Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market

I’ve had clients over the years insist that property taxes are higher in Johnson County Kansas than on the Missouri side of the state line. Some Kansas City home buyers simply won’t consider having an address that ends in Kansas… others won’t consider having an address than ends with Missouri. Of course, the agenda of many may not truly lie with the property taxes on one side versus the other. The reason for some is simply not living near a bunch of Kansas Jayhawks… or not living near a bunch of Missouri Tigers… or  K-State Wildcats… Property taxes may just be the excuse given.

It’s a good thing we have professional sports teams like the Chiefs and Royals to rally us together. Now if property taxes really ARE the reason some buyers choose one side of the state line over the other, I decided to do a quick comparison of a few homes on the Kansas side versus a few on the Missouri side. I looked at three recent home sales around $200,000 on each side and was surprised to see two of the three highest property taxes of the six were Missouri homes. I knew I didn’t have the resources to do this comparison the way I’d like… you’d really need the time to break down every city on each side of the state line and compare them to each other, rather than simply state versus state. You’d also need to be able to break each city down if more than one school district serves the area. For instance, part of Lenexa is served by the Shawnee Mission School District, part is served by the Olathe School District, and yet another portion is served by the De Soto School District.

I knew I’d seen some high property taxes in Lee’s Summit Missouri but also in Kansas City Kansas as well.  Due to time constraints however, I simply went with comparing property taxes in a Johnson County Kansas versus Missouri side of the state line fashion.  When entering parameters into MLS, I chose only homes that sold for $199,000 to $201,000. I also went back 1 to 2 years ago to avoid getting property values on homes that become more off-base as time passes but also to avoid homes sold in the past year since those likely hadn’t yet had their property taxes adjusted. I then reviewed the first 20 results for each of the two searches, taking a look at the property taxes associated with the 40 total homes.

On the Johnson County Kansas side, 18 of the 20 property taxes were in between $2,800 to $3,600 a year range. On the Missouri side of the state line, 18 of the 20 were between $3,000 to $4,100 range. I excluded a few odd ducks on each side of the state line. Overall, I was surprised to find that property values appear to be higher on the Missouri side of the state line. To be honest, I would have surprised if the stats were even close, much less lower on the Kansas side. Keep in mind I did just an hour of research and I took the first 20 homes I found meeting the parameters above. Still, the results were very interesting. While doing some checking around, I also found this forum discussion about property taxes on City-Data.com to be very interesting.

Posted by Jason A. Brown