photo by: AdobeStock

An AdobeStock image shows models of homes.

If you squint, you can start to see the Lawrence real estate market getting a little easier for homebuyers. But don’t fully blink, as homes are still moving on and off the market very quickly.

Lawrence home sales in April were unchanged — 97 in total — from a year ago, according to the latest report from the Lawrence Board of Realtors. The more significant news, though, is on the pricing and availability front.

The median selling price for homes in April dropped by 6 percent from the same period a year ago. Compare that to what happened in April 2024. Home prices were exploding at that point. The median selling price in April 2024 was 22% higher than the median selling price in April 2023.

One month’s worth of totals, however, often tells an incomplete story. The year-to-date totals, though, also tell a story of moderation. Through April, the median selling price for Lawrence homes is up 2.1% to $319,075. Last year at this time, median selling price was up 11.9%. The median selling price went on to finish 2024 up 4.3%, settling at $315,000. So, thus far in 2025, home prices are on pace to rise half as fast as they did a year ago. There is certainly a lot of time for that to change, but if you are looking for some signs of a taming market, this an early one.

As for the issue of availability, the numbers were a little more stark. In April there were 150 homes for sale in the Lawrence market. That was up from 119 in April 2024 and 106 in April 2023. Generally, a rising number of homes on the market helps moderate prices, as the supply and demand equation becomes closer to balance.

Notice I said closer to balance. The Lawrence market — as is the case with many markets across the country — is not balanced. It is still weighted heavily in favor of sellers.

“The market continues to move at an intense pace, with the median days on market at just four days,” Bailey Stuart, president of the Lawrence Board of Realtors, said in the group’s monthly report.

Indeed, half of all homes in Lawrence sold in four days or less in April, which is one of the busier home buying months. For the year, the pace is a little slower, but still fast. The median days on market was 8, up from 7 days a year ago.

Other facts and figures from monthly real estate reports include:

• While home sales were steady in April, they are up year-to-date. Lawrence homes sales through April total 274, up 4.6% from the same point in 2024.

• While there were more homes on the market in April, new home construction didn’t do much to boost totals. Only one-newly constructed home sold in April. That’s down from six in April 2024. Both of those numbers are historically low, and reflect the fact that new home construction in Lawrence has been setting new all-time lows the last several years. If you are having a hard time understanding how more homes have come on the market despite the slowdown in construction, the answer is that more Lawrence residents are placing their existing homes on the market. Where they are moving to, however, is a more difficult question to answer.

• The Lawrence real estate industry has sold $97.8 million worth of homes thus far in 2024. That’s up from $92.8 million at this point last year, and way up from $72.3 million at this point in 2023.

• The real estate market in the Kansas City metro area is behaving quite a bit differently than its Lawrence neighbor, thus far this year. Home prices are rising much faster in the KC metro, currently. The median selling price in the K.C. metro is up 7%, compared to the 2.1% increase in Lawrence. Despite that strong increase, the median selling price in Kansas City is still significantly less than the Lawrence median. Half of all homes in the KC metro are selling for $305,000 or less. In Lawrence, half of all homes are selling for about $319,000 or less.

The other thing that is happening in the Kansas City market is that as home prices are rising, the number of sales are falling. Home sales in the KC metro are down 0.9% for the year, which is in contrast to Lawrence, where both home prices and the number of sales have been rising. That, however wasn’t true in Lawrence in April, so it will be interesting to see if a new trend is in the works.