photo by: AdobeStock

An AdobeStock image shows models of homes.

Lawrence homes sales grew for the second consecutive year, according to 2025 totals, but selling prices didn’t grow nearly as fast as in past years. In fact, Lawrence median selling prices grew by the slowest rate in the region.

All told, it was a bit of an odd year for the Lawrence real estate market. On one hand, there were signs of strength in the market. Lawrence home sales totaled an even 1,000 sales, according to the year-end report from the Lawrence Board of Realtors. That was up 4.4% from a year ago, and continued a turnaround in the market. From 2020 through 2023, the Lawrence market had posted three consecutive years of declining home sales.

The higher demand for homes, however, didn’t cause selling prices to soar. When home sales go up but prices remain pretty steady, that sometimes is a sign that the community has added quite a few new houses to the market. But we know that wasn’t the case in Lawrence. The city posted a new record low for the number of single family building permits. We also know that existing home owners weren’t putting their homes on the market in higher numbers. The number of new listings that hit the Lawrence market in 2025 was down 2.6% from 2024.

Despite the small number of new homes being added to the market, the median selling price of a Lawrence home was up just 1.6% from a year ago. That is compared to gains of a little more than 4% in 2024 and 2023. Prior to that, Lawrence was seeing price increases near 10%, so it is true that Lawrence is in a multi-year slowdown of selling prices. (Let’s not get confused: The selling prices of homes are not dropping, but the rate at which the prices are growing has slowed.)

I looked at nine other Kansas markets, and Lawrence’s 1.6% increase in selling prices was the smallest of the bunch. The average increase for the other nine was 4.7%, so not only was Lawrence lower, it was by a wide margin.

The slowdown in price growth comes at a time when housing affordability was talked about almost continuously for the last year. It was the No. 1 issue in the November City Commission election, for example.

Has the slowdown in prices occurred because some city policies — smaller lot sizes, more emphasis on duplexes — are starting to work? Has the negative publicity spooked sellers into asking a little less than they would have otherwise? Have rising mortgage interest rates — they fell in 2025 but are still significantly higher than at the beginning of the decade — impacted Lawrence more significantly than other communities?

Or, have Lawrence buyers simply said enough is enough?

I don’t know, but the data does show that Lawrence buyers still have reason to be frustrated. Even though prices are growing more slowly, Lawrence still has some of the most expensive housing in the state.

The median selling price of a Lawrence home is basically equal to the selling price in the Kansas City metro. That’s despite households in the KC metro generally earning significantly higher wages that Lawrence households.

Looking at how much a house sells for versus how much a household earns is one way to measure housing affordability. When you do the math for Lawrence, you can see why housing affordability has become such a big topic. I looked at Lawrence’s median earnings for a full-time, year-round worker, as measured by the Census Bureau. I then multiplied that number by two, because most new buyers are dual-income families, at this point. I then compared the amount a typical household is earning versus the median selling price.

In the case of Lawrence, the selling price of a typical home was 2.75 times greater than the household’s income. In other words, the typical dual-income family earned $116,258, while the median selling price of a Lawrence home was $320,000.

For the nine other communities that I gathered data for, median selling prices were 2.12 times greater than the average household income. Another way of saying it: The strain that home prices are putting on households is about 30% more in Lawrence than in the other communities I measured.

No wonder we have been talking about affordability all year.

However, I can’t say that Lawrence had the worst numbers in this category. Technically speaking, the very affluent community of Johnson County has the worst numbers. A typical dual income family in Johnson County earns a little more than $153,000 a year, or about about 30% more than a Lawrence family. However, the median selling price of a Johnson County home swelled to $467,500 in 2025. That means the median selling price of a Johnson County home was 3.05 times greater than the earnings of a typical dual-income family.

Does that mean Johnson County has more of an affordability problem than Lawrence? I suppose it could be evidence that affordability there is more of an issue than we would think. However, it also is possible that once your income reaches a certain level, you have enough disposable income so that paying more for a home with extra amenities isn’t really a burden but is rather just an investment.

Regardless, this year’s numbers tell an interesting — albeit complex — story about Lawrence: The home market is on an upswing, as evidenced by two years of an increase in buyers, even though housing prices and incomes are some of the most mismatched in the region. But, given that home prices are growing more slowly than anywhere else in the region, maybe that mismatch is on the verge of changing.

Per usual, we’ll follow the local housing statistics throughout 2026 to see if that is indeed the case. But here is one more look at 2025 numbers, including Lawrence and the nine other markets I studied.

Lawrence

Sales: up 4.4%

Median selling price: $320,000, up 1.6%

Average days on market: 26 days

New listings: 1,240, down 2.6%

Median earnings for household with two full-time workers: $116,258

Median selling price vs income: 2.75 times greater than income

Kansas City metro

Sales: up 2.9%

Median selling price: $320,711, up 5.2%

Average days on market: 40 days

Median earnings for household with two full-time workers: $124,200

Selling price vs income: 2.58 times greater than income

Johnson County

Sales: up 10.0%

Median selling price: $467,500, up 3.9%

Average days on market: 37 days

Median earnings for household with two full-time workers: $153,024

Selling price vs income: 3.05 times greater than income

Wyandotte County

Sales: up 2.6%

Median selling price: $252,259, up 3.6%

Average days on market: 36 days

Median earnings for household with two full-time workers: $97,342

Selling price vs income: 2.59 times greater than income

Franklin County

Sales: up 1.8%

Median selling price: $240,000, up 5.75

Average days on market: 44 days

Median earnings for household with two full-time workers: $103,150

Selling price vs income: 2.32 times greater than income

Emporia
Sales: down 1.3%

Median selling price: $179,000, up 2.9%

Average days on market 45 days

Median earnings for household with two full-time workers: $84,698

Selling price vs income: 2.11 times greater than income

Topeka metro

sales: down 0.1%

Median selling price: $210,000, up 6.6%

Average days on market: 25 days

Median earnings for household with two full-time workers: $112,724

Selling price vs income: 1.86 times greater than income

Wichita metro

Sales: up 2.1%

Median selling price: $235,000, up 6.8%

Average days on market: 34 days

Median earnings for household with two full-time workers: $113,366

Selling price vs income: 2.07 times greater than income

Manhattan-Junction City metro

Sales: Down 4.5%

Median selling price: $265,000, up 8.2%

Days on market: 35 days

Median earnings for household with two full-time workers: $104,058

Selling price vs income: 2.54 times greater than income

Here are a few more Lawrence specific numbers for those of you who are keeping score:

• The 1,000 homes sold in Lawrence was the highest number since 2022, when there was 1,121 homes sold.

• The total dollar value of homes sold in Lawrence was $370.2 million in 2025. That was up from $330.3 million in 2024.

• While the charts above noted the average number of days a home stayed on the market before selling, I normally report the median number of days instead. But, alas, not every market had that number available. But for Lawrence, the median number of days on market was 8, which was unchanged from a year ago.

There’s one other element to the year-end report that probably shouldn’t be overlooked: The Lawrence home market was stronger at the beginning of 2025 than at the end. Home sales for the month of December were down 17.5% compared to December 2024. The number contracts for sale that were written in December — a predictor of sales to come — were down 21% from the same period a year ago.

“Year-end numbers look positive, however recent months show a different trend, with August being the last month home sales increased over the same month in the prior year,” Erin Maigaard, president of the Lawrence Board of Realtors, noted in the organization’s year-end report.