Selling and buying without an agent in Montana

Who runs your closing

Montana closes through title and escrow companies rather than through lawyers. The title company orders the search, issues the commitment and later the policy, prepares the settlement statement, holds and disburses the money, and sends the deed to the county clerk and recorder. No Montana statute puts an attorney at that table, and most sales close without one.

The escrow side is regulated. Title 32, chapter 7 of the Montana Code Annotated licenses escrow businesses through the Department of Administration, and section 32-7-103 exempts several groups from that license: an abstract and title search business regulated by the commissioner of insurance, a financial institution whose escrow accounts are regularly audited, and an attorney not actively in the escrow business. The first exemption is why the title company in town can hold your money without an escrow license.

The money rules are your real protection in a sale with no agent on either side. Under 32-7-117, escrow funds must sit with a financial institution doing business in Montana, kept separate from the escrow company’s own money, and they are not subject to execution or attachment on a claim against that company. Nothing goes out until the incoming money has actually been collected. What none of that buys you is advice. The escrow officer processes your contract, does not review it, and will not write your disclosure statement. Line up your title company before you have an accepted offer, and keep a Montana attorney in reserve for what runs past paperwork: a contract for deed, an estate or trust seller, an access easement across a neighbor, a water right nobody has traced in decades.

What you must disclose

Montana’s written disclosure duty is only a few years old, and that is the first thing to understand about it. Chapter 375 of the 2023 session laws created Part 5 of Title 70, chapter 20. Before that, no Montana statute generally required a seller to hand a buyer a written condition statement. Under 70-20-502, a seller of residential real property must now provide a disclosure statement covering any adverse material fact about the property the seller actually knows, delivered before or at the same time the contract is executed. Section 70-20-501 defines an adverse material fact as a condition, malfunction, or problem that would have a materially adverse effect on the property’s monetary value, that affects the structural integrity of improvements, or that presents a documented health risk to occupants. It covers one to four dwelling units or an individually owned unit in a building of any size, including condominiums.

The statute sets the minimum coverage: title and your ability to transfer; water service and the water source; the wastewater treatment system; utility connections; the residence itself, including water intrusion and problems with any structural system or improvement, from the well and septic to the roof, foundation, plumbing, electrical, heating, windows, doors, and appliances; substantial additions made without a building permit; hazardous materials or pest infestations on the property or nearby; settling, soil, standing water, or drainage problems; whether any portion has been tested or treated for asbestos, radon gas, lead-based paint, mold, methamphetamine, storage tanks, or contaminated soil or water; and a catch-all for any other adverse material fact you know about. On the well and septic properties common outside Montana’s city limits, the water and wastewater lines carry most of the weight.

Here is the part that matters most when you are selling alone. Montana specifies content, not a document. No state agency publishes an official disclosure form, so anything circulating in the market comes from a private form library rather than from the state. You are responsible for a statement that walks the full statutory list and carries the acknowledgments 70-20-502(2) requires: that it reflects only what you actually know, that you were not obligated to investigate, that it is neither a warranty nor a substitute for the buyer’s own inspections, and that unless the parties agree otherwise in writing the contract is not effective until three days after the buyer receives it. Deliver it with your marketing packet, before anyone writes an offer. If it lands after signing, 70-20-504 gives the buyer three days from delivery to rescind by handing you a separately signed written rescission. Section 70-20-503 exempts a handful of transfers, among them sales to a spouse, child, or parent, transfers between co-owners, and foreclosure and court ordered transfers.

Transfer taxes

Montana does not tax the transfer itself. There is no state real estate transfer tax, no deed tax, no documentary stamp, and no county or municipal version of any of them. The Realty Transfer Act in Title 15, chapter 7, part 3 imposes a filing requirement instead of a levy. Under 15-7-305, the parties complete a realty transfer certificate declaring the consideration paid, on a form prescribed by the Department of Revenue, and the clerk and recorder may not accept a deed for recording until that certificate arrives. Section 15-7-302 gives the purpose: sales price data for statewide levels and uniformity of real estate assessments. Section 15-7-308 then makes the certificate confidential and not a public record. That has an edge for anyone pricing a home alone, since Montana sale prices are not published and comparables are harder to pull here than in most states.

Attached to the certificate is the piece Montana sellers should read twice. Under 85-2-424, unless the property is served by a public service water supply, the certificate must carry a water rights disclosure in which the seller acknowledges, at or before closing, whether any water rights are associated with the property and whether they transfer with it. A fee set by rule under 85-2-426 is then paid at closing and the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation updates its ownership records. The same section requires any written agreement to transfer land with water rights on record to carry a water right ownership update disclosure warning that failure to pay that fee can expose the buyer to a penalty. If you draft your own purchase agreement, that language belongs in it.

Your actual courthouse cost is the recording fee. House Bill 192 from the 2025 session raised it effective October 1, 2025 to $20 for the first page and $10 for each additional page, plus $10 per document that misses Montana’s formatting standards, which include a three inch top margin and a return address in the upper left corner. A deed and its related pages keep the total in the tens of dollars. Who pays is negotiated.

The bottom line for doing it yourself

Montana treats a private sale as ordinary business. The closing runs through an escrow company that handles this every day, no statute makes you hire a lawyer, and the state takes nothing off the sale price.

Put your attention on the disclosure statement, since that is the one job nobody else will do for you. Build it from the statutory list, answer from what you know rather than what you assume, and give it to buyers before they write an offer so the three day rescission clock never becomes a factor. Your title company carries the realty transfer certificate, the water rights disclosure, and recording from there. If the property has a well, a shared road, a contract for deed, or a water right you have never traced, an hour with a Montana attorney is money well spent on a question this page cannot answer for your particular ground.