What Housing Experts Forecast for Kansas City Home Prices Over the Next Five Years

A significant share of would-be buyers in the Kansas City metro have postponed purchasing because they expect home prices to fall. The data from the people whose job is to forecast housing prices does not support that expectation.

What the Expert Consensus Actually Shows

Each quarter, Pulsenomics surveys more than 100 economists, housing analysts, and real estate experts as part of the Home Price Expectations Survey. The most recent results show a clear consensus: a crash is not in the forecast.

The average of all forecasts projects home prices rising every year for at least the next five years. The pace is more moderate than the pandemic-era spikes, but the direction is consistently positive.

Even the Most Pessimistic Forecasters Expect Prices to Rise

Pulsenomics segments the panel by outlook — separating the most bullish forecasters from the most bearish. The result is telling.

Even the pessimist segment of the panel does not forecast a crash. They expect slower appreciation, not price declines. The debate among experts is not whether prices will fall — it is how much they will rise.

The Cost of Waiting for a Crash That Isn't in the Forecast

Based on the Pulsenomics forecast, a buyer who purchased a $400,000 home at the start of this year would accumulate approximately $40,000 in equity from appreciation alone over the next five years — in a moderate-growth scenario.

The calculation runs in both directions. A buyer waiting for prices to fall who instead sees five years of continued appreciation is not avoiding risk — they are taking a different kind of risk. They may be paying more for the same home in year five than they would today, having missed the appreciation that accrued in between.

That dynamic plays out at the national level. In Kansas City, where inventory constraints have kept the market from softening the way some other metros have, the case against waiting is reinforced by local supply conditions.

What This Means for Kansas City Buyers

Timing a purchase around a forecast crash requires the crash to actually happen and the buyer to recognize it in time to act. The Pulsenomics data suggests neither condition is likely to materialize. The more productive question is whether the buyer's financial position, life circumstances, and local market conditions support a purchase now.

Munkel Real Estate Solutions works through that analysis with Kansas City buyers — not to push a transaction, but to give an accurate read on what waiting actually costs versus what it protects against in this specific market.

Data sourced from Pulsenomics Home Price Expectations Survey.