09/07/2026
Five Helena-area developments worth watching this month
1️⃣ Helena’s zoning rewrite is moving forward. Preliminary recommendations would reshape several residential, mixed-use and commercial districts but nothing has been adopted yet.
2️⃣ The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate reached 6.71% on September 3. Higher borrowing costs can show up as longer marketing times, price reductions and seller concessions.
3️⃣ Rose Hills is moving toward its infrastructure phase in East Helena. The roughly 250-acre plan calls for about 1,500 mixed-income homes, with approximately 100 lots in Phase One. Groundbreaking is not yet confirmed.
4️⃣ PFAS was confirmed at the Rossiter Elementary well. Filtration is installed, and this result does not establish neighborhood-wide contamination or a measurable value impact. Nearby private well assignments warrant careful, property specific due diligence.
5️⃣ Lewis and Clark County unemployment was 2.6%, down 0.4 percentage points year over year, with 37,019 employed residents. The labor data remain supportive of local housing demand.
