0%) for companies, and in the 'Small landlord (3-5)' tier with 41 properties (70.7%) versus 17 properties (29.3%).

The 'Small-medium (11-20)' tier shows exclusive individual ownership, with 23 properties (100.0%) held by individuals and 0 by companies, which is an interesting pattern contradicting the 6-10 tier trend and possibly reflecting unique local dynamics for slightly larger portfolios.

This detailed breakdown highlights distinct strategies: individuals primarily focus on smaller portfolios (1-5 properties), while companies, though fewer, tend to aggregate properties into slightly larger, multi-property portfolios once they are present.

No pricing data is available by tier and owner type, preventing any insights into whether individual or company investors pay different prices within or across various portfolio sizes.

Due to the lack of Q4 data for purchases by owner type and tier, it's not possible to compare all-time growth patterns between individual and company landlords in Big Horn County.

While some regions show data limitations, MT-Big Horn-59050 stands out with an exceptionally high investor ownership rate of 81.5% for its 53 recorded properties. This indicates a high concentration of investment activity in specific local areas.

Another significant hotspot is MT-Big Horn-59089, which also exhibits a substantial investor ownership rate of 76.9%, showcasing specific areas within Big Horn County where investors are highly prevalent.

Conversely, MT-Big Horn-59034 has a lower investor ownership rate of 29.6% for its 269 properties, suggesting that investor activity is not uniformly distributed across the county's zip codes.

The top regions by investor-owned count, MT-Big Horn-59016, MT-Big Horn-59025, and MT-Big Horn-59031, have 'nan' values for property counts and ownership rates. This data gap makes it impossible to identify the regions with the most investor-owned properties by count.

Due to these data limitations, it is not possible to determine if there is a correlation between regions with high property counts and regions with high investor ownership percentages; the two sets of top regions appear to be distinct based on available data.

Consistent with other sections, no acquisition prices are provided across any geographic regions, preventing an analysis of price variations or market value differences across Big Horn County's sub-geographies.

The existing data suggests that specific, smaller pockets within Big Horn County are heavily dominated by investors, while other areas might have lower investor penetration or less complete data reporting.

A critical observation from the historical transaction data is the complete absence of buy and sell transactions for all landlords in Big Horn County across all recorded timeframes (Q4 2025, Q3 2025, 2024, 2020-2023, All Time). This implies a highly illiquid or inactive market.

This lack of transaction data means it's impossible to determine if landlords overall are net buyers or net sellers, as there are 0 buy and 0 sell transactions recorded. No buy/sell ratio can be calculated.

Furthermore, institutional investors (1000+ tier) also show 0 buy and 0 sell transactions for all timeframes. This reinforces the finding from Section 8 that institutional players are not active in Big Horn County, both in terms of holdings and transactions.

With no recorded transactions, the percentage of buy or sell transactions originating from or going to other landlords (inter-landlord activity) is also 0.0%. This indicates no internal market churn among investors.

The absence of any buy or sell prices means no implied profit margins can be analyzed. We cannot assess whether landlords are buying low and selling high, or facing market pressures in Big Horn County.

The consistent pattern of zero transactions across all historical timeframes suggests a profoundly stable, yet stagnant, investor-owned market in Big Horn County, with little turnover or new investment activity.

The complete lack of transaction data means no meaningful differences can be observed between overall landlord transaction patterns and institutional investor patterns; both are non-existent in this dataset for Big Horn County.

In Q4 2025, Big Horn County recorded 0 total SFR transactions, with 0 transactions specifically involving landlords. This indicates an entirely dormant or non-existent transaction market for the quarter.

As a result, landlords accounted for 0.0% of all Q4 transactions, reflecting no buying or selling activity from investor entities in the county during this period.

Given the complete lack of transactions, there is no data to assess how transaction volumes might vary across investor tiers, as all tiers show 0 transactions.

Similarly, average purchase prices by tier cannot be determined, as all tiers have an average purchase price of $0 due to the absence of activity. This means no price spread between tiers can be identified.

There was no inter-landlord trading activity, with 0 properties bought from other landlords, and thus 0.0% of purchases originating from other landlords. This signifies a lack of secondary market activity among investors.

With 0 transactions, neither mom-and-pop landlords (Tier 01-04) nor institutional investors (Tier 09) show any activity, reinforcing the pervasive inactivity across all investor segments.

The absence of any Q4 transaction activity makes it impossible to compare tier activity levels in transactions against the existing tier ownership distribution, as there's no new activity to measure.