Ricardo Alberto Magana and Parker Leann Frazee made a busy Wednesday at the Lewis and Clark County Recorder's Office on June 11, appearing in four separate filings tied to at least two properties — buying one home, selling another, and filing a Declaration of Homestead all on the same day.
The pair purchased a property from Nicholas D. and Jamie K. Bright, recorded in Book M65, Page 4788. The same day, they conveyed a lot in Pioneer Village Subdivision Phase II — Lot 31 — to Juliana R. Alfaro and Osmar B. Campos-Diarte, recorded in Book M65, Page 4777. The back-to-back transactions suggest the couple may have been closing out one chapter of Helena homeownership while opening another.
The Declaration of Homestead, also recorded June 11, is a routine but meaningful legal step. Under Montana law, a homestead declaration protects a portion of a primary residence's equity from certain creditors. Filing it the same day as a deed purchase is not unusual for buyers who move quickly to protect their investment, though it does underscore that Magana and Frazee intend the newly acquired property as their primary home.
Records flag the buyers as potentially based outside Montana, though the homestead filing — which applies only to a Montana primary residence — would complicate that characterization. Across all six filings tied to this pair in the county recorder's system, the activity spans four distinct properties and four recording categories, including real estate transfers, lending records, capital flows, and homestead documents. For the new owners of the Pioneer Village lot, Alfaro and Campos-Diarte, the purchase lands them in a subdivision on Helena's south side that has seen steady infill activity in recent years.