05/21/2026
There has been some uproar over average home prices in our Great Falls region recently. When you’re tracking the local housing market, there are two numbers that always get thrown around: the Median Sales Price and the Average Sales Price. They sound like the same thing, but looking at our latest April 2026 Local Market Update for Great Falls attached below, you can see they tell two completely different stories.
Looking at the Single-Family numbers for April 2026, the Median Sales Price was $350,000, which is down 1.0% from last year. Meanwhile, the Average Sales Price came in at $445,360, which is up a massive 20.4% from last year. How can one be slightly down while the other skyrocketed by nearly $100,000? Here is why the average is often the wrong metric to look at, and why the median is the one you should actually trust.
The "Bill Gates" Effect: Why Averages Lie
The Average is calculated by adding up every single home sale price and dividing it by the total number of homes sold. The problem is that it is incredibly sensitive to "outliers"—meaning just a few ultra-expensive luxury homes can completely warp the results.
Imagine five people are sitting at a local diner, and each owns a $300,000 home. The average home value in that diner is $300,000. Now, a billionaire walks in and sits down. Suddenly, the average home value in the diner jumps to $20 million! But did anyone else's house actually get more valuable? No. The data is just skewed by one massive number.
That is exactly what happened in our Single-Family market this April. A few highly priced luxury properties sold, which artificially dragged the average up to $445,360. It makes the market look much more expensive than it actually is for the everyday buyer.
Why the Median is the "Common Sense" Number
The Median is the exact middle of the market. If you line up all 79 homes sold in April from the lowest price to the highest price, the median is the price right in the dead center.
This means exactly half of the homes sold for more than $350,000, and exactly half of the homes sold for less than $350,000. Because it is simply the middle point, it doesn't matter if someone buys a multi-million dollar mansion; it won't drastically budge the median. It gives you a much truer, more stable picture of what the typical buyer is actually paying in Great Falls.
The Takeaway
If you want to know what "luxury" activity looks like, look at the average. But if you want a pulse on what standard, everyday homes are doing in our community, always look at the Median. Right now, our middle-of-the-road market is holding incredibly steady right around that $350,000 mark.
