How preapproved building plans can reform small-scale housing production

This article examines preapproved building plans, the first of four topics showcased in this year’s Housing Policy Innovation Series. Hosted by the Greater Kansas City Regional Housing Partnership (RHP), the four-part series provides local government officials, policymakers and housing stakeholders the opportunity to explore innovative strategies to address creation and preservation of quality, attainable housing.  Each event in the series will focus on a different housing topic and features experts from across the region and country who are implementing best practices in their own communities. To learn more about the series and upcoming events, visit www.kcrhp.org. 
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Framing the issue

The Kansas City region faces a persistent housing shortage, with previous research from MARC estimating a shortage of 12,000 to 24,000 housing units for both renters and homeowners. In response, cities are exploring ways to reduce barriers in the development process, including how long it takes to move from plan approval to construction.

Matthew Petty, CEO and co-founder of Partner Zones Co., says homes that are ultimately built represent a balance of what is allowable, convenient and marketable. During the February Housing Policy Innovation Series presentation, Petty said delays during plan review disrupt this balance, particularly for smaller projects that operate on tight margins.

Through its Portfolio Homes program, Overland Park offers a collection of preapproved plans that property owners and builders can download for immediate use. By preapproving plans up front, the city reduces a key source of delay from the design process without changing zoning requirements. 

Why it matters

Across the Kansas City region, housing production has not kept pace with demand, and the types of housing being built remain limited. Detached single-family homes dominate both the existing housing stock and new construction, while smaller formats like duplexes and triplexes remain rare.

Data from the American Community Survey (ACS) show that detached single-family homes make up 56% to 68% of housing stock, while attached single-family homes  (one unit that shares a wall with another structure, such as a townhome) make up a significantly smaller share (4% to 9%) of the market. Additionally, small multiunit buildings that contain between two to four units make up only 2% in areas such as, Edwardsville, Kansas, to under 8% in Kansas City, Missouri, of total housing stock. This limited share of properties with two to four units is highlighted to show a gap often described as “missing middle” housing—a term used to describe housing types that fall between detached single-family homes and larger apartment buildings.

New construction mirrors this existing trend. Over the past 10 years, data from the Home Builders Association (HBA) show that most residential permits were issued for single-family homes (attached and detached), while permits for other types of housing (two to four units and those with over five units) remained a much smaller proportion of overall production.

Iframe code:

Despite significant year-to-year swings over the 10-year period, permits for missing middle and multifamily housing types never exceeded 8% of new permits across the region combined, hovering between 73 and 352 units annually. In 2021, the region's highest production year in the past decade, permits for these same housing types fell as a share of total output compared to the previous year.

Limited production of these housing types comes against projected demand. The MARC nine-county region is projected to add about 206,860 households between 2020 and 2050 (roughly 6,900 per year), while Overland Park is estimated to add 24,286 more households by 2050 – more than any other community in the region.

To meet this growth, the region will need not only more housing, but a broader range of housing types. Overland Park’s Housing Needs Assessment highlights the dominance of large, detached homes and apartment complexes in the city, alongside a need for smaller homes and duplexes to support a broader range of households, including working-class families earning between 80% and 120% of the Area Median Income (AMI).iii

Together, these patterns point to a gap between the types of housing being built and the types needed to meet future demand.

What Overland Park is doing

In Kansas, Overland Park’s Portfolio Homes program is one approach to expanding opportunities for smaller-scale housing that aligns with neighborhood character. The potential footprint is significant, with roughly 8,000 parcels in the city eligible for the program. [HM8.1]

Catalog design options

The portfolio includes 25 plans total: one- and two-story designs for cottage-style homes, small single-family houses and duplexes, as well as a plan for a detached garage. The sizes of duplexes range from around 854 square feet to 1,658 square feet, while two- and three-bedroom single-family homes range from 1,224 to 2,197 square feet. 
 

How preapproved building plans reduce friction

Builders using a Portfolio homes design select a plan, complete structural paperwork, obtain a site survey and apply for a permit. This streamlines the most unpredictable part of the permitting timeline before the city reviews a plan for approval, reducing two costs that would otherwise occur during the conventional permitting process: drafting custom building plans and receiving city approval to use these plans for construction.

A faster review period can shorten the overall construction period and labor costs. Hard numbers on time and cost savings aren't available yet since the program just recently launched in November 2025. However, Leslie Carr, director of Overland Park’s Planning and Development Services, said early download activity suggests strong interest. 

Why pre-approved plans work

Matthew Petty served as a consultant to Overland Park and says the core benefit of using preapproved plans is the city does the regulatory work up front, so builders don’t have to repeat it. 
Successful programs tend to share a few characteristics: participation is voluntary, the catalog remains limited in size (typically eight to 10 plans per building type), and stakeholder feedback is collected early in the process.

Petty’s team at Pattern Zones Co. has worked with several communities nationwide to implement these programs in their cities, including Fayetteville, Arkansas, South Bend, Indiana. and Claremore, Oklahoma. Kyle Clifton, Claremore’s director of planning, also presented at  February’s Housing Policy Innovation Series event about the city’s program's results. Since launching in 2019, Clifton says preapproved applications have achieved 24-hour turnarounds, with construction costs at $120–$135 per square foot compared to $155–$190 for typical market-rate construction.

Clifton noted community engagement during the co-design process influenced neighbors opposed to the new developments to becoming neighborhood advocates. A similar dynamic in Overland Park, Kansas, played out before Portfolio Homes launched. A proposed triplex that drew neighborhood opposition was redesigned as a duplex with adjustments to scale and proportions and community support followed. That experience shaped the housing types and designs the city ultimately included in the program.

Petty mentioned that while some planners are aware of this strategy, few cities have pursued them. Overland Park is among the first in the region to implement a program, with others not far behind. The city of Kansas City, Missouri. is developing its own program with DRAW Architecture, with three plans approved and four more in development for an anticipated program rollout in 2027. 

What we don't know yet

Pre-approved plans are most powerful where zoning and land availability aren't the primary challenge . Overland Park's Housing Needs Assessment identifies both conditions working in the city's favor, noting that Portfolio Homes was designed to address a backlog of unbuilt homes and slowed construction rates through administrative change.

The program operates within existing zoning standards and site-specific factors — utility conflicts, lot-width constraints and parcel zoning — need to be resolved before a plan can be used. A single-family lot, for example, requires rezoning before a duplex plan can be applied. The plans themselves are designed for a specific set of housing types and the current catalog is not intended for accessory dwelling units, commonly known as ADUs. 

Currently, regionwide data on permitting timelines and construction backlogs are limited. As more applications move through Overland Park’s process, the region will get a clearer sense of how programs like this can accelerate housing construction and adapt this method locally. 

Next steps

Programs like Overland Park’s Portfolio Homes are just one piece of a larger effort to expand housing options across the Kansas City region. Pairing preapproved plans with technical assistance, financing tools or targeted subsidies can help more homeowners, small builders and developers lower the cost to start a project. Though the practice is still largely new to the region, the use of preapproved plans offers a promising strategy for addressing housing challenges and reducing barriers to housing development and attainability at the local level. 

Learn more

Follow the RHP and attend the next session of the Housing Policy Innovation Series in May, where they will explore modular and prefabricated homes as another strategy for affordable and quality housing development across the region. To view the presentations from February’s Housing Policy Innovation Series on Preapproved Building Plans, visit MARC’s YouTube Channel.

Matthew Petty, Pattern Zones Co., Keynote
Community Spotlights – Kansas City, Missouri, Overland Park, Kansas and Claremore, Oklahoma
Question and Answer Session

Interested in working with MARC?

Contact Hannah Mitchell, regional housing program manager at hmitchell@marc.org.