Delaware County posted the highest average home sale price in Central Ohio's suburban ring in 2025, at $563,672. Its own economic development department also flagged it, in the same report, as the least industrialized suburban county in the region on a per-capita basis, with what the report called "very little product currently under construction." Those two facts sit on the same page of the county's semi-annual State of the Market report, and they don't usually travel together. Counties with the region's highest prices tend to have the region's busiest job centers underneath them. Delaware County doesn't.
If you're comparing Delaware to Dublin, Westerville, or Lewis Center right now, that gap matters more than the median. It tells you the price isn't being set by what's already here. It's being set by a plant that isn't in Delaware County at all.
The map that's actually pricing the county
The plant is Intel's chip fabrication site in New Albany, and the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission has a name for the geography it's reshaping: the "Intel 40-Minute Ring," a drive-time radius rather than a mileage circle. US Route 42 in Delaware County sits just inside that ring, according to MORPC's own presentation to county officials, reported by the Delaware Gazette in September 2025. That single fact explains why the county is spending public money the way it is.
MORPC's presentation to county officials listed roughly $250 million in road projects planned for 2026 through 2029, with more than $100 million coming from Delaware County funds, all of it framed explicitly as work inside the 40-minute commute radius to the Intel site. A sample of what's funded:
| Project | Cost | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| I-71 / US 36 interchange, Phases A-C | $110M | 2025-2029 |
| Home Road Railroad Grade Separation | $17M | 2026-27 |
| Bale Kenyon Road, Phases 2 and 3 | $10M | 2025-26 |
| Berlin Station Road, Phase 2B | $5M | 2026-27 |
| South Old State and Hollenback Roads | $4M | 2026-27 |
A roundabout at State Route 315 and Jewett Road, delayed for years, was slated by ODOT to begin construction in summer 2026, according to District 6 spokesman Matthew McGuire speaking to the Delaware Gazette in January 2026. Another, at County Line Road and SR 37 where Delaware and Licking counties meet, was identified as a need back in 2022, the same year Intel's project was announced, McGuire said.
None of this infrastructure is being built to serve a factory, warehouse, or headquarters inside Delaware County. It's being built to move people who work somewhere else through the county faster. That's a different growth mechanism than the one most buyers assume when they see a rising median. It's not "jobs came, so housing followed." It's "a commute got shorter, so housing followed."
Why the county average isn't the city average
Here's where the $563,672 figure gets misleading if you take it at face value. That number is a county average, and Delaware County includes new-build golf course communities and large-lot subdivisions that pull the average well above what a buyer looking specifically inside the city of Delaware will actually pay.
Redfin's data for the city of Delaware itself, covering the three months ending in May 2026, puts the median sale price at $405,000, up 1.2 percent year over year, with homes averaging two offers and selling in 44 days. The city's price per square foot runs around $200. Compare that to Glenross, a golf-course community in Delaware where the median listing price sat near $578,900 in early 2025, up 3.3 percent from the year before even as the broader market cooled. Or Berlin Farm West, a 434-lot development spread across 279 acres in Berlin Township, approved in 2022 and now building homes from 1,440 to over 3,700 square feet with pools, a dog park, and community gardens baked into the HOA.
The county figure is an average of a $400,000 city and a $580,000 golf community and a still-building 434-lot subdivision. If you're pricing a specific address, the county number tells you almost nothing about it. If you're pricing a specific pocket of the county, the new-construction communities are where the commute-driven premium is actually landing.
New construction in unincorporated parts of the county carries its own friction worth knowing before you sign a builder contract. MI Homes' Northwood subdivision has been navigating pushback over new transportation impact fees, and county planning trackers now anticipate a standard $1,000-per-unit fee on new lots even in phases where earlier approvals skipped it. If you're buying pre-construction anywhere in the unincorporated county, ask the builder directly whether that fee is baked into your purchase price or added at closing.
Occupied and empty, at the same time
The rental market shows the same signature as the sales market, and it's the clearest evidence that Delaware County is pricing ahead of actual occupancy rather than behind it. The county carries the highest rent per unit of any county in Ohio and the Columbus region, at $1,589 a month, well above the region's $1,371 average. At the same time, the county's vacancy rate has held at 13.1 percent for six straight quarters, above both the regional rate of 10.3 percent and the national rate of 8.5 percent.
High rent and high vacancy don't usually coexist. High vacancy is supposed to pull rents down until units fill. In Delaware County, rents are staying elevated anyway, which suggests landlords and developers are pricing units for tenants who haven't arrived yet, not for the ones currently signing leases. It's worth adding some context: even at $1,589, Delaware County rent sits below the Q4 2025 national asking average of $1,758. This isn't a county pricing itself as the most expensive place in America to rent. It's a county pricing itself ahead of its own current demand, inside a state where it's still the outlier.
The Turner Construction Cost Index adds a supply-side reason this is happening slower than the price signal suggests it should: the county's own report points to large economic development projects, Intel among them, absorbing the construction labor pool that would otherwise be building more homes and apartments here. The demand signal arrived years before the workers who'll actually occupy the units, and the labor to build for them is tied up elsewhere.
What the loosening inventory tells a buyer or seller right now
None of this means Delaware is overheating in the way it did a few years ago. Inventory has been climbing. County MLS data showed 518 homes for sale as of April 2026, up 20.7 percent from a year earlier, with 2.0 months of supply, still a seller-favoring number but a meaningfully looser one than the peak years.
Days on market tell a more layered story depending on which dataset you check. Realtor.com reported a median of 31 days in the same window, while county MLS data showed 46 days. That gap usually means the fastest-moving listings, priced right in the most in-demand pockets, are pulling the aggregate median down, while a real share of listings are sitting well past a month. Sellers received 98.5 percent of original list price on average in April 2026, and close to a quarter of listings saw a price drop before going under contract, so the market isn't punishing sellers, but it's no longer forgiving mispricing the way it once did.
For a buyer, that means negotiating room exists, but it isn't evenly distributed. A well-priced home in a subdivision inside the Intel ring, where the infrastructure spending is concentrated, is still likely to draw competing offers close to list. A home priced optimistically in a slower corridor has real room to negotiate, and the rising inventory gives you leverage to ask for it.
FAQ
Does the $563,672 county average mean every home in Delaware costs that much? No. That figure blends new-build golf communities and large-lot subdivisions with the city of Delaware itself, where the median sale price over the three months ending in May 2026 was $405,000. Ask which submarket a comparable sale is actually drawn from before you use it to judge a specific address.
Will the county's rising inventory turn into falling prices? The data through spring 2026 shows softer days-on-market and more price reductions, not falling closed prices. Inventory loosening from a tight market usually shows up first in negotiating room and second, if at all, in the median.
Should I wait to buy until Intel's timeline is settled? Intel's Ohio fab timeline has already shifted before, and the road spending tied to the 40-minute ring is proceeding regardless of the exact production date. Waiting for certainty on the plant's schedule means waiting through years of infrastructure and pricing decisions that are already locked in.
If you're trying to figure out whether a specific Delaware County listing is priced off the commute map or off the comps in its own neighborhood, that's exactly the kind of read I Care Home Group can walk through with you address by address. Call us for a free home valuation.
