How Much Does It Cost to Join Tartan Fields or New Albany Country Club? Fees, Home Prices and Taxes (2026)

Thirty-eight houses closed inside these two communities in 2026, and not one of them came with a golf membership. The 29 in the New Albany Country Club community ran a median $1,554,600. The 9 in Tartan Fields ran $1,124,999. Neither club will tell you what it costs to join until you ask them directly, which is on brand for a private club and useless as a search result.

So here is the honest version. The fee figures below are what the club-cost directories publish, and I am labeling them as the estimates those directories admit they are. The home prices come from closed MLS sales and the tax rates come from two county auditors. Those I will stand behind. The fees, I will only stand next to.

How much does it cost to join New Albany Country Club?

The club does not publish a number. Its membership page tells you everything except the price: every membership is non-equity and covers the primary member, a spouse and children under 24, offered as Golf, Social or Dining in Resident, Associate, Executive, National, Senior or Junior categories. That is the entire public disclosure.

The figures that show up when you search are from club-cost directories. privateIQ estimates a $50,000 to $100,000 initiation and $1,000 to $2,000 in monthly dues, and prints, in its own words, that the figures are "estimates only and should not be relied upon for making club membership decisions." Country Club Magazine runs the same range with the same disclaimer. I treat those numbers the way I treat a Zestimate: a starting point that anyone with actual information will correct in about four seconds.

If you were hoping to reverse-engineer the initiation from a tax filing, so was I. The club is operated by Country Club Corporation, an Ohio corporation, per its own membership application. That is a for-profit company, so there is no public Form 990 to check the directories against. The membership office is the only source, and that is a phone call, not a search.

What the club does put in writing is the golf. It opened in 1992 as the anchor of the New Albany master plan, with a 27-hole Jack Nicklaus course plus racquet, fitness and swim facilities.

How much does it cost to join The Club at Tartan Fields?

Also unpublished. The club is operated by Arcis Golf, the Dallas-based operator, and its own site describes an Arnold Palmer Signature course with golf and social memberships, "no food and beverage minimums, no assessments, and flexible membership options." No dollar figure anywhere.

The directory version: Country Club Magazine lists a $5,000 one-time initiation, golf dues from $7,500 a year for a limited membership to $15,000 for full or family golf, $12,500 for corporate, and $2,500 a year for social. Same disclaimer as above, estimates only.

One more reason to hold those numbers loosely. The same page that prices the club credits the course to a different architect and dates it to 1997. The club's own site says Arnold Palmer, and the golf databases put the opening at 1998. When a page cannot get the architect right, I do not let it set my membership budget. I read it, I note it, I call the club.

What did homes in NACC and Tartan Fields actually sell for in 2026?

This is the part with real numbers behind it. These are closed sales in the Columbus REALTORS MLS from January 1 through September 3, 2026, pulled by subdivision name, so the New Albany column is the country club community itself, not the whole city.

	New Albany Country Club community	Tartan Fields	Tartan West and Tartan Ridge
Closed sales, 2026	29	9	17
Median sale price	$1,554,600	$1,124,999	$720,000
Middle half of sales	$1,125,000 to $2,035,000	$900,000 to $1,250,000	$651,000 to $845,000
Full range	$776,000 to $3,700,000	$810,000 to $1,500,000	$414,900 to $1,500,000
Median price per square foot	$361	$292	$252
Median days to contract	13	18	9
Median year built	1997	2002	2014
Median sale to original list	100%	100%	100%

Three things I would slow down on.

First, the per-foot gap. NACC trades at $361 a square foot against $292 in Tartan Fields, a 24 percent premium per foot for the same vintage of house. You are paying that for the covenant, the address and the Intel corridor, not for more drywall.

Second, the NACC median moved. All of 2025 produced 18 closings at a median $1,357,500. The first eight months of 2026 produced 29 at $1,554,600. Before anyone calls that 15 percent appreciation, know that four of the 2026 sales cleared $2.5 million, including one at $3.7 million. Some of that jump is the top end showing up to sell, not every house on the street getting richer. Tartan Fields, by contrast, is flat: 14 closings at $1,167,500 last year, 9 at $1,124,999 so far this year.

Third, the speed. Thirteen and eighteen days to contract for seven-figure houses is not a slow market. A $1.5 million house going pending in under two weeks is a market with a waiting list, and it means the discount you were planning to negotiate is mostly imaginary.

The third column is the one buyers skip. Tartan West and Tartan Ridge sit next door to Tartan Fields in Dublin, built a decade newer, and closed 17 homes at a median $720,000. If the golf address matters more to you than the golf course, that is where a $700,000 to $850,000 budget lands without apology.

How much more are property taxes at NACC than at Tartan Fields?

This is where the casual luxury buyer stops paying attention, and it costs them every January for as long as they own the house.

The City of New Albany publishes its own figure: for 2025, the Franklin County Auditor set property taxes in Tax District 222 (City of New Albany, New Albany-Plain Local Schools, Plain Township Fire) at $2,421.88 per $100,000 of fair market value.

Tartan Fields sits in Concord Township, Delaware County, inside the Dublin City School District. The Delaware County Auditor's 2025 rate table lists that exact combination, Concord Township with Dublin schools, at an effective residential rate of 60.926658 mills on assessed value. Ohio assesses at 35 percent of market value, so that works out to about $2,132 per $100,000. If a particular parcel sits inside the Dublin corporation line within the township, the same table puts it at about $2,098.

	NACC (Tax District 222)	Tartan Fields (Concord Township, Dublin CSD)	Gap
Per $100,000 of market value	$2,421.88	$2,132.43	$289.45
On a $1,250,000 home	$30,274 a year	$26,655 a year	$3,618 a year
On the NACC median, $1,554,600	$37,651 a year	$33,151 a year	$4,500 a year
Ten-year hold at $1,250,000	$302,735	$266,554	$36,181

These are effective rates after the state rollbacks and before the owner-occupancy credit and any homestead exemption, and they move every time a levy passes or a reappraisal lands. Pull both parcels through the Franklin County and Delaware County auditors before you sign anything. The gap is not headline money at this price point. It is a car every decade, which is the kind of money that people at this price point still notice.

A correction, because I would rather make it than have you find it. The first version of this post put Tartan Fields in the Olentangy school and tax district. Wrong. All nine 2026 closings in Tartan Fields carry Dublin City Schools on the listing sheet, and the Delaware County rate table has a separate line for exactly that combination. I fixed it, and the tax math above is the corrected math. If you ran numbers off the old version, run them again.

Are the schools a tiebreaker between NACC and Tartan Fields?

Not much of one, and both districts publish their own report cards so you do not have to take my word for it.

New Albany-Plain Local Schools earned 5 stars overall on the 2024 to 2025 Ohio School Report Card, with 5 stars on every rated component. Dublin City Schools, which serves Tartan Fields, earned 4.5 stars overall, with 4 stars in Achievement and 5 in Progress, Gap Closing and Graduation. Dublin spans three counties and redistricts, so confirm the assigned school for the specific address before you write an offer. That sentence applies to New Albany too.

Does buying the house get you into the club?

No, and this assumption costs people real money.

NACC memberships are non-equity and applied for on their own. Owning a house inside the community gets you the covenant, the streetscape and the homeowners association. It does not get you a tee time. At Tartan Fields the club and the neighborhood are separate transactions handled by separate parties, and the neighborhood association fee is not a club fee. The Arcis site does not mention a residency requirement in either direction, which cuts both ways: you can join without buying, and you can buy without joining.

In my experience the buyers who get burned here are the ones who bundled the two costs in their head, budgeted the house, and then met the initiation fee after closing. Do the club conversation first. Then shop.

What is the extra dollar buying in each community?

In the NACC community, the dollar buys land scarcity, a Nicklaus signature course, a four-sided red brick Georgian covenant with white horse-plank fencing, lots around three quarters of an acre in Lambton Park, and a front-row seat to the New Albany International Business Park, roughly 12,000 acres with more than 60 companies and more than 20,000 jobs, plus the Intel campus. That tailwind is real and it has timing risk, which I covered in the Intel Ohio One delay.

In Tartan Fields, the dollar buys a bigger Delaware County lot, a Palmer course, lighter architectural covenants, a lower tax bill, a Dublin schools address and a shorter drive to Polaris, Bridge Park and Dublin's employers. The houses are varied executive product, brick and stone fronts, three and four car garages, finished lower levels, with course views carrying the premium.

The construction read: NACC is a community where the streetscape is consistent because the master plan demands it. Tartan Fields is a community where each lot can be its own architectural statement. Neither is wrong. They are different design philosophies, and you should know which one you are before you fall for a kitchen.

What are the commutes like from NACC and Tartan Fields?

From the NACC community: downtown Columbus about 23 minutes via I-670, John Glenn International about 16 minutes, Easton in under 10, Intel about 6 miles from the New Albany Village Center. From Tartan Fields: Polaris Fashion Place about 5 miles south, Bridge Park 10 to 15 minutes, downtown roughly 30 minutes outside rush hour, the airport roughly 25.

If your job is at Intel, the business park or anywhere on the northeast side, NACC wins the clock. If it is at Polaris, in Dublin or on the northwest side, Tartan Fields wins. If it is downtown, NACC is shorter. If it is remote, congratulations, decide on the golf.

How do you decide between NACC and Tartan Fields?

If you want the enforced Georgian streetscape, Intel-corridor proximity and a 5-star district, and you will pay $361 a foot plus roughly $3,600 a year more in property tax for it, the NACC community is your answer. If you want a bigger lot, a Palmer course, looser covenants, a lower tax bill and Dublin at your doorstep, Tartan Fields is your answer, and Tartan West or Tartan Ridge is the same answer at $720,000.

What I would not do is decide on the club fee, because you do not actually know it and neither does the internet.

Send me the street you are looking at and I will pull the parcel's real tax bill, the closed comps on that block, and what the membership office is quoting this month. That last one takes a phone call, which I will make so you do not have to hear the word "invitation" from a receptionist.

If $600,000 rather than $1 million is your number, I broke down Powell vs New Albany at $600,000, and there is a separate read on New Albany vs Westerville luxury homes and on what it costs to live in Muirfield Village. The New Albany and Dublin submarket pages have more.

Selling to make this move? Start with a home value estimate so the math has a starting point.

Adam Geuy at Blacktree Realty. 937-239-2919.