Overland Park

The number that explains the city

75 square miles. That is the city limit, not the metro. Anyone who quotes you "the Overland Park median" — including us, at $490,000 — is flattening three distinct housing markets into one figure.

North of I-435 you are buying 1950s and 1960s brick ranches under a full tree canopy: mature silver maples and pin oaks, sidewalks in some plats and none in others, and infrastructure that is sixty-plus years old. Through the middle it is 1980s and 1990s two-stories, vinyl and brick fronts, quarter-acre lots, two-car garages, full basements. South of 135th it is stone-and-siding new construction, three-car garages, larger footprints, an HOA, and trees that have been in the ground for under twenty years. Median year built citywide: 1989.

Walk Score is 35. The exception is downtown OP — the handful of blocks around Santa Fe Street, where the rebuilt Farmers Market at Clock Tower Landing reopened this year after a long renovation. Leave those blocks and you are back in a car for everything.

The boundary problem

Buying an Overland Park address does not tell you which school district you are in. This is the most expensive misunderstanding in Johnson County.

Shawnee Mission USD 512 serves fourteen cities, and Overland Park is one of them. Blue Valley USD 229 also takes in Overland Park addresses. So does Olathe USD 233. So does Spring Hill USD 230. District boundaries do not follow city lines. A north-OP address is usually Shawnee Mission; a south-OP address is usually Blue Valley; a west-OP address can land in Olathe. Look up the actual street address on the district's own boundary map before you write an offer, and do not accept the city name as an answer from anyone, including a listing agent.

What it costs to carry

The property tax bill is 98.929 mills applied to 11.5% of market value: about 1.14% of the home's value every year. On a $490,000 house, roughly $5,600. That effective rate is lower than Leawood, Lenexa and Olathe.

HOA dues are the variable. Most of the pre-2000 stock has none. Newer communities south of 135th can run several hundred dollars a month, sometimes with amenity assessments layered on top. Read the declaration, not the listing summary.

If you work in Kansas City, Missouri, you owe the 1% earnings tax to that city. Living in Kansas does not exempt you.

Roads and infrastructure

The US-69 reconstruction is finished; express toll lanes between 103rd and 151st opened in February 2026. If your commute uses that corridor, tolls are a line item now.

Drive times from the middle of the city, free-flow and without traffic: 17 minutes to downtown OP, 29 to the Plaza, 29 to downtown Kansas City, 49 to KCI. Those are floors. The city's arterial grid — Metcalf, Antioch, Switzer, Quivira — moves volume well but the distances are real.

What to inspect

On the older north side: sewer laterals (clay or cast iron), electrical panels, and original galvanized supply lines. On the middle-era stock: roofs, HVAC at end-of-life, and the first generation of vinyl windows. On the newest south-side houses: grading and drainage on young lots, and whether the subdivision still has active construction traffic on the street you are buying into.