Kansas City is a town with a colorful past and a promising future; it is big and sprawling, diverse and dynamic, sophisticated and yet down-home.

Geography in Kansas City 

Kansas City is big in miles, straddling a state line and encompassing (depending on which government agency is doing the counting) from eight to 13 counties. In the 11 most close-in counties, and we encompass more than 4,000 square miles. According to the 2010 Census there are 145,786 people, 53,925 households and 35,112 families residing in Kansas City. There is a Kansas City, Missouri and a Kansas City, Kansas, and the larger of the two and the urban center of the metro area is on the Missouri side. Many locals, even those who live 50 miles away from the Kansas City, MO, city limits on either side of the state line, are apt to reply when asked where they're from - "Kansas City." It's a big name for a big place.

We could have been Possum Trot. That was one of the names suggested for the town that grew up on banks of the Missouri River in the mid-19th century. The Town Company, which purchased the original 271 acres in 1838, finally settled on the Town of Kansas, naming the new town for the Kansa Indians who had long inhabited the area.

Landscape of Kansas City

Kansas City is a pretty city, not the flat prairie or arid wasteland some picture. The Missouri and Kansas rivers meet just north of downtown Kansas City. They - and their tributaries - have carved valleys and bluffs over the landscape. In the late 19th century some far-sighted city fathers committed to a program of interconnecting boulevards and parks that placed this town in the forefront of the nationwide "City Beautiful" movement. We have as many - probably more by now - boulevards as Paris, and with more than 200 fountains, we're second only to Rome. (In 1973 a City of Fountains Foundation was established to ensure the construction of new and upkeep of the older fountains; from them, you can obtain a map for a driving/walking tour of some of the city's prettiest). We do not have an ocean or a mountain, but we have limestone bluffs and thousands of acres of lakes, rivers and streams.

History of Kansas City 

Almost smack-dab in the middle of the United States, Kansas City has always been an important trade/transportation center. The same year Missouri came into the Union, a French trader, Francois Chouteau, came upriver from St. Louis and established a trading post at a bend in the river. A few miles and a few years later, another entrepreneur, John McCoy, set up an inland store on the Santa Fe Trail that became Westport and an important outfitting spot for wagons headed west. We have been an important rail center (today second in size nationally only to Chicago) since we opened a railroad bridge across the Missouri in 1869. Today, too, we have what many call the nation's most user-friendly airport: Kansas City International sees about 400 flights a day, and the distance from curb to aircraft is less than 75 feet.

We are a cowtown and an art center. The stockyards made us one of the world's major cattle markets in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At its peak in the early 1900s, the Kansas City Livestock Exchange was the largest building in the world devoted exclusively to livestock interests. We still commemorate that heritage every year during the American Royal Livestock, Horse Show and Rodeo, more than 100 years old and one of the nation's largest.

Demographics 

Our diverse population has many ethnic groups whose roots go deep. The Hispanic community traces its to the opening of the Santa Fe Trail; the huge meat-packing industry of the late 1800s brought Croatians, Serbs, Russians, Slovakians and Greeks. Our religious preferences are varied. The more than 2,000 congregations here represent more than a dozen faiths: Protestant, Roman Catholic, Jewish, Orthodox, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi, Baha'i, Native American, Sikh, Jain, pagan, Unitarian Universalist and New Age groups. The 2000 census revealed that we are 51.5 percent female and 48.5 percent male; that 42 percent of us have at least two vehicles; that we are 84.5 percent white, 13.4 percent African-American and 1.7 percent Asian.

We are good workers. We miss fewer days of work and drive shorter commutes than most major metropolitan centers. The Midwestern work ethic is alive and well here. According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, production workers in Kansas City contribute 50 percent more value added per hour than the national average, and the National Center for Health Statistics reports that Kansas City area workers take the fewest sick days of 33 major metropolitan areas surveyed.

Kanas City's demographics are a part of the several reasons why the people love calling KC "home". When searching the Kansas City real estate market here, potential buyers are drawn to the culture, geography and economic success - let alone the diverse range of Kansas City real estate properties.

Economic Climate in Kansas City 

Our business environment is healthy. Year after year, through good times and bad, the metro unemployment rate and the cost-of-living rank well below national averages. Much of that is due to the area's diverse economic base. We are a key production, distribution and service center for the Midwest. We are home base to major companies including Hallmark Cards, Yellow Freight, Farmland Industries, Sprint, and Interstate Bakers. Our homegrown businesses include American Century, H & R Block and Russell Stover. We are a regional office town with outstanding office spaces in the heart of the city and spread in office parks around the edges. Agriculture is still important to us, but so are the Harley-Davidson and automobile plants, the technology companies, the big banks and all the various kinds of service businesses. We consistently rank among the top U.S. cities for supporting small businesses, and Fortune magazine ranked us among the 20 best U.S. cities for international business. We lead the world in underground storage space and are home to the world's largest subsurface business complex. In 2000, plans for the Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute were announced, launching an area-wide partnership of business and science committed to transforming this city into a national life sciences center. In July of 2012 Google started taking pre-orders for their experimental Fiber-optic network, which it is building at no cost to the city to deliver high speed internet services to Kansas City.

Real Estate in Kansas City

Families have chosen to call Kansas City their home for over a century and a half now. Now the Kansas City real estate market is booming. With listings on both the Missouri and Kansas sides, buyers are certain to find the perfect house that fits all of their needs. What makes Kansas City real estate so desirable? 

• Kansas City is one of the most affordable cities to live in
• Kansas City is a center for business, art and lifestyle
• Kansas City is spacious, with a lot of green space
• Kanas City has an easier commute than most other large cities
• Kansas City has low unemployment rates

And those are just a few of the reasons why choosing real estate in Kansas City is a great idea. It is such a desirable area to live in that it is unlikely that Kansas City real estate will go down in value, making it one of your best investments.

Weather in Kansas City 

We have very interesting weather (we average 38.1 inches of precipitation every year, including 21 inches of snow, and we have 51 days with thunderstorms, 39 days above 90 degrees and 22 below 10 degrees - on our hottest day ever, August 14, 1936, we hit 113 degrees, and we bottomed out at minus 23 degrees on Dec. 22 and 23, 1989); five entertainment districts; great shopping all over town; 74 public school districts; and big plans for the future.