Drive Beech Road toward the Intel site today and you will see grading equipment, construction fencing and not much else. The chip fabrication plant that reset New Albany's real estate market in January 2022 is still years from producing a single wafer. Yet homes in New Albany have kept climbing in price through 2026 as if the jobs were already here.
That gap between what the market is pricing and what actually exists on the ground is the thing worth understanding before you compare New Albany to any other Central Ohio suburb. The number on a listing sheet right now reflects a bet on a 2030 New Albany. Whether that bet pays off, and on what timeline, matters more to your offer strategy than the median price itself.
The Land Moved First, Before Any Steel Went Up
Intel's announcement of a $20 billion semiconductor campus inside New Albany's borders triggered an almost immediate repricing of everything nearby. Licking County Auditor Michael Smith described watching agricultural land near the site jump from about $20,000 an acre in 2021 to $45,000 an acre in 2022. The New Albany Company, which assembled the parcels for the project, bought land at roughly $70,000 an acre and sold it to Intel for around $110,000 an acre.
Housing followed the same pattern. Smith told a Columbus TV station at the time that residential values in the surrounding area were seeing "probably 30% to close to 40% increase just in residential value." None of that increase required a single job to exist yet. It was a market pricing in an announcement, not a payroll.
The Timeline That Keeps Sliding
The part of this story that gets less attention is what happened to the schedule. Intel's own construction timeline for the New Albany campus has slipped more than once since 2022. The completion date once penciled in for 2025-2026 now sits somewhere in 2030-2031, with the current construction phase described as being at its peak but still years from finished production and the thousands of direct jobs, reportedly averaging $135,000 in salary, that were meant to anchor the surrounding housing demand.
That five-year slide matters for anyone comparing New Albany's price tag to a neighboring suburb's. A buyer paying today's premium is not paying for a New Albany that has absorbed a new wave of Intel employees. They are paying for the anticipation of one, on a schedule that has already moved once and could move again.
One Suburb, Five Different "Median Prices"
Ask five sources what a home in New Albany costs right now and you will get five different answers, sometimes off by more than double. Here is what public data shows for 2026:
| Source and window | Reported figure | What it likely measures |
|---|---|---|
| Homes.com, trailing 12 months through mid-2026 | $378,800 median sale price, up 9% | A broader area including older and lower-priced stock |
| Redfin, February 2026 | $825,000 median sale price, up 29.4% YoY | Recent closed sales, only 9 homes that month |
| Zillow Home Value Index, June 2026 | $572,747 average value, up 4.0% | A smoothed index across all homes, not just recent sales |
| Movoto, July 2026 | $585,000 median list price, $257 per square foot | Active listings rather than closed sales |
| Regional brokerage report, "corporate limits," June 2026 | $932,000 median sale price, up 9% YoY | A narrower municipal boundary skewed toward newer, higher-end construction |
None of these sources is wrong. They are measuring different slices of the same town, in different months, using different definitions of what counts as "New Albany."
Why the Number Won't Hold Still
The instability is not random. Redfin's own data shows only 9 homes sold in New Albany in February 2026, down from 15 the year before. When a monthly median is built from single-digit transaction counts, one or two seven-figure estate closings can swing the entire number by tens of thousands of dollars. A regional brokerage report covering the incorporated "corporate limits" put the June 2026 median at $932,000, while the broader New Albany-Plain Local School District, which stretches beyond the city itself, posted a lower median of $710,000 the same month. Same general area, different boundary, six-figure gap.
This is exactly the kind of market where a single headline stat should not drive your offer. The direction of the trend across several months matters more than any one month's median, and knowing which geography a number describes matters as much as the number itself.
The Neighbor That Didn't Get the Same Bet
The clearest way to see that New Albany's premium is specific to Intel anticipation, not a general Central Ohio updraft, is to look next door. Westerville, a comparably desirable suburb without a semiconductor campus inside its borders, saw its median sale price fall to $402,000 in January 2026, down 10.7% from a year earlier. By August 2026, Westerville's listed median sat at $449,000, still down 4% year over year.
So in roughly the same stretch of 2026, New Albany's reported medians were climbing by double digits in some readings while Westerville's were falling by double digits. Statewide, Ohio's median home price was still rising at a more modest pace, recently reported around $285,000, up 14% year over year. New Albany is not simply riding a hot Ohio market. It is pricing in a specific, delayed, multi-billion-dollar bet that has not yet paid out in jobs.
Three Questions Before You Anchor to Any Number
- Which New Albany does this figure describe? Ask whether a quoted median reflects the incorporated city, the school district, or a broader ZIP code area. They are not the same market.
- How many sales built this number? A median built from single-digit monthly closings can swing sharply on one or two high-end sales. Ask for a rolling six to twelve month trend instead of a single month.
- What am I actually buying into? A home near the Intel corridor today is priced partly on a 2030 production date. If that timeline slips again, the amenities and demand you are paying for now may take longer to show up than the price already assumes.
A Few Direct Questions
Is New Albany still a seller's market in 2026? Yes, by most measures. Reported days on market have ranged from the low 30s to mid-50s across different 2026 snapshots, and sale-to-list ratios in several reports sit near or at 100%. But "seller's market" and "stable, comparable pricing" are not the same thing, and the wide spread in reported medians is evidence of the latter, not the former.
Should I wait for the Intel campus to open before buying in New Albany? That is a personal financial decision, not one this post can answer for you. What the data does show is that a meaningful share of today's price already reflects anticipated demand tied to a completion date that has moved before. Waiting does not guarantee a better price. It does mean you would be buying with more of the uncertainty resolved.
Are areas near the original village, like Market Street, priced differently than the newer construction near the country club? The spread in reported medians across geography and construction era suggests yes, and it is one more reason a single citywide number is not a reliable guide for a specific street or subdivision.
If you are trying to figure out what a specific New Albany price actually reflects, or how it compares to Westerville, Gahanna or another Central Ohio suburb you are weighing, that is exactly the kind of question worth a direct conversation rather than another aggregator page. Sharon Staub has spent more than three decades reading Central Ohio's market shifts, including the ones that show up in the gap between a headline number and what a home is actually worth on your street. Let's Connect.
