When Travis Stull was out for a walk in Kansas City, Kansas’s Strawberry Hill neighborhood, he saw a handwritten “For Sale by Owner” sign in a yard three blocks from his apartment. It seemed almost cute by today’s standards. He talked to his agent. They came to a house party. There was no one else there. The house was bought by him.
“Because everything is so competitive, you don’t really have a lot of room to think about it,” Stull replied. He was 39 years old and trying to get his footing in a market that had been slowly moving against people like him for months. There was no doubt in his mind that if the house had been listed by a regular agent, he would never have seen it before someone else bought it. “If I hadn’t got it, I think I would have stopped looking for a house,” he replied. When you think about what other people were going through at the same time, that story almost seems lucky.
Robert Wegley, 28, and his wife looked for a house in Johnson County for months. They wanted a house with a basement, a garage, and more than one bathroom for them and their five-year-old child. They made deals on five different homes. They lost every time, even when they paid $30,000 more than the asking price. The other offers weren’t just more expensive. There were no appraisals or inspections, and they were all paid for in cash. The way Wegley spoke, “None of those things are even possible for us,” showed that he had dealt with his anger some time ago. Eventually, through their agent, they learned about an Overland Park duplex that was back on the market after a deal fell through. They saw it that night and made an offer four hours later. That night, it was agreed upon. They didn’t want that house. It was a house, though.
The housing market in Kansas City didn’t just disappear overnight. It got in. There wasn’t enough stock in the city even before the pandemic. Then it all started: low interest rates brought more buyers into the market, construction costs went through the roof as lumber prices rose, and a wave of first-time buyers in their 20s and 30s—many of whom had done everything right by saving and getting pre-approved—ran into a supply that wasn’t there. Private equity firms were also moving in, buying homes in secret to turn them into rentals. There were many forces working against the middle class at the same time.
The Kansas City Regional Association of Realtors says that by May 2021, the number of homes for sale in Jackson County had dropped 49% year-over-year. In just one year, the average home price went from about $194,500 to $240,000. According to a study by First American Financial, Kansas City is one of the five worst housing markets in the country for year-over-year drops in affordability. This is because home prices have gone up 16.5% while household incomes have gone down 4.3%. Even though the numbers don’t fully show what it was like on the ground, they do show the same thing.
Amy Carlson, a real estate agent in Kansas City, said, “Sometimes you get fifteen minutes to come in and make a decision.” “It’s an unreasonable thing to expect of people making a huge investment.”
That stress was very strong for 26-year-old Lee’s Summit resident Kayla Burns. Her fiancé and her set a budget of $225,000 to $260,000, which seemed like a good amount of money until they started looking. Every house they looked at was already priced too high and needed a lot of work. Their first offer was $16,000 more than what was being asked. They didn’t do inspections. It looked like buyers had to do everything they could to stay competitive. They still lost. “We were like, ‘Wow, this really stinks,'” Burns said. In the end, they bought the rental home they were already living in, not because it was their first choice, but because the market had made it the only option left.
A deeper story lies beneath all of this that isn’t talked about as openly as the dollar amounts. On four blocks that used to have eighty homes, Kansas City Life Insurance Company has been quietly tearing down homes in neighborhoods like Valentine. Over the years, they have done this to dozens of homes. By late 2024, there were only eight structures left. Catherine Hayes, who has lived there for a long time, called it “a wasteland.” Sarah, her daughter who grew up there, said the loss feels like it can’t be fixed. “Those people are no longer there.” Those places are no longer there. You can’t get them back. There’s more than one problem with Kansas City’s housing market that can’t be solved by increasing supply alone. In some parts of the city, it’s getting smaller.
There is still a lot of confusion about whether this part of Kansas City’s housing story is over or if it was just the beginning of something bigger. It’s clear that speculators and investors weren’t the ones who felt its effects the most strongly. They were people like Stull, Wegley, and Burns who were trying to make a permanent move by buying their first home. The rules of the game had changed overnight, and no one had thought to tell them.
