Issue 5 of 12
The typical home here sells for $510,000. The first rung is missing.
Delaware County is a wonderful place to own a home and a hard place to buy a first one. The typical sale has climbed 89 percent in ten years, buying the median house takes roughly $98,000 a year in income before taxes and insurance, and rents run 44 percent above the Ohio median. Underneath the prices sits a rulebook: in most townships, one house requires one to five acres by right. Ryan wants the county's own tools, sewer, platting, and incentives, pointed at starter homes and the smaller lots they need.
See the rules, township by township ↓$510,000
The median sale price for a Delaware County home in 2025, up 89 percent from $270,000 a decade ago. The typical buyer needs roughly $98,000 a year for the loan payment alone.
Columbus REALTORS annual report, January 12, 20261 to 5 acres
The minimum lot a single house requires under the base zoning of the county's 18 townships. Smaller lots exist only where a builder wins a discretionary rezoning.
DCRPC Zoning Summary Workbook, July 2026$1,492
The median monthly rent, 44 percent above the Ohio median of $1,034. Only about one household in five in the county rents at all.
U.S. Census ACS 2024 5-year, 2024 releaseThe data
The rulebook behind the price tag.
Prices get the headlines. The quieter driver is what the rules allow to be built in the first place. All of this comes from the Regional Planning Commission's own current summary of every township's zoning.
The decade that priced out the first rung
Columbus REALTORS MLS, each year's own December report: up 89 percent from 2015 to 2025. Hover for any year.
The smallest lot one house can use, township by township
* Marlboro, Radnor, and Thompson are zoned under the county's own code, the only three townships where the board you elect writes the rules. Several townships also keep five-acre agricultural districts; shown is the base residential district in the DCRPC Zoning Summary Workbook, July 2026. Hover any row for the district.
What buying the typical home takes
Assumptions: 30-year fixed at Freddie Mac's published average for late August 2026, 28 percent of income to the loan payment, principal and interest only, before property tax and insurance. A real bill is higher.
Renting is not the escape hatch
Straight answers
What people ask at the door.
Who decides what kind of homes get built?
Mostly your township. In 15 of the 18 townships, the zoning commission and trustees you elect locally write the rules; the county's own zoning code covers only Marlboro, Radnor, and Thompson. What the county does control sits underneath those rules: subdivision platting in the unincorporated townships, the sewer capacity no subdivision can exist without, and the incentive deals that make projects viable. The cities of Delaware, Powell, Sunbury, and Westerville write their own rules inside their borders.
Why are there so few smaller, cheaper homes?
Look at the chart above. Under the base zoning in every township, one house needs somewhere between one and five acres of land. Homes on smaller lots, the kind a first-time buyer or a downsizing grandparent can actually afford, are legal only through planned-district rezonings that a builder has to negotiate case by case. Builders build what the rules make easy, and the rules make big homes on big lots easy. That is not a criticism of any township. It is the plain arithmetic behind the price tag.
Can the county make housing cheaper?
Not by decree. The county cannot rewrite township zoning, set mortgage rates, or order a builder to build anything. What the board can do is aim its own tools: extend sewer where smaller-lot neighborhoods would be welcome, use platting and incentive decisions to favor projects that include starter homes, and put real numbers in front of every township so the tradeoffs are visible before a rezoning vote instead of after. The state also runs down-payment help for first-time buyers through the Ohio Housing Finance Agency, and more people qualify than know it.
What about renters?
About one household in five here rents, against one in three statewide, and they pay for the scarcity: the median rent is $1,492 a month, 44 percent above the Ohio median. Apartments and townhomes are mostly a city matter, because township zoning allows them almost nowhere by right. A renter saving for a first house in this county is climbing a ladder that is expensive at the bottom and missing its middle rungs.
What happens if nothing improves?
Prices keep outrunning first paychecks. In the Columbus metro, the median elementary teacher earns $78,150 a year, a registered nurse $83,900, a firefighter $61,780, and a paramedic $47,130, all well under the roughly $98,000 that buying this county's median home now assumes. Meanwhile the county's 65 and older population roughly tripled between 2000 and 2020, and a county of big lots offers them few smaller homes to move into, so family-sized houses turn over slowly. Nearly 10,000 homes are already in the township pipeline; if nearly all of them arrive at one price point, the county grows bigger without growing more open.
Where can I check this myself?
The Regional Planning Commission publishes the zoning summary behind the chart on this page, updated through July 2026, plus the development pipeline. The Auditor's property search shows any home's value and taxes. The Ohio Housing Finance Agency lists first-time buyer programs at myohiohome.org. And the commissioners meet Monday and Thursday mornings at 9:30 in the Historic Courthouse at 91 North Sandusky Street. Every figure on this page is linked in the sources below.
Levers and limits
What a commissioner can actually do about housing.
Nobody at the county building can wave prices down. The honest map of the levers looks like this.
The board controls
Sewer capacity. No line, no subdivision. Where the county extends capacity decides where any smaller-lot neighborhood is even possible, and the $8,100-per-home capacity fee is set by this board. This is the strongest housing lever the office holds.
Subdivision platting. County subdivision regulations govern how land divides in the unincorporated townships: lot layout, streets, connections. A rulebook that quietly favors one kind of home can be rewritten to allow more kinds.
Incentives and financing. Tax increment financing, reinvestment areas, and New Community Authority deals run through this board. Whether a project that wants county help includes starter homes is a fair, legal, and public question to ask before signing. The Evans Farm community authority in Orange Township, created by commissioner resolution in 2017, shows the county already works these tools at neighborhood scale.
The land bank. The county's land bank, created in 2021 and chaired by a commissioner, has moved about $2.9 million in state money to clean up problem properties. Recycled land is land that can carry homes again.
Publishing what it knows. The county can map where its own sewer and road capacity could support smaller-lot neighborhoods and hand every township real numbers before a rezoning vote. Nobody's permission is required to tell the truth in public.
The board does not control
Township zoning and lot sizes. The minimums in the chart are township law in 15 of 18 townships, written by locally elected boards. The county's code covers only Marlboro, Radnor, and Thompson.
City housing. Delaware, Powell, Sunbury, and the city portions of Westerville, Dublin, and Columbus zone their own land, and city land is where smaller lots and apartments are mostly allowed today.
Mortgage rates and building costs. Set by markets and the Federal Reserve, not by anyone on Sandusky Street. When rates moved, this county's affordability math moved with them.
Impact fees. Ohio gives counties no statute authorizing them. Any candidate promising to make builders fund housing programs through fees is promising something Ohio law does not allow.
What builders choose to build. The county can open doors. It cannot push anyone through them. Markets decide what gets proposed; the rules decide what is possible.
The plan
What Ryan will do.
Map where starter homes could actually go.
The 10-Year Growth Impact Forecast gets a housing chapter: county sewer and road capacity, platting data, and the township rulebook, combined into a public map of where smaller-lot neighborhoods are feasible. Townships keep every bit of their authority. They just stop having to guess.
Point the county's own deals at the first rung.
When a project asks for county sewer capacity, an incentive, or a financing deal, whether it includes starter homes and a range of price points becomes part of the public evaluation, stated in the packet, before the vote. The county's help is worth something. It should buy something.
Make the first purchase less lonely.
Grow the land bank's reach beyond cleanups toward putting problem parcels back to productive use, and publish a plain-English first-buyer guide pointing at the state's down-payment programs, which more families qualify for than know it. Small tools, honestly described, beat big promises.
If nothing improves
The pipeline builds out at one price point, and the county fills with people who could clear half a million while everyone else, including the kids who grew up here, starts their equity somewhere else. Grandparents hold oversized houses for lack of anywhere to go. The county gets bigger and, quietly, narrower.
What better looks like
A county where a new teacher, a young family, and a downsizing grandparent can each find a first or a next home in the same community they serve and love. Townships still write their own rules. The county simply makes the possible visible, and points its sewer lines, its platting pen, and its incentive dollars at the missing rung.
Sources
Last updated: September 2, 2026
You should not have to take a candidate's word for any of this. Every figure above traces to one of these sources. Found an error? Tell the campaign and we will fix it.
Keep going.
Housing is where growth, sewer, and taxes all land on one family's kitchen table.