Raymore

The streets off Foxwood and 163rd are wide, pale and new. Driveways run three cars deep, garages are attached and front-loaded, and the trees are exactly as tall as the houses are old — which is to say, not very. The Census puts the median year built at 2002, the newest of any city on this site by roughly fifteen years, and you can read it in every direction: young canopy, no shade over the pavement, curb-and-gutter still sharp-edged, and full afternoon sun on the west elevations.

That is the trade Raymore offers. A house built this century, and 35 minutes of interstate between it and the rest of the metro.

The market

Median sale price is $346,989, up 8.3% year over year — the fastest move of any city on this page — with 74 homes for sale citywide in May. Zillow publishes no city-level price-per-square-foot or MLS days-on-market for Raymore, so we do not print either.

The two big pieces of the housing story are the subdivisions and Creekmoor, a golf-course community built around a Thomas E. Clark 18-hole course that opened in 2007 and plays to 7,405 yards from the back tees, with larger houses arranged along the fairways. Creekmoor carries an HOA; much of the rest of the city does not, and there is no reliable citywide typical dues figure — read the declaration for the specific subdivision.

The tax number we will not guess at

Raymore's effective property tax rate is about 1.57% of market value — a certified 2025 total of $8.2470 per $100 of assessed value for a Raymore-Peculiar R-II parcel, at Missouri's 19% residential assessment, read from the Cass County certified levy sheet and cross-checked line by line against the Missouri State Auditor.

What we do know matters: Raymore's bill includes a separate South Metropolitan Fire Protection District levy on top of city, county and school. That means every "city + county + school" estimate you find online — and quite often the one in a lender's worksheet — is too low. Before you write an offer, get the rate for the exact parcel from the Cass County Collector in writing, and rerun your payment.

Distance is the defining fact

KCI is 63 free-flow minutes away. That is the longest airport drive of any city on this site, and it is the figure without traffic. Downtown is 35 minutes, the Plaza 32, south Overland Park 35 — all free-flow floors computed on empty roads. Drive your actual commute at your actual departure time before you commit; that single hour of research changes more minds than anything else on this page.

Walk Score is 17, the lowest on this site. The street pattern is cul-de-sac and collector, retail is on the arterials, and there is no corner coffee shop at the end of the block.

What there is

The civic center of gravity is a park, not a street. T.B. Hanna Station — three acres in Original Town, with a covered Depot that becomes an ice rink in winter, a sprayground, and the first two universally accessible play spaces on a single site in the country. Recreation Park runs 62 acres on the south end, about 80% of it programmed for active use.

Raymore-Peculiar R-II serves most of the city. As everywhere in this metro, district boundaries do not follow city lines — confirm by address, not by city name.

On a 2002 house

Newer does not mean no inspection. At twenty-plus years, the original roof, the original HVAC and the original water heater are all at or past the age where they fail. On the newest streets, look at grading and drainage on young lots, check whether construction traffic is still running through, and ask what is still scheduled to be built on the vacant ground behind you.