Rental Property in Missouri: What the Numbers Actually Look Like

Missouri is the friendliest state in this Midwest set on paper and one of the two where insurance, not property tax, is the expense that decides the deal.

The effective property tax rate is 0.88% — the lowest of the seven states here, and less than half of Illinois's. There is no real estate transfer tax at all; the Missouri Constitution prohibits the state and its political subdivisions from imposing one. There is no mortgage recording tax. The statewide median is $299,064. A Missouri buyer pays almost no friction to get in and one of the lowest holding taxes in the region.

Then the insurance quote arrives: $3,409 a year at $300,000 of dwelling coverage — 1.30 times the property tax bill on the median house and 14.20% of gross rent on the worked example below. Missouri is one of the most hail-exposed states in the country, and the premium says so.

There is one more thing that a statewide rate will not tell you, and it is the largest county effect in this whole Midwest set: St. Louis County's effective rate is 1.57%, or 78% above the state figure. Section 5 puts a dollar number on that.

A note before you start: this is general educational information about how rental property arithmetic works in Missouri. It is not investment, tax, insurance, or legal advice, and it is not a recommendation about any property. Missouri property tax is assessed and levied locally, and insurance is priced per structure. Talk to a Missouri CPA about tax treatment, a licensed Missouri insurance agent about a real quote, and a Missouri real estate attorney about anything contractual.

1. What a rental costs to buy here

The statewide median sale price is $299,064 (Redfin, June 2026, up 3.1% year over year — an actual median sale price rather than a smoothed index). Zillow's home-value index reads $268,423, but that is a smoothed index and a different measurement.

County medians and carrying costs, and note that the two are almost identical in price and very different in tax:

• Jackson County (Kansas City): $251,574, effective property tax rate 1.11%, average insurance $3,205
• St. Louis County: $256,312, effective property tax rate 1.57%, average insurance $2,619

The cash you actually need

Missouri is one of the cleanest closings in the country for a buyer:

• No real estate transfer tax. Missouri Constitution, Article X, Section 26 prohibits the state and its political subdivisions from imposing new sales or transfer taxes on the transfer of real property. Only nominal recorder-of-deeds filing fees apply — commonly cited around $24 for the first page plus $3 per additional page.
• No mortgage recording tax and no intangible tax. Nothing a Missouri buyer pays scales with the loan.
• Closing costs: 2% to 5%, with Rocket Mortgage putting the Missouri buyer average at about 3.77%. This article uses a 3.5% midpoint, slightly below Rocket's point estimate. (A widely repeated 2021 figure putting Missouri as the cheapest closing-cost state in the country at roughly $1,290 is stale and excludes loan origination costs; it is not used here.)
• Closings are handled by title and escrow companies. Missouri is an attorney-optional state with no strong regional attorney custom.

On the $299,064 statewide median at 25% down:

• Down payment: $299,064 x 0.25 = $74,766
• Loan amount: $224,298
• Closing costs: $299,064 x 3.5% = $10,467.24
• Transfer tax: $0
• Mortgage recording tax: $0
• Total cash in: $85,233.24

On price growth: FHFA's 2026 Q1 Purchase-Only index put Missouri at +3.89% year over year, twelfth among the states — a respectable figure, and not one that rescues a cash-flow problem.

2. The two expenses that decide whether it works

Property tax: the lowest rate in this set, and the widest county spread

The Tax Foundation reads Missouri's effective rate at 0.89% on owner-occupied housing value; propertytaxrates.org reads 0.88%. Secondary WalletHub-derived citations range from 0.85% to 0.97%. This article uses 0.88%, the figure the two tightest sources share.

On the $299,064 example: $299,064 x 0.88% = $2,631.76 a year, or $219.31 a month.

That is genuinely low. It is also the number least likely to describe your actual parcel, because Missouri's county spread is enormous. Here is the same house with only the effective rate changed:

A statewide 0.88% and St. Louis County's 1.57% are 0.69 points of cap rate apart on the identical house — a $2,063.54 annual difference. That is a bigger swing than the entire insurance range in several other states in this series. Missouri's low headline rate is real for the state as a whole and actively misleading for a specific St. Louis County parcel.

Two more Missouri mechanics:

Missouri has no general homestead exemption. It offers the Missouri Property Tax Credit (the "circuit breaker"), which reimburses part of taxes or rent paid — up to $1,100 a year for owners — but only for qualifying low-income seniors aged 65 and over and disabled residents under income caps (roughly $30,000 single and $34,000 married for the maximum owner credit as of the 2025 filing year), filed on Form MO-PTC. Separate recent legislation created a narrower senior-only freeze or exemption. None of it is a broad homestead exemption, and none of it applies to an investor.

The practical upshot is unusual and mildly good for a buyer: there is no general exemption for the seller to lose on transfer, so a Missouri listing's tax figure is less distorted than an equivalent Michigan or Illinois one. What still moves is assessment. Missouri reassesses residential property on a two-year cycle in odd-numbered years, and residential property is assessed at a statutory percentage of market value. Confirm both the current assessed value and where the parcel sits in the reassessment cycle with the county assessor.

Levies are set by taxing district. A county effective rate averages school districts, fire districts, municipalities, and library districts. The county collector or clerk publishes the actual rate for the parcel's district; use that one, particularly in St. Louis County where municipal fragmentation is extreme.

Insurance: the number that decides everything here

The reference figure is $3,409 a year at $300,000 of dwelling coverage with a $1,000 typical all-perils deductible — the midpoint of two reads that disagree by about 25% and neither of which can be dismissed. Insurance.com puts Missouri at $3,783 on exactly $300,000 dwelling, $300,000 liability, $1,000 deductible. Insurify puts it at a projected $3,035 by end-2026, at Missouri's average dwelling limit of $341,009 — about 14% above the reference tier, close enough that the coverage gap does not explain the difference, and notably the higher-coverage source reports the lower premium. Two further sources bracket the midpoint: ValuePenguin at $3,031 on $350,000 and NerdWallet at $3,805 on $400,000.

The four figures span $2,826 to $3,805 across three coverage levels. $3,409 is a fair reference-tier reading, not a precise one.

At $3,409 the premium is $284.08 a month and 14.20% of gross rent on Section 3's example. It exceeds the property tax bill by $777.24 a year.

Insurify projects +7% for 2026, following +9% from 2024 to 2025 — a sustained mid-to-high single-digit climb rather than the one-off spike Minnesota saw. That compounding matters over a hold period in a way a single year's figure does not.

Here is the same house with only the premium changed:

Insurance is worth 1.07 points of cap rate across that range. And note the measurement uncertainty inside Missouri's own source cluster — $3,031 to $3,783 — is worth 0.25 points and $62.66 a month all by itself. You cannot underwrite this line from a statewide average. Get a quote.

The wind/hail deductible, and why it is a landlord's problem specifically

Missouri has no hurricane exposure, but it is one of the most hail-exposed states in the country, and a separate percentage wind/hail deductible is now the prevailing convention rather than an oddity.

Carriers commonly impose a wind/hail deductible of the greater of 1% of the dwelling limit or $2,500, with 1% to 2% the usual range and higher percentages in the most hail-prone counties. On a $300,000 dwelling limit:

• 1% = $3,000 (the greater-of rule makes $3,000 the floor here, since it exceeds $2,500)
• 2% = $6,000

against a $1,000 flat deductible that still applies to fire, theft, water, and every other peril on the same policy.

Insurify's 2026 hail analysis puts Missouri's average wind/hail deductible at 1.27% of dwelling coverage — $3,810 on a $300,000 limit — just below the 1.36% that put Kansas tenth nationally on that measure. So unlike Minnesota, where the statewide average came in well below what agents describe, Missouri's measured average confirms the convention.

This is not a statutory scheme. Florida and Mississippi mandate that carriers offer specific deductible options. Missouri does not. It is a carrier underwriting practice, which means it varies by insurer and can be introduced at renewal with no rate filing a policyholder would notice. Read your renewal declarations page, every year.

Section 3 works out that this rental produces $11,431.24 of net operating income in a good year. So:

• A 1% wind/hail deductible ($3,000) is 26.24% of a full year's NOI
• Missouri's measured average of $3,810 is 33.33% of a full year's NOI
• A 2% deductible ($6,000) is 52.49% of a full year's NOI

You cannot pass any of it to a tenant. It is not a lease obligation, it is not billable, and there is no statutory once-per-calendar-year limit — two hail events in one year can mean two full deductibles.

Roof settlement is the other half. Roof age and carrier, not state law, decide the settlement basis. Replacement cost remains standard on newer roofs, but Missouri carriers have moved steadily toward actual-cash-value settlement or an age-based depreciation schedule on older roofs, and Missouri restoration and claims guides published in 2026 describe that replacement-cost-to-ACV shift alongside rising wind/hail deductibles as a paired change homeowners are absorbing at renewal. Get the roof age in writing and ask which basis applies.

The residual market here is unusually narrow, and a landlord should know why. The Missouri Property Insurance Placement Facility (Missouri FAIR Plan) writes a dwelling form capped by statute at $200,000 of total insurance on building and contents combined — which sits below the median Missouri home value in much of the state, and below both counties' medians above. Coverage is actual cash value, named peril: depreciation is taken at the time of loss and replacement cost is not included. Liability, earthquake, flood, and sewer or sump backup are not covered at all. Earthquake is a conspicuous gap in a state that contains the New Madrid seismic zone.

So a Missouri landlord pushed onto the FAIR Plan has no replacement-cost roof option at any price, may be unable to insure the full value of the building, and has no liability coverage on the property. Price a standard landlord policy properly and early.

Coverage adequacy is a separate question from premium. Missouri rebuild cost runs about $235 per square foot (the midpoint of a published $170 to $300 band shared with Ohio — read it as a range, not a point). A 1,500 square foot house rebuilds for roughly $352,500, which is 17.87% above the statewide median sale price, 40.12% above Jackson County's $251,574 median, and 37.53% above St. Louis County's $256,312. A $300,000 dwelling limit buys roughly 1,277 square feet. In both of Missouri's major metros, insuring to the purchase price leaves you underinsured.

3. A full worked example

The property. A single-family house at the Missouri statewide median of $299,064.

The rent — read this carefully. This site does not carry rent data. The $2,000 a month used below is an assumption chosen to be plausible for a house at that price. It is not a market observation. Pull three to five real comparable listings for the specific neighborhood and substitute the actual number, because Section 4 shows how sensitive the answer is to it.

The other assumptions:

• Vacancy: 8% of gross rent (roughly one month of turnover a year)
• Property management: 10% of collected rent
• Repairs and maintenance: 5% of gross scheduled rent
• Capital reserve: 5% of gross scheduled rent
• Financing: 25% down, 30-year fixed at 7.00% — the rate is an assumption, not a quote
• No HOA
• Property tax computed at the statewide 0.88% effective rate. On a real parcel, especially in St. Louis County, use the local rate

Step 1 — income

• Gross scheduled rent: $2,000 x 12 = $24,000
• Vacancy loss: $24,000 x 8% = $1,920
• Effective gross income: $24,000 - $1,920 = $22,080

Step 2 — operating expenses

Management is charged on rent actually collected, not scheduled rent:

• Management: $22,080 x 10% = $2,208
• Property tax: $299,064 x 0.88% = $2,631.76
• Insurance: $3,409
• Maintenance: $24,000 x 5% = $1,200
• Capital reserve: $24,000 x 5% = $1,200
• Total operating expenses: $10,648.76

Expense ratio: $10,648.76 / $22,080 = 48.23% of collected rent — inside the 35% to 55% band most rentals land in. Insurance alone is 32.01% of that expense line, against 24.71% for property tax.

Step 3 — net operating income and cap rate

• NOI = $22,080 - $10,648.76 = $11,431.24
• Cap rate = $11,431.24 / $299,064 = 3.82%

The mortgage is deliberately absent from that figure. Cap rate exists to compare properties independently of how they are financed; putting debt service into it is the most common error in this whole exercise, and it makes two identical houses look like different investments because one buyer put more down.

Step 4 — debt service and cash flow

Loan: $299,064 x 75% = $224,298. At 7.00% over 30 years, principal and interest is $1,492.26 a month, or $17,907.12 a year.

• Annual cash flow = $11,431.24 - $17,907.12 = -$6,475.88
• Monthly cash flow = -$539.66
• Debt service coverage ratio = $11,431.24 / $17,907.12 = 0.64

Step 5 — cash-on-cash return

• Cash invested: $85,233.24 (Section 1)
• Cash-on-cash = -$6,475.88 / $85,233.24 = -7.60%

Rate sensitivity, since 7.00% was an assumption

• At 6.50%: P&I $1,417.72/mo, annual cash flow -$5,581.40
• At 7.00%: P&I $1,492.26/mo, annual cash flow -$6,475.88
• At 7.50%: P&I $1,568.32/mo, annual cash flow -$7,388.60

A full point of rate is worth about $1,807.20 a year. For scale, the gap between Missouri's insurance average and Wisconsin's on the same house is $1,729 — nearly a full point of mortgage rate, every year.

The check that passes and should not

Add up the three bills a lender escrows:

• Principal and interest: $1,492.26
• Property tax: $2,631.76 / 12 = $219.31
• Insurance: $3,409 / 12 = $284.08
• Total: $1,995.66 a month

Against $2,000 of assumed rent, that is +$4.34 a month. The naive test passes — by four dollars, but it passes.

This is the most dangerous number in the Missouri article. It is exactly the arithmetic behind "the numbers work in the Midwest," and it is wrong by $544.00 a month — the gap between +$4.34 and the -$539.66 that Section 3 actually produced. Everything in that gap is Section 4.

4. The expenses people leave out

Vacancy, management, and capital reserves do not arrive as invoices. Nobody bills you for the month the house sits empty, or for the roof you will need in nine years, or — if you self-manage — for your own weekends. So they fall out of the mental model, and the property looks better than it is.

Here is the same house with those three removed and everything else identical:

The three omissions are worth $5,328 a year — $1,920 of vacancy, $2,208 of management, $1,200 of reserve. They flatter the cap rate by 1.78 percentage points and hide 82.27% of the annual loss.

The left column is what an optimistic Missouri spreadsheet looks like: a 5.60% cap rate, a DSCR of 0.94, and a $95.66 monthly shortfall that reads as noise. The right column is the same house at 3.82%, DSCR 0.64, losing $6,475.88 a year. Nothing about the property changed. Three lines were added.

The left column's 30.17% expense ratio is itself the tell — it sits well below the 35% to 55% band real rentals land in, which is the signal that something is missing rather than the signal of a good deal.

Vacancy. Eight percent is roughly one month a year, which is what a single clean turnover costs between move-out and the next tenant's first full month. Setting it to zero assumes the house is never empty, including between tenants.

Management. Set it to zero and the return is paying you for your own labor rather than for the property. Self-managing this house saves $2,208 a year, lifting NOI to $13,639.24 and the cap rate to 4.56%, with cash flow improving to -$355.66 a month. It is a real saving, and it is the single largest lever available on this property. It does not fix the deal, and it stops being free the moment you stop being available.

Capital reserves. Roofs, HVAC, water heaters, and flooring have known lives, and in Missouri the roof is the line that dominates: Section 2 explains that the market is simultaneously raising the wind/hail deductible and depreciating the settlement on the exact component the state's weather targets. The 5%-of-rent convention used above is one option. A harsher and equally common convention is 1% of purchase price a year for maintenance and 1% for capital, which here is $2,990.64 each. Run that way: total operating expenses $14,230.04, expense ratio 64.45%, NOI $7,849.96, cap rate 2.62%, cash flow -$838.10 a month, DSCR 0.44.

So the honest cap-rate range for this property is 2.62% to 3.82% depending on which reserve convention you choose. Choose one deliberately.

What would actually have to be true

The rent this property needs. For cash flow to reach zero at this price and this financing, gross scheduled rent must reach about $32,895.44 a year, or $2,741.29 a month — 0.92% of purchase price per month. That is where the old "1% rule" comes from: at 2026 financing costs it is roughly the point at which a leveraged single-family rental stops bleeding. The assumed $2,000 rent is 0.67% of price.

The price this rent supports. Hold rent at $2,000 and solve for the price at which cash flow reaches zero with 25% down: about $204,770, or 68% of the statewide median. Both Jackson County's and St. Louis County's medians sit above that, though not enormously — which is why Missouri attracts cash-flow investors, and why the insurance and county-tax lines decide whether they are right.

The down payment this price needs. Keep the $299,064 price and the $2,000 rent and solve for the loan the NOI can service: about $143,184 — which means roughly $155,880 down, or 52.12% of the price.

5. What actually varies by county here

This is the section that matters most in Missouri, because the two counties are nearly identical in price and radically different in tax.

Take the identical $299,064 house at $2,000 rent and apply each county's actual tax rate and average premium:

St. Louis County has the cheapest insurance of the three columns — $790 less than the statewide average — and still finishes 0.42 points of cap rate behind it, because its property tax bill is $2,063.54 higher. The tax rate is 78% above the statewide figure and it swamps everything else.

That is the reverse of the usual county story in this series and it is worth stating plainly: in Missouri, the statewide 0.88% is the most misleading number on this page. It is correct for the state and wrong for St. Louis County by a factor that changes the answer.

Now run each county at its own real median price and a rent assumption scaled to it. The two medians are within $4,738 of each other, which makes this an unusually clean comparison:

• Jackson County at $251,574 with a $1,800 assumed rent, 1.11% tax ($2,792.47) and $3,205 insurance: cash in $71,698.59, NOI $9,727.33, cap rate 3.87%, cash flow -$444.69 a month, cash-on-cash -7.44%, DSCR 0.65, rent-to-price 0.72%.
• St. Louis County at $256,312 with the same $1,800 assumed rent, 1.57% tax ($4,024.10) and $2,619 insurance: cash in $73,048.92, NOI $9,081.70, cap rate 3.54%, cash flow -$522.13 a month, cash-on-cash -8.58%, DSCR 0.59, rent-to-price 0.70%.

Two houses within 2% of each other in price, in the same state, at the same assumed rent — and a 1.14 percentage point difference in cash-on-cash return. $1,231.63 of that gap is property tax; $586 of it is insurance running the other way. If you are choosing between Kansas City and St. Louis on a Missouri spreadsheet, the tax rate is the variable that decides it, and it will not show up in a statewide figure.

Two further county-level facts to check for a specific address, neither of which is in a county average:

St. Louis County is municipally fragmented. Dozens of separate municipalities, fire districts, and school districts levy within it, so the county effective rate is an average across a very wide internal range. The parcel's own district rate can sit well above or below 1.57%.

Reassessment lands in odd-numbered years. Missouri reassesses residential property biennially. Buying just before a reassessment in an appreciating submarket is a knowable, datable risk — ask the assessor when the parcel's value was last set.

6. Financing a rental is not financing a home

These are the standard mechanisms across the mortgage market. Any specific rate or overlay is your lender's, not this article's.

Down payment. Conventional financing on a non-owner-occupied one-unit property generally requires more equity than an owner-occupied purchase — 20% is usually the floor and 25% the common expectation, which is why this article models 25%. FHA and VA are not available for a property you do not occupy. The genuine exception is house hacking: a two-to-four-unit property you live in one unit of qualifies for owner-occupied programs.

Rate. Investment-property loans price above owner-occupied loans. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac apply loan-level price adjustments for investment occupancy that scale with loan-to-value and credit score; lenders pass those through as rate or points. The 7.00% modeled above is an assumption. Get a real quote.

Reserves. Lenders typically require post-closing reserves — months of principal, interest, taxes, and insurance held in liquid assets — scaling with the number of financed properties you own. In Missouri, size your own reserves against the wind/hail deductible in dollars: at the state's measured average of 1.27% of a $300,000 limit, that is $3,810, or nearly two months of this property's entire PITI.

Rental income counting. Lenders credit a portion of market or lease rent toward qualifying, not all of it. Ask what percentage yours uses and whether they need an appraiser's rent schedule.

DSCR loans. A debt service coverage ratio loan qualifies the property rather than the borrower, comparing property income to debt service and largely skipping personal income documentation. The trade is a higher rate, a larger down payment, frequent prepayment penalties, and a minimum DSCR — commonly stated at or above 1.0 and often above 1.2.

Look at Section 3. This property's DSCR is 0.64, and even with vacancy, management, and reserves stripped out it is 0.94 — still under 1.0, and close enough to feel arguable, which is exactly the illusion Section 4 exists to break. A DSCR lender computes its own NOI and will not use your version.

Earthquake coverage is a genuine Missouri financing question. Standard property policies exclude earthquake everywhere, the Missouri FAIR Plan excludes it, and southeastern Missouri sits in the New Madrid seismic zone. Whether your lender requires it, whether it is available, and what the deductible looks like are all worth asking before you are under contract rather than after.

7. What to check before you buy in this state

Property tax, from the parcel rather than the state average — this is first in Missouri.

1. Get the assessed value and the levy rate for the parcel's specific taxing district from the county assessor and collector. A statewide 0.88% is for articles; St. Louis County is 78% above it.
2. Find out when the parcel was last reassessed. Missouri reassesses residential property in odd-numbered years.
3. In St. Louis County, identify the municipality, school district, and fire district by name and get each levy. County-average figures are close to meaningless there.
4. Check for special assessments and neighborhood improvement districts on the tax bill.

Insurance, second, and before your contingency period ends.

1. Get a bindable landlord policy quote for the specific address — a dwelling fire form with loss-of-rents coverage, not a homeowners quote and not a statewide average. The published Missouri averages span $2,826 to $3,805.
2. Read the wind/hail deductible off the quote and multiply it into dollars against the dwelling limit. Expect the greater of 1% or $2,500; Missouri's measured average is 1.27% of coverage. Write that number down. It is your minimum cash reserve.
3. Re-read the renewal declarations page every year. Missouri wind/hail deductibles are a carrier practice, not a filed statutory scheme, and can change at renewal.
4. Get the roof age in writing and ask specifically whether the roof settles at replacement cost or actual cash value.
5. Confirm the policy carries loss of rents and find out how many months it pays.
6. Check the replacement cost, not the purchase price. At roughly $235 per square foot, a 1,500 square foot Missouri house rebuilds for about $352,500 — around 40% above Jackson County's median sale price.
7. Understand what the Missouri FAIR Plan is before you need it: a $200,000 statutory dwelling-and-contents cap, actual cash value settlement, named perils, and no liability, earthquake, flood, or sewer backup coverage at all.
8. Flood, sewer backup, and earthquake are all separate. New Madrid makes the last of those a real Missouri question rather than a theoretical one.

The rent, from the market.

1. Pull three to five genuine comparable rentals for the specific neighborhood and note how long they sat.
2. Divide monthly rent by purchase price. Section 4's breakeven for this example was 0.92%.

The law, from the statute rather than from an article.

1. Do not take eviction timelines, notice periods, security-deposit handling, or late-fee rules from a blog — including this one. Missouri landlord-tenant law sits primarily in Missouri Revised Statutes Chapter 441 (landlord and tenant) and Chapter 535 (landlord-tenant actions). Read them at the Missouri Revisor of Statutes' own site, https://revisor.mo.gov/, or have a Missouri real estate attorney walk you through them.
2. Check the city separately. Kansas City and St. Louis both operate rental licensing or occupancy-permit regimes, and St. Louis County's dozens of municipalities each set their own requirements — including, in several, an occupancy inspection before a new tenant may move in.

The money and the tax treatment.

1. Size your cash reserves against the wind/hail deductible in dollars, not against a month of mortgage payments.
2. Ask a Missouri CPA how the property will be taxed, including depreciation, passive activity loss rules, Missouri's state income tax treatment of rental income, and treatment on sale.

What to do next

Every figure above came from a data file or was computed in front of you. Re-run all of it with your own numbers.

The Missouri rental analysis calculator does exactly the work in Sections 3 and 4 — enter your price, your real local rent, and your own vacancy, management, and reserve assumptions, and it produces NOI, cap rate, cash flow, cash-on-cash, and DSCR. It also warns you when you have left out the expenses Section 4 is about, rather than letting them pass silently. Given that Missouri's naive PITI check clears by $4.34 while the honest analysis loses $539.66 a month, that warning is the whole point here.

Because insurance is the larger of the two fixed bills in Missouri, start with the Missouri insurance premium estimator — it will get you closer to a real figure than the $3,409 statewide average, and it converts a 1% or 2% wind/hail deductible into actual dollars rather than leaving it as a percentage.

The Missouri mortgage payment calculator gives you the principal and interest figure for the rate you are actually quoted, which Section 3 shows is worth about $1,807 a year per point — and it will let you swap in the county tax rate that Section 5 shows is worth more than that.

This article is general educational information about rental property arithmetic in Missouri, based on figures current as of August 2026. It is not investment, tax, insurance, or legal advice. The rent figures in the worked examples are stated assumptions, not market data. Insurance premiums, property tax assessments, and mortgage rates change and vary by property. Consult a Missouri CPA, a licensed Missouri insurance agent, and a Missouri real estate attorney before buying.