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Gazundering is when a buyer lowers their agreed offer just before contracts are exchanged.

It puts a seller under pressure to accept the lower price or risk losing their sale and collapsing their property chain – potentially losing the house they want to buy.

It is possible because in England, Wales and Northern Ireland an offer is not legally binding until parties exchange contracts. Once an offer is accepted it takes an average of 120 days to complete. One in three house sales fall through before exchange.

This costs sellers £400m and the wider economy £1.5bn each year, according to the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government.

Planned government reforms would cut that time by four weeks and save the average first time buyer £650, it says.

After speaking to her dad and husband Sarah decided to put her house back on the market that same day.

The next day, her buyers “went running into the estate agent’s office saying they were happy to proceed with the agreed sale price”, she says.

“Gazundering is actually awful. It’s not just a business deal. It’s my children’s home and the fact that nothing’s been done about it is ridiculous.”

Beth Rudolf from the Conveyancing Association says gazundering is a small but growing problem.

“It’s not actually that big, it doesn’t happen very often [but] it’s started increasing though because of the change in the property market that’s made it a buyers’ market.”

There are more houses on the market than people looking to buy, she explained, which means sellers face stiffer competition, forcing them to lower prices.

The government has put plans in place to reform the house buying and selling market in England and Wales which would tackle issues like gazundering although at the moment the timetable for those reforms, external is by the end of the current parliament in 2029.

The Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government told the BBC: “We’re stopping gazundering by introducing legally binding agreements that prevent buyers from walking away at the last minute without a valid reason, with fines for those who do.”

The airport – with a renovation under way – gets a steady stream of private traffic ferrying the rich to their homes at places like the exclusive Yellowstone Club in Big Sky, about an hour south, where stars like Justin Timberlake and Tom Brady own multi-million-dollar piles.

“Any given day out at our airport, there will be 80 to 100 private jets on the tarmac, primarily Yellowstone Club guests,” says Corner.

During Covid, local buyers were systematically outbid by cash offers from out of state. So many people bought homes sight-unseen that the state realtor association added a new disclosure form to its contract library. And while Montanans were finding it impossible to get onto the property ladder, others were finding it equally unfeasible to even still rent.

“Every developer in America heard about the exorbitant rental rates in Bozeman and how attractive it was to develop here,” Corner says. Apartment blocks and townhomes began materialising everywhere – fast – with rent for one-bedrooms coming in at $2000 a month or more – something no locals could afford, particularly those on single incomes.

It was on this wave of frustration that Mayor Morrison swept to victory in November 2023.

Now 30, the mayor lives with his fiancée – and two roommates. Before that, about 10 years ago, he rented a room in a duplex for $333; that same room now rents for $900, he says.

Morrison, who grew up in eastern Montana with a nurse mother and incarcerated father, was a founding member of Bozeman Tenants United, the union chapter that has since helped the mobile home parks strike. His mayoral election, he says, was a referendum on housing policy and local government’s perceived abandonment of the average Montanan.

“It really was this huge groundswell… that was clearly saying: We want one of us to represent us in City Hall,” he says.

He sees “a lot of hopelessness out there for the ability to stay in this state, stay in this city in particular,” he says.