Kansas voided city rules on small houses. Covenants were left alone
Kansas voided city rules on small houses. Covenants were left alone
2026-09-10 · Kansas · Legislation
A Kansas city may no longer require a two-car garage, a large lot, or brick on all four sides of a new small house. New Section 3 of SB 418 — separate from the by-right permitting machinery in Section 1 — sets a mandatory floor that every county, city and unified government has to allow, and then voids any local rule that conflicts with it.1
It is the most aggressive piece of the act, and the one most likely to change what new Kansas subdivisions physically look like.
The four things every jurisdiction must now allow
Section 3(a) applies “for new construction of single-family residences that are less than 2,500 square feet of total livable floor area, or gross floor area minus garages and basements, in size, and are constructed on each such residence's own separate lot or parcel with its own individual legal description.”2 For those houses, “all political subdivisions shall allow” four things.
First, use of the 2018 edition of the International Residential Code — either the 2018 IRC itself, the version of it the jurisdiction previously adopted, or the version adopted by another political subdivision, at the jurisdiction's discretion. Second, “construction of single-car garages.” Third, “only one side of architectural finish.” Fourth, “a minimum residential lot size of 3,000 square feet subject to any reasonable setback requirements that avoid unwarranted hardship yet protect the public welfare and safety.”
Subsection (b) supplies the enforcement: “Any part of any building code, ordinance, resolution, regulation or rule of any political subdivision that violates this section shall be null and void as applied to such property.” Not preempted going forward — void as applied, now. Subsection (c) defines “political subdivision” to reach “any county, city, unified government or any other political or taxing subdivision of the state of Kansas, or an administrative unit thereof, with authority to regulate the new construction of single-family residences.”
Nothing in Section 3 mentions covenants
Section 3 has no savings clause of its own. The covenant-preserving language sits in Section 1(e) and is drafted as “nothing in this section” — a reference to Section 1, not to Section 3. That drafting difference is worth flagging, though the practical answer is the same in both directions: Section 3 constrains what a government may require, and says nothing whatever about what a private declaration may require.
Where this collides with a Kansas declaration
Three covenant provisions that are ordinary in Kansas subdivisions now point in the opposite direction from state law.
Minimum square footage. Plenty of Kansas declarations set a floor — no dwelling of less than 1,800 or 2,000 square feet of finished living area. The state has just built its entire small-home policy around houses under 2,500 square feet. A developer platting inside an existing covenanted subdivision cannot use the new floor; a developer platting raw ground can. The state rule and the private rule now select for different products on adjacent parcels.
Garage requirements. A two-car-garage covenant is extremely common, and it is untouched. The city must permit a single-car garage; the association need not.
Architectural finish on all elevations. This is the sharpest one. “Only one side of architectural finish” is precisely the requirement most architectural control committees exist to police. An owner building a small house in a covenanted subdivision can now clear the city on one finished elevation and fail the committee on the other three, and the committee's authority survives that outcome intact if the declaration supports it.
What a board can actually do
Confirm the declaration says it, not just the guidelines. K.S.A. 58-4617(c) conditions design-standard rulemaking on the declaration providing for it: an association may adopt construction and design criteria “if the declaration so provides.”3 An architectural standard living only in a committee handbook, with no declaration hook, was always the weaker position. It is weaker now that a builder can point to a state statute voiding the municipal version of the same requirement.
Check the lot-size math on any undeveloped ground inside the community. A 3,000-square-foot minimum lot is small — roughly 50 by 60 feet. If the declaration is silent on lot dimensions and relies on the recorded plat, the plat governs and nothing changes. If the declaration is silent on both, the state floor is the only floor, and a leftover parcel inside the community may be more subdividable than the board assumes.
Do not assume the association can enforce the 2018 IRC point. The code-edition provision is about which building code a government may require. Associations do not enforce building codes and should not start; a declaration provision purporting to impose a code edition is an invitation to a dispute the association has no expertise to win.
What to watch next
Watch for the “reasonable setback” fight. Section 3(a)(4) lets jurisdictions keep setbacks that “avoid unwarranted hardship yet protect the public welfare and safety,” and a 3,000-square-foot lot with generous setbacks is an unbuildable lot. That is the obvious lane for a city that dislikes the mandate, and the obvious first test case.
And watch the plat, not the ordinance, in your own community. Where a subdivision plat fixes lot lines, Section 3 changes nothing on the ground no matter what the city code now says.
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