FHA Loans in Kirkwood, MO: Homes Built Before 1978, the County's Floor Limit and the Permit That Turns On the City's Utilities

The first train to Kirkwood arrived on May 11, 1853, for an auction of lots, and the town took its name from James P. Kirkwood, the engineer who laid out the railroad. The Census Bureau now puts the median build year of a Kirkwood home at 1963, which means half of the city's homes are 1963 or older. FHA finances homes of that age with a few extra checks, and this page walks through them.

An FHA loan fits the price of most Kirkwood homes: Redfin's median sale price for the three months ending September 2026 is $454,783, and FHA's 2026 limit for a one-unit home in St. Louis County is $541,287. At the minimum down payment that limit reaches a price of about $560,900. I'm Jeff Moran, NMLS #483943, a mortgage broker licensed in Missouri through C2 Financial Corporation, and I have been in the mortgage business since 1996. I work out of Bluffton, South Carolina, and I work with Missouri clients by phone.

My page on Kirkwood itself covers the depot, Kirkwood Road and the utilities the city runs, and the St. Louis area page covers the county and its municipalities. The FHA rules below come from HUD's Handbook 4000.1, and the local facts come from the publishers linked on this page, checked in November 2026. FHA loans in Missouri covers the statewide limit and Missouri's closing costs, and the FHA explainer covers the program basics.

The 2026 FHA loan limit in Kirkwood and what homes sell for

All of Kirkwood is in St. Louis County, and the county is at the lowest limit FHA sets anywhere, the figure HUD calls the floor. The box below this article shows the current one-unit figure. The limit applies to the base loan, before the upfront mortgage insurance premium is added. At 3.5 percent down it corresponds to a price of about $560,900, and a larger down payment raises the price you can reach.

Redfin's market page for Kirkwood counted 125 sales in September 2026, down from 156 a year earlier, with the typical home selling after seven days on the market and at 101.6 percent of its list price. The median of $454,783 was down 4.8 percent from the same three months of 2025. Redfin is a brokerage, not an association's report, so I treat its figure as a good reading rather than the official one.

The median leaves about $86,500 of room under the limit, and plenty of Kirkwood sales land on either side of it. On the day I read Redfin's page, the recent sales included a home on Peeke Avenue that had been listed at $695,000 and one on Adams Lane listed at $649,900. Both are past the limit at the minimum down payment. The same list had two units in multi-unit buildings listed at $215,000 and $130,000, both well under it. The Webster-Kirkwood Times quoted a higher figure, an average sale price of $583,298 in 2025 across the Kirkwood and Webster Groves school districts. An agent cited it in March 2026 from MARIS, the St. Louis area's multiple listing service. That is an average across two districts, and a few large sales pull an average up, so the two figures measure different things: one is a three-month median for Kirkwood, the other an average across two school districts.

For a home priced above the limit, FHA still works as long as the base loan stays at or under $541,287, which means a bigger down payment. Above that, a conventional loan is the usual answer, and the county's conforming loan limit, the ceiling for a standard conventional loan, is in the same box. The table below runs Redfin's median through the Handbook's minimum required investment, which is 3.5 percent of the adjusted value, the lower of the price and the appraised value. The premiums come from Appendix 1.0 of the Handbook.

Illustration: FHA purchase at the Redfin median, 3.5 percent down
Home price at Redfin's median for the three months ending September 2026	$454,783
Down payment, 3.5 percent	$15,917
Base loan	$438,866
Upfront mortgage insurance premium, 1.75 percent of the base loan, financed	$7,680
Loan amount with the premium financed	$446,546
Annual mortgage insurance premium, 0.55 percent of the base loan, first year	about $2,414, or $201 a month

The annual premium stays for the life of the loan at this down payment, and it is paid in monthly installments with your payment. These figures are only the mortgage insurance. Principal and interest, property tax and homeowners insurance come on top, and the rate option you choose comes from the pricing tool described at the bottom.

FHA loans on a 1960s Kirkwood home

FHA works on a 1960s home, and the age of the home sets what the appraiser and I look for. The Handbook says the lender must confirm the home is free of lead paint hazards, and HUD's lead-based paint rule applies to homes built before 1978. On a 1960s Kirkwood home, that means a lead paint hazard has to be corrected before closing. The Handbook also says the lender decides which repairs have to be made for the home to be eligible, so a repair the appraiser calls for is something we settle with the lender before closing.

Termites are the other item on an older home. For an existing home, the lender has to confirm it is free of wood destroying insects, and when the appraisal is written subject to a pest inspection, I order the inspection and get any treatment documented.

A home that needs more than paint can still be bought with FHA. The Handbook's 203(k) program adds the cost of the work to the loan. The Limited 203(k) covers minor remodeling and nonstructural repairs up to $75,000 in total work, with no consultant required. The Standard 203(k) covers bigger projects, with a minimum of $5,000 in repairs and a 203(k) consultant who writes up the job. On a home built before 1978, stabilizing lead-based paint is on the list of work either version can pay for. The pricing tool on this site does not price a 203(k), so if one is the right fit for a Kirkwood home you like, please call me and we will talk through what the lender needs first.

Once you have a home under contract, please provide the complete home inspection report, all pages, and the pest inspection report with it. I read them against the Handbook's list before the appraisal is ordered, so a repair request reaches the seller once instead of twice.

The seller's occupancy permit and the three bills from City Hall

Kirkwood runs its own electric utility, its own water system and its own trash service, and the city's occupancy page ties all three to one piece of paper. Every change in occupancy requires a permit that includes an inspection, and the seller is the one who applies for it, on the Kirkwood Public Portal, for a single-family home or a duplex. Once the home passes, the city issues an Occupancy Certificate to the new occupant. You have to hand that certificate to the city's finance department before Kirkwood Electric, the water and the trash can be transferred into your name. The same certificate is what the Kirkwood School District asks for when you register a child.

So a Kirkwood closing has two inspections that can each produce a repair list: the FHA appraisal, which answers to the Handbook, and the city's occupancy inspection, which answers to the city code. They are not the same list, and the seller's permit application is one date I put on the closing timeline early, because the transfer of the lights and the water waits on it. I did not find the permit fee or how long an inspection takes to schedule on the city's page, so please ask the Building Division at 314-822-5823 when you are under contract. Please also ask the seller whether the permit has already been issued, since a property that already passed does not need a new one.

The city's page says most residents are in the Kirkwood Electric service area, with Ameren Missouri serving the rest, and it lists Spire for gas and the Metropolitan Sewer District for sewer. None of those bills is in the payment a lender qualifies you on, so I add them to the budget we work out together. Kirkwood Electric's rate page lists a residential customer charge of $10 a month plus 14.85 cents per kilowatt-hour from October through May and 16.05 cents from June through September, effective November 1, 2025. The same page says a purchase power adjustment of 3.5 cents per kilowatt-hour may be added. Please ask the seller for the last twelve months of electric and water bills for the home, and we will put the real figures in your budget.

Property tax in the FHA payment

The property tax is in the payment I qualify you on, collected monthly with the mortgage. Missouri assesses a home at 19 percent of its market value, and the tax rate is charged per $100 of that assessed value. The city's tax rate page adds up every line on a Kirkwood residential bill. The lines run from the city's own $0.4580 and the library's $0.2150 to the county, the Zoo-Museum District, the community college, the sewer district and the state. It puts the total at $6.2237 per $100 of assessed value.

That table does not say which tax year it covers, and its school line reads $3.4737 while the Kirkwood School District's own 2025 rate is $3.0507, the lowest its board has approved in more than 30 years. The two do not match, so the table below runs the bill both ways. The arithmetic on Redfin's median looks like this:

Illustration: Kirkwood property tax on the Redfin median
Market value used	$454,783
Assessed at 19 percent	$86,409
At the city's published combined rate of $6.2237 per $100	about $5,378 a year, or $448 a month
Same bill with the district's 2025 rate swapped in	about $5,012 a year, or $418 a month

The county reassesses every odd year, so a home bought in 2026 gets a new value in 2027, and the St. Louis area page covers the appeal window. For the payment I run, I use the county's actual bill for the address, and I set the escrow from that. Escrow is the account the lender keeps alongside your loan to pay the tax bill and the insurance when they come due.

FHA is an owner-occupied program. The Handbook requires at least one person on the loan to move in within 60 days of signing and intend to live there for at least a year.

Flood along the Meramec and Sugar Creek

The city's floodplain page says about 1,133 properties in Kirkwood, around 10.6 percent, face flood risk over the next 30 years, and it names the Lower Meramec Basin and the area near Sugar Creek as the places to look. The Handbook requires me to order a flood zone determination for the address, separate from anything the appraiser says. A Special Flood Hazard Area is FEMA's high-risk zone, the zones beginning with the letter A (or V on a coast). If any part of the home is in one, the home has to be in a community where National Flood Insurance Program coverage is available. You also carry flood insurance for the life of the loan, so the premium becomes part of the cost of owning the home.

The city's page says a Floodplain Development Permit may be required before work inside a mapped floodplain, including additions, fences, retaining walls and roofing, even when no building permit is needed. If the home you like is in the Lower Meramec Basin or near Sugar Creek, I want the flood determination and a premium quote before you write the offer. My article on buying in a flood zone walks through how to get both.

Kirkwood condominiums and FHA approval

Two of the recent sales on Redfin's page were units in multi-unit buildings, on East Washington Avenue and North Clay Avenue. FHA insures a unit only in a project that meets its rules, and the ones that matter most to a client are how many of the units are owner-occupied and how many owners are behind on their dues. A project on HUD's approved list has already been checked. A project that is not on the list can still work for a single unit when it has at least five units and the unit is not brand new. A single-unit file underwritten by hand rather than through FHA's automated system is capped at 90 percent of the value, which means 10 percent down.

I have not checked any Kirkwood project against HUD's list, so I look each one up by name when you find a unit. I also read the recorded declaration, which is the document filed with the county that says how the building is owned. The dues go in the payment I qualify you on, the same as the tax bill. Pitman Place is an apartment building, so it is not a condo question. Why condos are harder to finance explains what gets checked.

Seller credits toward your FHA closing costs

Redfin shows Kirkwood homes selling above list price in about a week, so a seller credit is not something to count on here. If you do negotiate one, the Handbook caps what the seller, the agents or a builder can pay on your behalf at 6 percent of the sales price. The credit can go toward closing costs, prepaid items, discount points, which are money paid at closing to lower the rate, and the upfront mortgage insurance premium. Anything above 6 percent is an inducement to purchase, which comes off the price dollar for dollar before the loan is figured, and none of it can go toward your 3.5 percent down payment. My article on seller extras covers what else counts.

Things to look up before you make an offer

• The St. Louis County property search shows the assessed value, the taxing districts on the bill and the build year for an address, and the build year tells us whether the lead paint rule applies.
• The seller applies for the city's occupancy permit, so it helps to ask whether the application has been made and whether the home passed, because the electric, water and trash transfers wait on it.
• Kirkwood Electric serves most of the city and Ameren Missouri serves the rest, so it helps to find out which one serves the address and to see the last twelve months of electric and water bills.
• FEMA's flood zone for the specific lot decides whether flood insurance is required, so a quote is worth getting if any part of the home is in a high-risk zone.
• For a condominium unit, please provide the name of the project, and I will pull its recorded declaration to see how the building is owned.
• The listing agent can tell you whether any association dues apply to the home and what they cover, since dues go into the payment I qualify you on.
• At pre-approval, please provide your most recent complete federal income tax return, all pages and schedules, please, and I'll let you know if we need the year before too. Please also provide your two most recent months of bank statements for the accounts you'll be using, all pages, even if the last page is intentionally left blank. Getting pre-approved in Missouri lists the rest of what I will ask you for.

Once you have an address in mind, I can run the FHA payment with that parcel's tax bill, the flood premium if the zone requires one and any association dues in it. You'll see pricing for your scenario, choose a rate option, which you can change later, and the application opens from there. You are also welcome to call me and talk it through first.

Nothing on this page is a loan approval, a denial or a commitment to lend, and it is not tax advice. St. Louis County sets the assessed value, FEMA's map decides the flood zone, the City of Kirkwood runs the occupancy inspection, and HUD's list decides a condominium project's status. Please confirm each before you rely on a figure here.

Common questions

What is the FHA loan limit in Kirkwood, MO for 2026?

It is HUD's one-unit limit for St. Louis County, which is the national floor, and the bold line at the top of this page gives the figure. Redfin's median sale price for the three months ending September 2026 leaves room under it, and a home priced above it still works with FHA when a larger down payment keeps the base loan at or under the limit.

Can I buy an older Kirkwood home with an FHA loan?

Yes. The Census Bureau puts the median build year of a Kirkwood home at 1963, and FHA finances homes that age every day. On a home built before 1978, the lender has to confirm it is free of lead paint hazards, so a lead paint hazard gets corrected before closing, and the lender confirms the home is free of termites.

Do I need an occupancy permit to buy a home in Kirkwood with an FHA loan?

The seller applies for the permit, which includes a city inspection, and once the home passes, the city issues the Occupancy Certificate to you. You hand that certificate to the city's finance department before Kirkwood Electric, the water and the trash can be transferred into your name. It is separate from the FHA appraisal, and a home that already passed does not need a new permit.

Does an FHA loan in Kirkwood require flood insurance?

Only when part of the home is in a Special Flood Hazard Area on FEMA's map, which in Kirkwood runs along the Lower Meramec and near Sugar Creek. Then the policy has to be kept for the life of the loan, and the premium becomes part of the cost of owning the home.

Can I buy a Kirkwood condo with an FHA loan?

It depends on the project. A unit in a project on HUD's approved list works. A single unit in an unapproved project can also work when the project has at least five units and the unit's certificate of occupancy is at least a year old or it has been lived in. No more than 15 percent of the units can be more than 60 days behind on dues. I look each project up by name.

Can I use an FHA 203(k) loan to fix up a Kirkwood home?

FHA's 203(k) program adds the cost of the work to the loan, with a Limited version for minor, nonstructural repairs and a Standard version for larger projects that uses a 203(k) consultant. Stabilizing lead-based paint on a home built before 1978 is on the list of eligible work. The pricing tool on this site does not price a 203(k), so please call me about one and we will talk through what the lender needs.