Kansas City New Home Permits: Which Cities Led March and May 2026?
By Joe Nelson, Retired Air Force, Nelson Home Group Team Leader and Mortgage Loan Originator
Kansas City new home permits in May 2026 were led by Kansas City, Missouri with 67 single-family permits, then Olathe with 66, Basehor with 55, Overland Park with 40, and Kansas City, Kansas with 33. Basehor has roughly 8,200 residents. Overland Park has more than 200,000. That is the number worth stopping on.
This is the Friday companion, and the last post, in my series on the fastest-growing Kansas City suburbs. Earlier this week I covered why Overland Park missed the top five, what buying a house in Spring Hill, Kansas looks like right now, and whether population growth actually raises home prices.
Moving to Kansas City or thinking about it? Grab my free KC Relocation Guide. It covers the metro side by side, what to expect on both sides of the state line, and how to narrow a list of suburbs down to two.
Which Kansas City Suburbs Led the March and May 2026 Permit Reports?
The Home Builders Association of Greater Kansas City publishes a monthly residential statistics report naming the most active cities for single-family permits. Below are two of those monthly snapshots, March and May 2026, with each city’s population alongside so the scale is visible. They are two separate months, not a year-to-date ranking.
For the wider trend, the association’s half-year report published July 31, 2026 says builders pulled permits for 2,836 single-family homes across the eight-county metro through June, up 28 percent against the same period in 2025. June alone produced 455 permits regionwide, with Kansas City, Missouri leading all cities at 69 and Johnson County, Kansas the most active county at 198 for the month and 1,167 year to date.
One thing worth naming because the association does not: the eight counties in that figure are Johnson, Clay, Jackson, Platte, Cass, Leavenworth, Miami and Wyandotte. If a permit number does not tell you which jurisdictions it covers, it is not comparable to another permit number.
| City | March 2026 SF permits | May 2026 SF permits | Approximate population |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kansas City, MO | 78 | 67 | About 521,000 |
| Olathe, KS | Not in top 5 | 66 | About 150,000 |
| Basehor, KS | 29 | 55 | About 8,200 |
| Spring Hill, KS | 53 | Not in top 5 | About 10,800 |
| Overland Park, KS | 29 | 40 | About 204,000 |
| Kansas City, KS | Not in top 5 | 33 | About 158,000 |
| Lenexa, KS | 34 | Not in top 5 | About 61,000 |
| Gardner, KS | 31 | Not in top 5 | About 26,000 |
Source: Home Builders Association of Greater Kansas City, March 2026 Residential Statistics Report (published May 1, 2026) and May 2026 Residential Statistics Report (published June 26, 2026). “Not in top 5” means the city was not named in that month’s most-active list, not that it issued zero permits. Population figures are July 1, 2025 estimates from U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts, rounded.
Read down the third column and then across to the fourth. Basehor issued 55 single-family permits in May, more than Overland Park’s 40, with about four percent of Overland Park’s population.
Why Does a Town of 8,000 Out-Permit Overland Park?
The March report named six cities instead of five because Overland Park and Basehor tied at 29 permits each.
Scale and batching, mostly. Subdivision permits come in groups when a phase opens, so a small city with one active phase can out-count a large city in a given month. Basehor sits in Leavenworth County with open ground inside a workable commute. My Basehor community page and my Living in Basehor guide cover what that looks like on the ground. I am not going to tell you Overland Park is out of land, because I could not verify that and the city’s own comprehensive plan points the other way.
Basehor also shows up third on the metro’s population growth ranking at 19.6% while Overland Park shows 3.3%, but those two measurements describe different things. Population estimates count residents. Monthly permits count authorized construction. A single month’s count does not establish anything about how much land a city has left.
Spring Hill tells the same story from the Johnson County side. It took 53 single-family permits in March 2026, second in the whole metro that month, and it is the metro’s fastest-growing city at 35.5%. My Spring Hill community page has the current numbers.
One caution about reading Kansas City new home permits month to month. These reports name the most active cities for that month only, so a city that does not appear did not necessarily stop building. Subdivision permits come in batches when a phase opens, which makes any single month noisy. Basehor at 29 in March and 55 in May is the same town, not a town that doubled its building rate in sixty days.
What Do Kansas City New Home Permits Tell You That Population Data Doesn’t?
Metro-wide single-family permits totaled 509 in May 2026, the month Basehor took 55 of them.
Timing. A census estimate measures what already happened, published almost a year after its reference date. A building permit is municipal authorization issued before construction begins, so it points forward instead of backward.
A permit is somebody committing to build on a specific lot. Population data is history. Permits are the leading edge. What a permit does not prove is completion: a permit is not a house until somebody finishes it.
Read them together. When the population number and the permit number point the same direction, as they do in Basehor and Spring Hill, both occupancy and intended supply are rising. When they disagree, something changed recently and it is worth finding out what.
How Do Permits Line Up With the Population Growth Ranking?
Closely, at the top. Spring Hill is number one on growth and number two in the metro on March permits. Basehor is number three on growth and number three on May permits. Gardner, Kansas is an interesting middle case: it took 31 permits in March, but it finished eighth on percentage growth at 12.3% because it started from a base of 23,287 residents. My Gardner community page covers it.
Raymore, Missouri is the one that will not show up in a monthly permit leaderboard the way the Kansas cities do, and it still added 3,692 residents since 2020, the largest headcount gain of any city in the metro’s growth top five. Its permit story is a multi-year one. The city told KSHB 41 in March 2025 that it issued 220 permits in 2024 for new homes, new subdivisions and renovations of existing homes, with more than 600 new single-family lots approved across five subdivisions. That count covers more than single-family starts, so it does not compare directly to the association’s monthly city figures.
How Should a Buyer or Seller Use Permit Data?
Johnson County, Kansas issued 1,167 single-family permits in the first half of 2026, the most of any county in the metro.
Permits near your target address are possible future competition on resale. If you are buying, count what is permitted and under construction within about a mile. Some of it will not finish, and what does finish only competes with you if it lands in your price band.
If you are selling in one of these cities, the permit count is a timing input. Heavy delivery in your price band during your listing window means builder incentives are running against you, and it usually argues for pricing to the front of the market rather than testing the top of it.
Treat these as directional and pair them with current inventory. For that, my latest Kansas City market update carries the live Heartland MLS numbers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which suburbs led the March and May 2026 single-family permit reports?
In the May 2026 report, Olathe led the suburbs with 66 single-family permits, just behind Kansas City, Missouri at 67. Basehor followed with 55 and Overland Park with 40. In the March 2026 report, Spring Hill led the suburbs with 53. These are monthly snapshots from the Home Builders Association of Greater Kansas City, not a year-to-date ranking.
How many single-family permits were issued across the Kansas City metro through June 2026?
Builders pulled permits for 2,836 single-family homes across the eight-county Kansas City metro through June 2026, up 28 percent from the same period in 2025, according to the Home Builders Association of Greater Kansas City. June produced 455 permits regionwide. That figure covers the whole metro, not the city of Kansas City alone.
What is a single-family building permit?
A single-family building permit is the municipal authorization required before construction of a detached house can begin. It is issued at the front of the process, so permit counts show construction that is authorized rather than finished. A permit does not prove a start or a completion, which is why permit data is treated as a leading indicator instead of a sales figure.
Are building permits a good indicator of a hot housing market?
They are a good leading indicator of future supply, which is not the same as a hot market. Heavy permitting means more homes will be available in twelve to twenty-four months, which can moderate prices in that submarket rather than raise them. Read permits alongside current inventory and days on market to see whether new supply is meeting demand or getting ahead of it.
Where does the Home Builders Association permit data come from?
The Home Builders Association of Greater Kansas City compiles monthly residential statistics from permit activity across metro jurisdictions and publishes a report naming the most active cities. The March 2026 report was published May 1, 2026 and the May 2026 report was published June 26, 2026. Reports are available on the association’s website at kchba.org.
Does a high permit count mean I should not buy there?
No. A high permit count identifies intended supply, not completed competition. Check construction stage, expected delivery, and price band before deciding what it means for a specific property. Builders competing for the same buyer can run standing incentive programs across a subdivision, which is a different thing from a single seller negotiating one deal.
Ready to Talk?
If you want to know what is being built near an address you are considering, send me the address. I will pull what is permitted and platted nearby and tell you what that means for your resale in five years. That is a short conversation and it costs you nothing. Call or text me, or send me an email.
Call or text: (816) 680-6624
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Web: https://nelsonhomegroupkc.com/
Nelson Home Group, Keller Williams KC North, 1508 NW Vivion Rd, #205, Kansas City, MO 64118