Whitefish MT is one of the best kept secrets in America. With Whitefish Lake and Whitefish Ski resort in the same town, you have winter and summer outdoor activities. Whitefish MT has a nice charming downtown with many fun little shops. The summers are filled with festivals in Whitefish Central Park right downtown. We have Amtrak service right downtown, and Kalispell is 20 minutes down the road for full blown shopping.
Living in Whitefish MT is a lifestyle choice. We have no sales tax, very low net income tax of roughly 5.5%, reasonable property taxes, and overall a clean, simpler way of living. There are not many jobs in Whitefish Montana. You don’t move here for a career. You move here because you’re at the point in your life where you’ve decided you don’t care about what the rest of the world cares about. You care about your family and having fun. Overall the cost of living here is not expensive. We do not support an expensive cost of living because the jobs available do not pay much and there aren’t very many of them. You could let this discourage you, but the fact is that if we had an abundance of high paying jobs, there would be a ton of people that lived here, everything would be expensive, and it would then suck. Although many do not want to admit it, our horrible job market is the reason living here is so cool.
Some helpful tips about living in Whitefish Montana:
Population: About 6,000 people. Flathead County has about 90,000.
Elevation: About 3,000 ft. We are in a valley. We often call it the Flathead Valley.
Weather: In the winter it will be about 30 degrees for the highs. About 20’s for the lows. We can go weeks where there’s almost only 10 degrees difference from the highs and lows. This is when we like to go to Missoula or fly the heck out of here. You need to be into skiing, snowmobiling, or something outdoors to mentally deal with this. We have a weird phenomenon called freezing fog. You can go inside to the grocery store and come out and the parking lot will be a sheet of ice and your car key won’t go in the car door. We recommend keyless entry for the winter. When the fog rolls into the valley, you can go skiing on top of Whitefish Resort and see the sun above all the fog and clouds. It’s really cool.
Summers are amazing. It’s basically the perfect day, every day. We have very little humidity. We actually have bug seasons. There’s a week of bees, a week of mosquitos, a week of flies, and then when they all seem to hatch we don’t really see much of them anymore. Many times in August we have smoke from forest fires.
It’s really pretty here and sometimes it seems like we don’t get the harshest of weather because it seems to blow over the valley. We all live in the valley, so basically anywhere you are, you will always be looking at beautiful mountains and scenery.
Housing: The average home rental price is usually about 1,000 to 1,500 a month. You can find apartments cheaper, but you can rent a very nice home for less than 1,500 a month. You can find a decent home for under 250,000, but if you’d like a nice home, you’re looking at costs of up to 400,000.
If you’re going to move to Whitefish Montana, we recommend you start your own business. Because there are so few people here, there is always a need for good service businesses. You would think that is opposite, but good service businesses with good customer service will always do well in the Flathead Valley.
To have a business in Whitefish, Montana, you start by forming your company with the Montana Secretary of State. Whitefish MT has a business license. Kalispell MT, Columbia Falls MT, and Bigfork MT do not. You will probably want to service all the towns in the Flathead County.
All Day $49 Montana Registered Agent LLC only charges $100 to set up your business properly with the state in about 1-2 days. Then by the time you get here, you’ll have the company formed and when you’re ready to start services you can go to the Whitefish City Hall and get your city license.