By Alida Tinch, Bigfork REALTOR® with Glacier Sotheby's International Realty
Say you are touring a house on the edge of Columbia Falls this month. The listing agent points out the open field behind the property line as a potential buffer or space for a garden. The Hungry Horse News reports that a compliant proposal today would go through administrative review. The Daily Inter Lake reports that neighbors who object have fifteen business days to file a written appeal to the city administrator.
The city's review process has changed. The Flathead Beacon reported that Columbia Falls adopted its new Future Land Use Plan on June 8, 2026, and gave final approval to the zoning and subdivision code that implements it a week later, on June 15, under the state's Montana Land Use Planning Act. Anyone comparing Columbia Falls to Whitefish or Kalispell on price alone is looking at the wrong variable. The key change this year is that the new process shifts public input from individual project hearings to the broader planning phase.
What actually changed
The Flathead Beacon reported that Montana's Legislature adopted Senate Bill 382 in May 2023, creating the Montana Land Use Planning Act. A City of Columbia Falls update says ten cities across the state, Columbia Falls among them, were required to rewrite their growth policies and zoning codes to comply. Columbia Falls spent from early 2026 through mid-June finishing that work with the consulting firm Cushing Terrell, and the city council adopted the final plan at a special meeting.
City planner Eric Mulcahy summed up the scope of it plainly to the council:
"As part of MLUPA, we were required for subdivision rights and zoning regulations to comply with these policies that essentially changed the whole way we address subdivisions and zoning in the past."
Three changes matter most if you are buying here:
Public hearings are mostly gone for standard subdivisions. If a proposed project complies with the new zoning, it goes through administrative review instead of a hearing. Neighbors who object have fifteen business days to file a written appeal to the city administrator.
Duplexes are now allowed anywhere a single-family home is allowed. The state law does away with single-family-only subdivisions as a standalone category.
Accessory dwelling units are permitted on lots that already have a single-family home. A second, smaller structure can go up.
Here is the shift in plain terms:
| Before MLUPA | After June 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Standard subdivision review | Public hearing | Administrative review, no hearing required |
| Neighbor objection window | Public input | 15 business days to file written appeal |
| Single-family lot next door | Single-family only | Duplex allowed by right |
The goal of the law, as reporting on the council meeting noted, is to front-load public input into the broad planning phase Columbia Falls just finished, rather than litigating each project as it comes up. That is a policy goal aimed at speeding up housing production. It also changes how proposals near open land are reviewed and how residents can respond.
A major project: Teakettle Heights
The project is notable for its scale.
On June 1, 2026, the council approved developer Mick Ruis's Teakettle Heights subdivision, the largest single subdivision in Columbia Falls history: 421 units on 78 acres south of Aluminum Drive, on land that once belonged to the Columbia Falls Aluminum Company. The parcel sits on a federal Superfund site. The EPA confirmed in May that the area is suitable for residential use, though no water wells can be drilled there, and the subdivision will instead connect to city sewer and water. The planning commission added conditions before signing off: the developer must preserve access to existing test wells, disclose the Superfund history in the subdivision's covenants, and plant a buffer of trees to partially offset the logging already done on the site.
The project includes 125 detached single-family homes, 56 single-family townhouse lots, and 240 multi-family apartment units, plus roughly 26 acres of open space including a planned baseball field and soccer field. Ruis has also offered qualified buyers a financing package with 2 percent down and a reduced mortgage rate.
The project illustrates the scale of development under consideration in Columbia Falls, but it was approved before the new zoning and subdivision code received final approval. The new land use plan directs future development north onto the old CFAC land, west and southwest along Highway 2, and into roughly 24 acres around Cedar Palace Medical Center. If you are shopping in those corridors, you are shopping inside the growth zone the city just drew on purpose.
What this means for the price gap
The reason buyers look at Columbia Falls in the first place is the gap. As of April 2026, Zillow put Whitefish's typical home value at $872,060 against Columbia Falls at $604,818, a difference of roughly 44 percent. Columbia Falls' own median sale price rose from $577,500 in 2024 to $600,000 in 2025, a modest, unremarkable climb.
But a Daily Inter Lake report from January 2026 found something the median hides: local agent David Fetveit described the back half of 2025 as an inflection point where homes under $1 million actually dropped about 4 percent in price while homes over $1 million rose about 10 percent. The valley's median looked flat because two different markets were moving in opposite directions underneath it.
That split is the context for everything happening in Columbia Falls right now. The town's affordability has depended on staying below that $1 million luxury line, on land that was cheaper to develop, and on a permitting process that historically moved slower and asked more questions. Two of those three conditions just changed. The city now has a faster, by-right approval path. Whether that pushes prices down further as new supply lands, or up as the town's profile rises alongside a marquee development on old industrial land, is the open question for the next two years. Either way, the price gap you see on a portal today is a snapshot of a market mid-rewrite, not a fixed feature of the town.
What to check before you write an offer
If you are comparing Columbia Falls against Whitefish or Bigfork right now, price per square foot is the least useful number you can pull. A few things are worth more of your attention:
- Whether the parcel next to a home you like sits inside city limits, where the new administrative review applies, or in the county, where different rules govern.
- Whether the lot you are buying could itself support a duplex or an ADU, which can be an upside for a buyer thinking about rental income or a guest space rather than a downside.
- Whether the listing sits inside one of the growth corridors the new Future Land Use Map designates, north of the old CFAC land, along Highway 2, or near Cedar Palace Medical Center.
- What the appeal window actually requires if you do want to weigh in on a future project. The fifteen-business-day appeal period, in writing to the city administrator, is a much shorter runway than the old hearing process gave residents.
The city has posted the underlying documents, including a side-by-side comparison of the old and new zoning code, on its Montana Land Use Planning Act page. It is worth a read if you want to understand the rules for development on nearby land.
A few straight answers
Does this change apply outside Columbia Falls city limits? No. The new zoning and subdivision rules apply within city limits. County land nearby follows different, separate rules, which is part of why boundary lines matter more here than they used to.
Does the new law mean every empty lot will be developed? No. It means the process for reviewing a compliant proposal moved from a public hearing to an administrative review with a short appeal window.
Is Teakettle Heights the only project moving through the new process? It is the largest and the one with the clearest paper trail so far, but it was approved before the new code received final approval, so it does not show how projects will move through the new process. Future subdivisions of this kind will go through administrative review rather than a headline vote, which means fewer of them may make the news.
Does this affect resale value? It is too early to say with certainty. What can be said is that a buyer's due diligence in Columbia Falls now includes a step it did not a year ago: understanding what is allowed by right on the parcels around a home, not just what is currently built there.
If you are weighing Columbia Falls against Whitefish, Bigfork, or another Flathead Valley town, the honest starting point is not the median price, it is understanding how each town's rules are shaping what gets built next. I'd be glad to walk through what that looks like for a specific street or subdivision you're considering. Let's Connect.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
