This is the first in a two-part series on the Kansas City region's housing shortage. Part one measures how many homes are missing and who's most affected. Part two will look at what that means for low-income renters, who are competing for a shrinking pool of affordable units.

Definitions follow the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey. See notes on the updated methodology.

Splitting a Midtown apartment with roommates into your 30s.

Holding onto a house that is more than you can manage, with nothing smaller nearby to move to.

Saving for a first home and watching every listing in your range disappear in a weekend.

These experiences highlight a growing friction across Kansas City, where an affordable cost of living—especially housing—long provided a competitive advantage by keeping homeownership within reach. Chronic underbuilding has strained housing availability and affordability as the population steadily grows. For more than a decade, the region has watched its competitive edge dwindle, consistently building less than half the annual housing units it did in the early 2000s.

MARC's updated analysis finds the nine-county area about 29,000 homes short, up from an earlier estimate of 12,000 to 24,000 homes.

The larger deficit reflects two factors:

  • Continued underbuilding since the previous estimate.1
  • A broader methodology that now includes all age groups and tracks whether households own or rent (the earlier estimate only accounted for those between the ages of 15 to 54 that owned). 2

Adapted from the Up for Growth framework, the study measures regional housing needs against the household formation rate in 2000. This benchmark was chosen because it predates the housing bubble and 2008 crash, capturing a time when people formed households at a higher rate than they do today. See the methodology section at the bottom of the story for more details. 


 

A shortage that's grown since the recession

In 2010, housing supply roughly matched local population demand in the Kansas City area. Production dropped sharply after the Great Recession and has remained in a consistent deficit since 2014. In the chart below, the teal line tracks the estimated deficit, which reached over 33,000 homes in 2024. To smooth out annual fluctuations in the data, the red line shows a steadier five-year average of about 29,000 homes.

Broken down by owning versus renting, the data shows the 29,000-home gap represents a shortage of homes to buy – the result of two trends pulling in opposite directions.

A different picture for owners and renters

ⓘ The census asks each household to name one person as the householder. Household formation is the share of people in each age group who head their own household. 

Measured against 2000 household formation rates, the metro area has roughly 57,000 fewer owner-occupied homes than expected. While an increase of 28,000 renter households partially offsets that homeowner gap, the two trends do not cancel out. Combined, they leave a net housing deficit of roughly 29,000 homes.

In the chart below, positive values add to the estimate while negative values offset it.

This suggests would-be buyers rent longer, double up or put off moving into a place of their own. The result is more competition for rentals and a narrower path to a first mortgage. 

The gap in ownership is widest during the pre-retirement years, when rates traditionally peaked. The region has roughly 16,000 fewer owner households among 55- to 64-year-olds, and another 10,000 among those aged 45 to 54.

Renters show the opposite pattern. Across many of those same working-age groups, there are more renters than anticipated — the mirror image of the missing owners in the previous chart. Where owners are missing, renters are piling up, a sign that people who might have bought a home are remaining in the rental market instead.

A shortage of smaller, starter-size homes compounds the problem at both ends. First-time buyers get priced out, and older owners have few options to downsize on a fixed income. The market offers too few smaller, accessible homes for people trying to age in place, according to the Urban Institute . When owners who might otherwise sell stay put, those homes remain off market for the next generation of buyers.  

Young adults form households at the lowest rates

Young adults have seen the steepest decline in household formation. People ages 15 to 44 form households at rates 4% to 17% lower than their counterparts in 2000, meaning they are less likely to be living in independent households than those in their age range more than two decades ago.

Nearly every age group forms households at a lower rate than in 2000. The one exception is among adults 85 and older, who now form households at a higher rate than a generation ago. That shift may reflect more older adults aging in place or living in assisted living rather than moving in with family or into nursing homes.

As fewer households form, more people live with family

These declines may be cyclical or structural — later marriage, higher costs — but the people not forming households don't disappear. Many offset costs or provide care by sharing space with roommates or relatives. In the Kansas City area, this broader trend is partially reflected by a spike in multigenerational housing. Based on an analysis of one-year ACS estimates and PUMS data, the share of 25- to 34-year-olds living with family jumped from about 1 in 7 in the early 2010s to nearly 1 in 5 by 2024.

Nearly every age group saw a rise in multigenerational living, from about 14% to 16% overall. Adults aged 75 to 84 are the exception: from 2010 to 2024, their share of joint housing fell from 18% to 13%. However, the number of older adults living with family still rose. Their share dropped only because the age group itself grew faster, as the baby boom generation aged into it.

Homeownership is how many families build wealth

For many families, a home is one of their largest assets, and the equity an owner builds while paying down a mortgage is something a renter doesn’t accumulate. The typical U.S. homeowner had a net worth near $396,000 in 2022, according to the Federal Reserve’s 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances. For a typical renter, it was $10,400.

Renting works for many households, and rising costs for insurance, maintenance and property taxes can make owning less of an advantage than it used to be. The issue here is not choice, but access: A typical home costed about 2.3 times the region's median household income in 2000. By 2024, that price had surged to nearly four times a family's median earnings.3 When there are too few homes to buy, would-be buyers often remain renters longer, and the wealth-building benefits of ownership start later, if at all.


 

Thinking big could mean building small

The homes the region needs most are the ones it builds least: smaller, less expensive options for first-time buyers now renting longer and older owners looking for something smaller to move into. Local policy can create and preserve more housing by giving residents more options and builders more flexibility. Zoning changes that allow "missing middle" housing, such as duplexes, townhomes and smaller single-family homes, offer homeownership at a lower entry price. Pre-approved plans, accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and modular and prefabricated construction offer newer ways to build locally beyond the traditional single-family model.

Sources

1 Housing production in the Kansas City region continues to lag peer metros

2 Using the original age groups measured, the number of homes underproduced is approximately 27,000.

3 Median home value and household income come from the 2000 Decennial Census and the 2024 ACS 1-year estimates.

Methodology

This analysis adapts Up for Growth's housing underproduction framework, which MARC modified for the nine-county region. It asks the question: if people formed households today at the same rate they did in 2000, how many usable homes — those available for year-round occupancy, excluding vacation homes or units without working plumbing or a complete kitchen — would the region need compared to what’s currently available. Applying 2000 Census headship formation rates (also called headship rates), the share of each age group that heads its own household to today's population gives each cohort's missing households a shortage where a group forms fewer households than the 2000 rate predicts and a surplus where it forms more. Summing these across all cohorts gives the region's net shortage of about 29,000 homes.

The data comes from the 2000 Decennial Census and 2010 to 2024 American Community Survey one-year estimates through IPUMS. The analysis excludes group quarters and reflects private households only. Reported figures use a five-year average to smooth year-to-year changes, excluding 2020 due to data availability. Owner and renter estimates are calculated separately and show overall patterns by tenure, not individual households moving from owning to renting or vice versa