Leawood

Leawood is fifteen square miles laid out east of State Line Road and split by I-435. The oaks along Lee Boulevard are old enough to close over the road; the streets south of 135th are still growing into their landscaping. It is a city of two housing eras that happen to share a name.

The housing stock, north and south

North of roughly 95th Street — Old Leawood — the stock is 1950s and 60s: brick ranches and mid-century splits on wide, flat lots under a mature canopy. These are the houses where the inspection matters most. Expect original cast-iron drain lines, sewer laterals pushing seventy years, 100-amp panels unless someone has upgraded, and cooling systems retrofitted into houses that were not designed for them.

South of I-435 the city changes character entirely: 1990s–2010s brick-and-limestone two-stories, half-acre-plus lots, three-car garages, finished basements, irrigation. The ACS median year built for the city as a whole is 1989, which is the average of two things and describes neither. The maintenance profile flips — less knob-and-tube, more roof area, more lawn, more mechanical systems that all reach end-of-life in the same decade.

The two districts, and the levy that follows them

Leawood sits in two school districts. Blue Valley USD 229 covers most of the south; Shawnee Mission USD 512 publicly lists Leawood among the fourteen cities it serves and covers the north. Blue Valley's boundary is set by the legislature and cuts across city lines without regard for them.

This is not a trivia point, because the tax bill follows the district. A Leawood address in USD 229 totals 110.622 mills. The same city, in USD 512, totals 107.890. Two houses, one city, two levies. At Kansas's 11.5% residential assessment ratio, 110.622 mills works out to roughly 1.27% of market value every year — above Overland Park's 1.14%, which surprises people. Pull the parcel record before you write an offer.

The market

May 2026: median sale $783,000, $237 per square foot, 6 days on market, 1.3 months of supply, 56 sales. That median is thin and it bounces — $709K in March, $870K in April — so a single month is not a price. Six days on market, though, is a real constraint: you will be deciding quickly, so be underwritten before you tour, not after.

HOA dues are all over the map: nothing in parts of Old Leawood, north of $200 a month in the gated communities south of 435. Read the declaration for the specific subdivision; there is no citywide number worth quoting.

Getting around and what's here

Free-flow drive times from the city centroid: 16 minutes to downtown Overland Park, 24 to the Plaza, 29 to downtown Kansas City, 52 to KCI. The airport number is the outlier and it does not improve at 5 a.m.

Walk Score is 22, and the highest-scoring pocket in the city is a 16. Retail is arterial — Town Center Plaza and Park Place at 119th and Nall, Mission Farms at 105th and Mission. Ironwoods Park is 115 acres with a nature center, an amphitheater, a one-acre lake and two miles of trail, and it is the best free thing in the city.