The city’s road to large scale residential development west of the South Lawrence Trafficway has a speed bump on it.

Commissioners on the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission last week were scheduled to consider making a recommendation on whether the city should annex about 650 acres west of the SLT and Bob Billings interchange. The annexation would be one of the largest in the city’s history, and could provide enough land for thousands of new homes, in addition to a significant commercial and retail district.

Planning commissioners, though, never got to the voting stage on the annexation request. Instead, the application was deferred before it was ever presented to the planning commission.

My attempts to reach Phil Struble — president of Lawrence-based Landplan Engineering and a representative of the Wichita development group seeking the annexation — haven’t been successful. However, Jeff Crick, Lawrence’s planning director, did tell me via email that the request was pulled from the planning commission’s agenda due to the rezoning application being “incomplete.”

City officials didn’t provide additional details about what elements of the application are incomplete, but Crick did confirm that the request is still an active one. In other words, the developers haven’t backed out of the project.

That is consistent with information I’ve heard in the city’s development community. The proposed annexation always has involved multiple parcels of land and multiple landowners. As we reported in December, Wichita businessman Phil Bundy has secured a contract to purchase about 800 acres west of the SLT and Bob Billings interchange. Since that land is under contract but not yet owned by Bundy’s group, that requires the existing landowners to complete certain parts of the application. Getting all those steps in order and all the landowners in alignment, may be part of the delay.

But again, I don’t have any official word from the development group. However, given the magnitude of the potential development, the delay is noteworthy.

When we first reported on the project in December, it caught the attention of city leaders who have been concerned that the city is facing an affordable housing crisis, in part, because it doesn’t have enough available building lots for new homes. Developers in December said this new project could easily provide Lawrence with enough building lots for at least a five to seven year period.

Crick said there was no timeline available for when the annexation request and related rezoning requests would return to the planning commission’s agenda. However, Crick said the city will be required to give ample public notice ahead of any such meeting.

I’ll let you know if I hear more.

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When it comes to the status of Lawrence’s housing market today, the word that is floating around is “sluggish.”

But that is not all bad. While the numbers of homes sold were down both in March and for the first quarter of the year overall, selling prices also were largely down. If you are a buyer, that news is probably welcome after a steady increase in prices for years.

Lawrence recorded 67 home sales in March, down from 72 in March 2025. The more interesting number, though, was that the median selling prices for those homes was more than 5% less than the homes sold in March 2025. The March median selling price was $310,000, compared to $327,500 during the same period a year ago.

March, of course, also marked the end of the first quarter of the year. Looking at results for the entire first quarter showed a similar picture, although not quite as stark on the price front.

Homes sales recorded in the first quarter were 152, down 16.9% from the first quarter of 2025. The median selling price of homes was unchanged from a year ago at $315,000. We haven’t seen first quarter numbers quite like those for awhile. Last year, median home prices were up 3.3% in the first quarter and in 2024 they were up 7%. So, an entire quarter in which home prices held steady is significant.

Both local and national factors are playing a role in the cool down, the Lawrence Board of Realtors said in its monthly report.

“Inventory remains tight and interest rates have increased, and the housing market is off to a sluggish start in 2026,” Erin Maigaard, president of the Lawrence Board of Realtors, said in the report. “For March we can attribute much of the sluggish numbers to the lack of new construction, which had just 1 sale in the month, compared to 6 in March last year.”

Other numbers in the report include:

• The number of homes on the market in March was 127, up from 114 a year ago and up from 124 two years ago.

• The median number of days a home has remained on the market was 15 for the quarter, up from 14 during the same period a year ago. It is up from 10 two years ago.

• The Lawrence market produced $53.8 million in home sales in the first quarter, down from $64.4 million during the same period a year ago. This year’s amount also is down from $56.3 million two years ago.