Sale prices here are not public record. That single fact shapes every valuation in this state — and it's why we've spent years building a comparable library instead of buying one.
Why this exists
Under Montana law, the realty transfer certificate that records what a property actually sold for is not a public record. The county clerk and recorder and the Department of Revenue are required to keep it confidential. In most other states you can look up what the building down the street traded for. Here you cannot.
That's why automated estimates from national websites are so unreliable in Great Falls. They're built on public sale records, and in Montana those records don't contain prices. What's left is assessments, extrapolation, and algorithms working around a hole in the data.
Filling that hole takes three separate things, and no single source gives you more than a piece of it.
The same building, two ways
Public record alone
Both columns describe the same building. The difference is entirely in what's knowable from the outside.
Three inputs
Each source covers what the others miss. Used together they close most of the gap that non-disclosure leaves open.
Input one
Listing and sold data from the Montana Regional MLS, which brokers can see and the public generally cannot. Strong on residential, useful on commercial, and the backbone of any comparable set — but only a starting point in this market.
Input two
Assessor and cadastral data, ownership and transfer history, zoning, platting, permits and annexation status — pulled property by property. This is where a comparable gets the characteristics that make it adjustable against a subject.
Input three
Every sale, lease and valuation this office has worked, plus deals confirmed directly with the brokers on the other side. This is the part nobody can buy, subscribe to, or reconstruct after the fact.
The part that's hard to replicate
A great deal of commercial property in Great Falls changes hands without ever being listed. It sells through a phone call between two people who already know each other. Catalyst is party to a disproportionate share of those conversations, and we have recorded them for years.
That means a valuation from this office draws on a set of commercial comparables that does not exist in any subscription, any listing platform, or any competitor's file — because it was never published anywhere to begin with.
How you get it
Catalyst IQ isn't a product you log into. It's the library and the method behind every broker opinion of value, lease rate opinion and underwriting model that leaves this office — and the reason our reports show the comparables rather than asking you to take a number on faith.
In a valuation
Every opinion of value we produce lists the comparables it rests on and the adjustments applied. You can argue with our reasoning, which is the point.
In the market report
What we can publish without exposing anyone's transaction goes into the quarterly market report, in aggregate. Individual deals stay confidential.
Client transactions are confidential and stay that way. What we share is the analysis, not the file.
Next step
Tell us about the property and we'll run it against the library. You'll see which comparables we used and why.
Request a valuation