Tag Archives: Johnson County Kansas Real Estate

Only You Can Truly Decide How Much Kansas City Home You Can Afford

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Hands On The Heartland
Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market

As a Kansas City home buyer, the Golden Rule for how much you can afford is to simply ask yourself. No one is more qualified than YOU to decide what YOU can afford. Now a mortgage lender is going to tell you the max amount they’ll let you borrow. But that amount may be much more than you can or want to truly afford. And by afford, I mean how much you can “afford” to sacrifice other things in your life. It’s one thing to afford a $2000 a month house payment and another completely to be able to do so without compromising your favorite boat or expensive dining habits.


So when the lender says here’s your Pre-Approval Letter and you can buy up to a $290,000 home, the better question is “how much will my payments be? Once you know that you’ll know if buying a $290,000 works into your master plan. If it doesn’t, then maybe you should be looking at $200,000 or $250,000 homes. It’s up to you and this is not something than any loan officer, Kansas City Realtor, friend or family member can decide for you. When a lender pre-approves you, the underwriting guidelines are designed to minimize the lender’s losses and are not in place to protect your  future finances. A good loan officer will certainly help you with that, but the underwriting guidelines that spit out a Pre-Approval Letter don’t factor it into the equation.

So what are some good rules of thumb when deciding what’s the right amount of mortgage payment? A good general rule of thumb is that your house (including principal, interest, taxes, insurance and PMI on the loan and also including your HOA dues) should not take up more than 25% of your gross income. But if you use this rule of them then you’ve already broken the Golden Rule in  the first paragraph. I know that I’m seeing buyers purchase homes at double to quadruple the amount they make per year.  In other words you could use as a general rule of them that someone who makes $50,000 may be able to purchase a $200,000 home — of course that’s making a whole lot of assumptions. But you would never use a rule of thumb anyhow when making such an important decision, would you?


Posted by Jason A. Brown
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Overland Park Kansas Relocation: Cheat Sheets By Zip Code

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Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market

One of the first questions I hear from relocation clients who have never been to Overland Park, Kansas City or Johnson County Kansas is that they’re expecting to find flat land with lots of farm fields and mules. OK, I added in the mules part, but most relocation clients really have no idea what to expect when they first visit the metro area. Overland Park is a big reason why Kansas City is known around the country as a legit big town metropolitan area. Areas like Overland Park, Olathe, Leawood, Lenexa, Leawood and Shawnee on the Kansas side really have it all. On the Missouri side there’s Lee’s Summit and North Kansas City, among others.

Seriously, the suburbs of Kansas City have more parks, shopping and dining amenities nearby than most remotely expect. I know this because that’s what relocation clients repeatedly tell me. The area amenities are also usually near highway access too, making them even more appealing. The master planning among the majority of newer areas of the metro has typically been done quite well. But relocation buyers also need be aware there can be big differences within any particular metro city. For instance, let’s take two of the many zip codes covering Overland Park Kansas… 66212 in northern Overland Park and 66221 in southern Overland Park. Then we can input those two zip codes in the Moving.com zip code tool and we find…

66212 (north)
Population 32,000+
Medium household income – $61,000
Average home price – Under $200’s
Percentage of Owner occupied homes – 57%

66221 (south)
Population – 15,000+
Medium household income – $167,000
Average home price – Over $400’s
Percentage of Owner occupied homes – 96%


What a great tool for comparing zip codes! Check it yourself by putting in your home zip code and another zip code from an area you might like to live. I know you probably don’t have the surrounding zip codes memorized, so here’s the best tool I’ve found for searching zip codes by map. On this site, you can enter your home zip code and it will also show you the map of the surrounding zip codes.  Once you’ve narrowed your home search to a few specific zip codes, you’ll want to check out this other site that takes your preferred zip code and puts it into an easy to read and printable format.  Here’s an example of this cheat sheet on the ZipSkinny cheet sheet web site.

Posted by Jason A. Brown

Johnson County Kansas Real Estate Stats* 7 Day Review Of Johnson County KS Real Estate Activity

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Hands On The Heartland
Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market

Johnson County Kansas Real Estate Update

Johnson County KS Real Estate Market Stats <> 7-day Glance

Type

#

Average $

Avg DOM

–

Newest Listings

304

$293,555

–

View Newest Listings

Total Active Listings

4,311

–

–

–

Newest Under Contract

208

$253,554*

91

View Newest Under Contract

Newest Solds (Closed)

72

$246,791

114

View Newest Solds

* Average Newest Under Contract considers the price the homes were listed at when they went under contract. Data pulled from Heartland MLS and deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Low samplings in any category can skew a particular category. DOM is Days On Market. Note the date of this post as market stats become outdated. Stats may not be an exact 7 days and stats were pulled in the AM on 4/23/09.

In Johnson County Kansas there continues to be more homes coming on the market than homes going under contract (pending) or than homes being sold (closed). This creates a further surplus of supply in Johnson County KS. Using the past 7 days as a basis for figuring the absorption rate in Johnson County, there’s about 14 months of inventory on the market. Again, that’s using the 72 homes sold to calculate the absorption rate. If we use the homes that went under contract instead (and assume they’ll all make it to the closing table), then the absorption rate is a much improved 4.8. This shows us that contracts being written has REALLY picked up with the spring market.

Do keep in mind that a 7-day period is a very small sampling of Johnson County Kansas market activity and designed to simply provide look at the what’s going on now in the current real estate market. While a 7-day period could indicate a trend forming it does not necessarily show a real estate markets long-term trend.

Posted by Jason A. Brown

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