Kansas City, KS Apartment Property Taxes: How the UG Assesses

Kansas City, KS apartment property taxes start with a market value set every January 1 by the Unified Government (UG) Appraiser’s Office. Kansas then taxes 11.5% of that value, the same residential rate a house gets, multiplied by the combined mill levy of every taxing body that overlaps the parcel. The rate is fixed by the state constitution, so year-to-year change comes from the appraised value and from the levies set each summer. This guide covers both, plus the deadlines Wyandotte County owners tend to miss.

Since 1997, Kansas City, Kansas and Wyandotte County have been governed together as one consolidated Unified Government. One Board of Commissioners therefore adopts two separate budgets each year, one for the city and one for the county, and each budget carries its own mill levy. An apartment owner inside the city limits pays both, along with the school district, the community college, the library and any special districts.

How Kansas classifies an apartment building

Article 11 of the Kansas Constitution sorts real property into classes, and each class carries its own assessment rate. Unlike many states, Kansas puts multifamily housing in the residential class. The Kansas Department of Revenue’s property tax basics page on assessment rates by class lists residential property at 11.5% and commercial and industrial real property at 25%. County appraisers describe the residential class as “real property used for residential purposes including multifamily residential real property.” Classification follows actual use. A building that people live in falls in the residential class whether it has two units or two hundred.

For investors this matters a lot. Two buildings with the same market value face very different bills depending on their class:

• Residential (11.5%). A $5,000,000 apartment property has an assessed value of $575,000.
• Commercial (25%). A $5,000,000 retail or office property has an assessed value of $1,250,000, more than twice as much.
• Mixed-use. Classification follows use, so a building with ground-floor retail and apartments above is worth a close look. The classification line printed on the annual notice should be checked every year.

What the UG Appraiser’s Office is trying to measure

By law the Appraiser’s Office must value every parcel at fair market value as of January 1. For a single-family house that usually means comparing recent sales. Apartment buildings trade less often and are priced on income, so income carries more weight.

The statutory factors

Kansas spells out what appraisers must weigh in K.S.A. 79-503a, the fair market value statute. Sales alone are not the standard. The statute lists factors such as “earning capacity as indicated by lease price, by capitalization of net income or by absorption or sell-out period,” along with rental values and productivity. It also lists “rental values restricted by the state or federal government.” That language matters for any property operating under an affordable housing regulatory agreement, because a rent cap reduces what the property can earn.

The UG’s own valuation material lists “income and expense information,” sale and lease data, and leases among the inputs it considers, next to physical characteristics and location. The county splits the work between a Residential Division and a Commercial Division. Its 2023 annual valuation update counted 67,627 real estate parcels in total, 5,528 of them in the Commercial Division.

How an income-based value moves

Under an income approach, an appraiser estimates what the property should earn: market rent, minus a vacancy and collection allowance, minus normal operating expenses. That net operating income is then divided by a capitalization rate drawn from the market. A few levers drive the result:

1. Market rent, not your rent. If the model assumes area rents that are higher than what the building can actually get, the value will be too high.
2. Vacancy and expenses. Older buildings often run higher utility, repair and insurance costs than generic assumptions.
3. The capitalization rate. A small change in the cap rate moves the value a lot. On $400,000 of net income, a 7.5% cap rate gives about $5.33 million. At 8.0% the same income gives $5.0 million.

Values have been rising. The UG’s market study for tax year 2024 reported a median increase of 14% for commercial real estate and 10% for residential. For 2026, KSHB reported that the average residential valuation rose about 8.5%. County Appraiser Matthew Willard told the station that sale prices were still climbing, though not at the pace of 2022 and 2023.

The annual valuation calendar in Wyandotte County

The schedule is the same every year, and most of the deadlines are short. K.S.A. 79-1460 requires county appraisers to mail real property notices on or before March 1. The UG’s Appraiser’s Office page on values and appeals lays out the local steps:

• January 1. The valuation date. The value reflects the market and the property’s condition on that day.
• Around March 1. The Notice of Appraisal and Classification arrives. In 2024 the UG mailed notices on Friday, March 1.
• 30 days after mailing. Deadline to file an equalization appeal. It was March 30 in 2024. KSHB reported a March 26 deadline in 2026.
• Spring. Informal meetings with the Appraiser’s Office, by phone, virtually or on the written evidence, followed by a final determination letter. In 2024 the informal meeting window closed May 13 and determinations were due May 20.
• Summer. Revenue neutral rate and budget hearings.
• November. Tax statements are mailed, using that year’s value and the levies just adopted.

In 2026 the UG held appeal-season information sessions at the Eisenhower Recreation Center, the Beatrice Lee Community Center, the Joe Amayo Community Center and in Bonner Springs, according to KSHB’s coverage of the 2026 notices. The same report said 44% of the people who filed informal appeals the previous year got a reduction.

Appealing a value: informal meeting, BOTA and payment under protest

Owners can contest a valuation in two ways. They cannot use both against the same year’s value.

The spring equalization appeal

The first route opens when the notice arrives. Appeals can be filed through the UG’s online portal, by email, or on paper delivered or mailed to the Appraiser’s Office at 8200 State Avenue, Kansas City, KS 66112. After filing, the office schedules an informal meeting. The UG suggests homeowners bring recent fee appraisals, interior photos and comparable sales. For an apartment building, the useful evidence is mostly financial: a trailing 12-month operating statement, a current rent roll, a list of deferred maintenance with contractor bids, and any regulatory agreement that limits rents. An owner who disagrees with the result can appeal to the Kansas Board of Tax Appeals (BOTA) within 30 days of the informal meeting decision.

Many small and mid-size apartment owners qualify for BOTA’s faster track. The BOTA Small Claims and Expedited Hearings Division pamphlet says commercial properties with a valuation under $3,000,000 may choose that division, and that hearings must be held within 60 days after an appeal is perfected.

Paying under protest in December

An owner who misses the spring deadline has a second chance once the tax bill arrives. Under K.S.A. 79-2005, a taxpayer can file a written protest with the county treasurer when paying, generally by December 20. The UG notes that this route requires at least a partial payment. A protest leads to the same informal meeting and the same 30-day window to go to BOTA. The statute does not allow a protest of a valuation that was already appealed in the spring, and a second-half payment cannot be protested if the first half already was.

Building the mill levy behind Kansas City, KS apartment property taxes

Once the assessed value is set, the bill is assessed value times the total mill levy, divided by 1,000. One mill is $1 of tax per $1,000 of assessed value. Each overlapping taxing body sets its own levy, and the county clerk adds them up for each tax unit. Two apartment buildings in KCK can therefore carry different rates. The city lies mostly in Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools (USD 500), but parts are in the Turner (USD 202) and Piper (USD 203) districts, which have their own levies. The UG’s 2026 budget presentation splits each KCK tax dollar among the city, the county, the school district, Kansas City Kansas Community College, the library and the state.

Some recent published figures:

• City of Kansas City, KS. The UG’s 2026 city budget hearing notice lists 38.459 mills for 2024 and an estimated 34.462 mills for 2025. It shows a revenue neutral rate of 32.175 mills and a proposed ceiling of 37.462 mills for the 2026 budget year.
• Wyandotte County. The county’s 2025 budget notice lists 37.328 mills actual for 2023 and 37.313 mills estimated for 2024, with a revenue neutral rate of 33.311 mills.
• USD 500. The Kansas State Department of Education’s USD 500 budget-at-a-glance for 2025-26 shows a total levy of 52.776 mills, up from 50.310. The bond and interest levy alone rose from 8.000 to 11.794 mills.
• The state levy. For years Kansas levied 1.5 mills statewide for its educational and state institutions building funds. The Legislature passed SB 35 in 2025 to end those levies and pay for the funds from the state general fund. KDOR now notes that the state mill levy is eliminated effective January 1, 2026.

To see how much the levy matters: every 10 mills on a $575,000 assessed value comes to $5,750 a year. The USD 500 increase of about 2.5 mills from 2024-25 to 2025-26 works out to roughly $1,400 a year on a $5,000,000 apartment property, even if its value had stayed flat. The tax statement’s information sheet shows each parcel’s exact total.

Truth in taxation and the UG’s recent levy decisions

In 2021 Kansas passed Senate Bill 13, a truth-in-taxation law now codified at K.S.A. 79-2988. Each year the county clerk calculates a revenue neutral rate for every taxing body. That rate would bring in the same property tax revenue as the year before, applied to the new, usually higher, total assessed value. A taxing body that wants to go above it must notify the clerk by July 20 and publish notice at least 10 days before a hearing. The hearing must fall between August 20 and September 20. Exceeding the rate then takes a majority roll call vote, and the clerk mails each taxpayer a consolidated notice comparing proposed taxes with the prior year’s.

The UG’s recent history shows how the law plays out:

• 2025 budget. The Commission chose a revenue neutral budget: as values rose, the city levy dropped from 38.459 to an estimated 34.462 mills and total city revenue stayed about the same. The UG’s notice shows tax levied of about $67.13 million in both years.
• 2026 budget. In July 2025 the Commission voted 7-3 to state its intent to exceed the revenue neutral rate. The proposed budgets included a 2-mill increase for both the city and the county. KCTV5 and KSHB reported in August and September 2025 that the commissioners approved higher city and county levies for 2026. KSHB also reported that the mayor vetoed the budget and the board overrode the veto.
• 2027 budget. After an August 24, 2026 hearing, the board voted again to exceed the revenue neutral rate, KCTV5 reported. KSHB reported in September 2026 that the adopted 2027 budgets keep the current city and county levies.

Keeping a levy flat is not the same as keeping taxes flat: the same levy on a higher value still means a higher bill.

Why sale prices stay out of public records

Kansas does collect sale prices, but it does not publish them. Under K.S.A. 79-1437c, a deed presented to the Wyandotte County Register of Deeds must come with a real estate sales validation questionnaire. The statute says the questionnaire “shall not be filed of record.” K.S.A. 79-1437f limits who may see it: county officials, appraisers, BOTA and a few other listed parties.

There is one exception that matters for appeals. A property owner, or the owner’s representative, may review questionnaires “for prosecuting an appeal of the valuation of such owner’s property.” Access is limited to sales in the same constitutional subclass. An apartment owner appealing a value can therefore ask for the residential-class sales the office relied on. The UG says it provides sales information to people who file appeals, and that appellants can submit their own comparable sales.

Neighborhood Revitalization rebates for rehab and new construction

The Kansas Neighborhood Revitalization Act lets local governments rebate part of the extra property tax that new construction or major renovation creates. The UG ran its program through the 2021-2025 UG Neighborhood Revitalization Area plan, which was effective January 1, 2021 through December 31, 2025. Under that plan:

• Multifamily qualified. New or rehabilitated multifamily projects could earn a 95% rebate of the incremental tax: for 10 years in Area 1, and for 5 years in Areas 2 and 3. In Area 3 the multifamily rebate applied to rehab only.
• Minimum improvement. The work had to raise assessed value by at least 15%. Historic structures had lower minimums and a 100% rebate.
• Caps and deadlines. Standard projects were limited to $3,000,000 in construction costs. Applications were due within 30 days of permit issuance, and projects had to be finished within 24 months.
• Special projects. Projects over $3 million in Area 1 or along the State Avenue and Leavenworth Road corridors could get a 75-85% rebate for up to 20 years.
• Compliance. Applicants could not have delinquent property taxes on any Wyandotte County property, and the rebate depended on paying taxes when due.

The rebate covers only the tax on the added value. Tax on the pre-improvement value is still owed. Because the published plan ran through 2025, owners planning a KCK renovation should confirm current terms and area maps with the UG Department of Economic Development before pulling permits.

Paying the bill: December 20 and May 10

Under K.S.A. 79-2004, the full year’s tax can be paid by December 20. It can also be split, with half due by December 20 and the other half by May 10 of the following year. The UG Treasury mails real estate statements in November and sends second-half statements in the spring. Its notice for the 2023 tax year said unpaid first-half balances began accruing interest after December 20, at 12% a year for that cycle, because the statutory rate changes. Payments go to “Unified Treasury” and can be made online through myWyco, by mail, at the drop box or in person. The Treasury does not take payments by phone.

Owners whose lender pays from escrow should still confirm the payment went out on time. A late payment can cost a Neighborhood Revitalization rebate.

Putting the tax calendar to work in Kansas City, KS

Here is how the pieces of Kansas City, KS apartment property taxes fit into an owner’s year:

1. Check the class line every March. Apartments belong in the residential class at 11.5%. Being assessed at the 25% commercial rate by mistake can cost more than any argument about value.
2. Have the operating data ready before the notice comes. With a 30-day window, owners who already have a current rent roll and a trailing 12-month statement can file a solid appeal with time to spare.
3. Argue the income approach on its terms. Market rent, vacancy, expense ratios and the cap rate are what move an apartment value, so challenge those inputs directly.
4. Use your access to sales data. As an appellant, you can see the residential-class sales questionnaires the office used, which the public cannot.
5. Watch the August notices. The revenue neutral notice shows each taxing body’s proposed increase before its vote, which helps when budgeting next year’s expenses.
6. Plan rehabs around incentives. Confirm the current Neighborhood Revitalization terms before permits are issued, not after.

A value or class corrected now carries forward into later years. For local rent, supply and pricing trends, see our Kansas City, KS market page. For the rest of the state, our Kansas market overview covers markets across the state. To compare these rules with other states, our state-by-state guide to rent control and property tax sets Kansas next to its neighbors.