Homes for Sale Under $300K in Columbus, Ohio: 6,074 Sold in 2026

Columbus is not out of homes under $300,000. Through September 14 this year, 6,074 of them closed across the seven Central Ohio counties. That is 34.2 percent of all 17,746 closed sales, and the median one went for $225,000 at $181 a square foot.

I did not expect the next number. This half of the market is slower than the half above it, not faster. 21 days from listing to contract under $300,000. 16 days at $300,000 and up. And 52.8 percent of the sub-$300,000 sales closed at or over list price, against 58.8 percent of everything else.

I have said the opposite out loud before, so I am correcting it here. Under $300,000 in Columbus is not a knife fight. It is a smaller, older house that takes an extra work week to find a buyer.

Every number below comes from one run against the Columbus MLS closed-sale exports, 2026 sales only, through September 14. No portal estimates, no builder base prices.

How many Columbus homes actually sell under $300,000?

6,074 in 2026 so far. For scale, the whole region closed 17,746 homes in the same window, so a third of the market lives under the ceiling you are searching.

On the market right now it is an even bigger share. Of the 7,173 active listings in those seven counties, 2,613 are priced under $300,000. That is 36.4 percent of everything for sale, at a median list price of $219,900.

Break the sub-$300,000 closings into price bands and the market clusters hard at the top of the range.

Price band	Homes closed	Median square feet	Median year built
Under $100,000	379	1,056	1953
$100,000 to $150,000	616	1,027	1953
$150,000 to $200,000	1,162	1,096	1959
$200,000 to $250,000	1,843	1,158	1962
$250,000 to $300,000	2,074	1,356	1975

3,917 of the 6,074, about two thirds, closed between $200,000 and $300,000. And look where the house changes. From $200,000 to $250,000 you get 1,158 square feet built in 1962. Push to the $250,000 band and it jumps to 1,356 square feet built in 1975. That last $50,000 buys 200 more square feet and 13 fewer years of deferred maintenance, which is the best trade in this whole table. If you are financing, run what that $50,000 does to the monthly payment before you decide you cannot stretch.

Which towns close the most homes under $300,000?

Two different questions live inside this one. How many does a town produce, and what share of that town is priced there. They give different answers, and you need both.

Town	Sold under $300K	Median sale	$/sq ft	Median sq ft	Median year built	Days to contract	Share of town's 2026 sales
Columbus	3,136	$210,000	$176	1,152	1959	23	53.3%
Newark	335	$218,500	$168	1,250	1948	12	63.0%
Lancaster	326	$210,000	$176	1,164	1950	13	61.3%
Reynoldsburg	223	$248,500	$185	1,248	1977	15	51.6%
Grove City	198	$262,000	$201	1,239	1977	12	24.8%
Hilliard	154	$235,750	$217	1,024	1990	20	23.8%
Westerville	152	$260,000	$190	1,317	1976	26	15.6%
Canal Winchester	138	$250,000	$181	1,280	2000	27	31.0%
Galloway	110	$269,500	$202	1,354	1996	16	39.0%
Delaware	98	$247,838	$184	1,317	1974	18	14.0%
Circleville	89	$220,000	$174	1,170	1952	19	45.2%
Dublin	85	$252,000	$206	1,152	1998	22	11.1%
Blacklick	77	$208,777	$182	1,235	2002	26	25.8%
Marysville	70	$246,250	$195	1,248	1962	23	48.6%
London	68	$231,500	$180	1,305	1960	33	67.6%
Heath	54	$240,000	$198	1,194	1976	30	42.6%
Groveport	49	$247,400	$187	1,364	1978	15	43.8%

Towns are by mailing address on the closed sale, minimum 40 sales to appear.

The city of Columbus is the whole ballgame on volume. 3,136 sub-$300,000 closings out of 5,886 total city sales, so more than half of everything that sells inside the city sells under the ceiling. Newark and Lancaster are the same story at a smaller scale and a lower price per foot.

The row most buyers get wrong is Dublin. Dublin closed 85 homes under $300,000 this year. It is only 11.1 percent of Dublin's volume, and the median one is 1,152 square feet, so you are buying a small home in an expensive town. But 85 is not zero, and almost nobody searching at this budget bothers to look there. Westerville closed 152. Hilliard closed 154 at $217 a foot, the highest per-foot number on the table, in the youngest housing stock of the group at 1990.

If the town matters more to you than the square footage, those rows are your search. If square footage matters more, Groveport and Galloway and Canal Winchester hand you 1,280 to 1,364 feet at the same money.

Do these homes sell faster than the rest of the market?

They do not, and this is the number I would most want you to carry into your search.

Measure	Under $300,000	$300,000 and up
Homes closed in 2026	6,074	11,672
Median sale price	$225,000	$447,000
Median price per square foot	$181	$228
Median square feet	1,206	2,032
Median year built	1964	1998
Days from listing to contract	21	16
Closed at or over list price	52.8%	58.8%

Both halves close at list price on the median deal. The difference is the tail. Above $300,000 the bidding is more common and the decision is faster. Under $300,000 you get almost a week of extra breathing room, on average, which is enough time to schedule a second walkthrough and get a contractor's eyes on the basement.

Days are measured from MLS entry to the under-contract date on 5,969 of the sub-$300,000 sales that reported both.

The per-foot number is the other correction. Under $300,000 you pay $181 a foot. Above it you pay $228. The cheaper half of this market is cheaper per foot too, so nobody is charging you a premium for buying small. You are paying for age and condition instead, and that is where the money goes after closing.

What condition and what age should I expect?

The median sale under $300,000 was 1,206 square feet, three bedrooms, built in 1964. Above the line it was 2,032 square feet built in 1998.

So the ceiling costs you about 800 square feet and roughly 34 years of age. That is the actual trade. It is not a location penalty, it is a house-size and house-age penalty, and it shows up as roof, windows, service panel, and whatever the 1964 sewer lateral has been doing since.

I pull this list for buyers most weeks, and what I look at first on a 1960s house is water. Downspouts that dump against the foundation, grade that runs back toward the house, soffit that has been painted instead of replaced. That stuff is cheap to spot and expensive to inherit. You still get a home inspection. But knowing the median home at your budget was built in 1964 changes what you budget for after you move in, and it changes which of two similar listings is actually the better buy.

Also budget the carrying cost, not the price. Taxing districts across Franklin and Delaware counties are far apart, and two homes at the same price can carry very different monthly bills. The property tax and insurance breakdown walks that math.

Should I be searching condos too?

Most buyers at this budget filter to single-family and never look again. That filter throws away a quarter of the market.

Of the 6,074 sub-$300,000 closings, 4,413 were single-family, 1,524 were condominiums and 136 were row or townhome style. So 25.1 percent of everything that closed under $300,000 this year was a condo. If your search is set to single-family only, you deleted 1,660 sales from your own results before you started. Condos inside Columbus are worth at least a look, with the association fee added to your payment math before you fall for one.

Is there any new construction under $300,000?

Almost none, and it is shrinking.

104 of the 1,736 new-construction homes that closed in Central Ohio this year came in under $300,000. That is 6.0 percent. On the active side it is thinner still: 38 of 812 new-construction listings are priced under the ceiling today.

Where the 104 landed: Villages of Galloway (14), Willow Reserve in Reynoldsburg (12), Spangler Farms (10), The Village at Glen Ridge (5), then singles and pairs. By town it was Columbus (52), Galloway (15), Newark (9), Etna (8) and Reynoldsburg (6).

That is an option, and a narrow one. If new construction is the priority over everything else, the fuller picture is in the new construction under $300K breakdown. Expect a smaller footprint, fewer included options, and an outer-ring commute.

How should I run the search?

Four things, in this order.

1. Set the ceiling where your money stops, not at a round number. If you can go to $310,000, search to $310,000. The $250,000 to $300,000 band is where the square footage jumps, and a round-number filter cuts you off right at the good part.
2. Pick towns off the table above by what you are optimizing for. Volume of choices: Columbus, Newark, Lancaster, Reynoldsburg. Square feet per dollar: Groveport, Galloway, Canal Winchester. A specific town at any size: Dublin, Westerville, Hilliard, Delaware.
3. Turn the single-family-only filter off, at least once, and see what the 1,524 condo sales look like in your towns.
4. Set alerts by town and price, not by "Columbus OH." The 2,613 active listings under the ceiling are spread across dozens of mailing-address towns, and a metro-wide alert buries the ones you would actually drive to.

One more thing on timing. 21 days to contract is a median, not a promise. Anything priced under the comps and already updated still moves in a weekend. The extra time shows up on the homes that need work, which is most of them at this price.

What to take into your search

A third of the Central Ohio market sells under $300,000 and a third of what is listed today is priced there. The median is $225,000, 1,206 square feet, built 1964, at $181 a foot. It takes 21 days to go under contract, a week longer than the market above it. New construction at this price is down to 6 percent of new-construction sales, and a quarter of what you could buy is a condo you are probably filtering out.

If you want the current list for your ceiling, send me the number you can spend and the towns you will drive to, and I will send back what is active, what closed near it, and what I would want inspected on each one.

Adam Geuy, Realtor - Blacktree Realty ABR | PSA | SRS | License #2020007964 937.239.2919 | calendly.com/adam-geuy

Data: Columbus MLS closed and active residential listings, Franklin, Delaware, Licking, Fairfield, Union, Madison and Pickaway counties, sales closed January 1 through September 14, 2026. Computed with the stats script in this post's package; per-square-foot figures are the median of per-sale ratios, not median price divided by median size.