Analysis
Spotlight on Ohio: what 88 counties did
Ohio’s typical home gained 13.5% between July 2023 and July 2026, comfortably ahead of the country’s 4.7%. That is the headline, and like most headlines about a state it is an average of things that did not happen to anybody.
Underneath it, Shelby County gained 24.6% and Wayne County lost 4.1% — a spread of 29 points, wider than the gap between the best and worst states in the country over the same three years.
Four Ohio counties, three years
Percentage change from July 2023. The two rising fastest are the two on this chart where homes cost least; the two barely moving are the two where they cost most.
- Delaware+5.6%
- Franklin+6.4%
- Mahoning+23.1%
- Ohio+13.5%
- Trumbull+23.5%
Zillow Home Value Index, all homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted. A typical home's value, not a sale price average.
The biggest gains were where homes cost the least
Ohio's ten fastest and ten slowest counties
Change in the typical home value, July 2023 to July 2026.
- Shelby +24.6% $199,499 → $248,492
- Putnam +24.2% $212,584 → $264,005
- Trumbull +23.5% $140,796 → $173,886
- Mahoning +23.1% $144,945 → $178,426
- Richland +23.1% $163,171 → $200,820
- Darke +22.6% $181,316 → $222,245
- Van Wert +21.4% $155,489 → $188,820
- Scioto +20.6% $122,726 → $147,954
- Ashtabula +20.1% $153,995 → $184,924
- Ashland +20.0% $205,897 → $247,156
- 68 more counties
- Belmont +7.7% $126,431 → $136,165
- Vinton +6.8% $167,079 → $178,510
- Franklin +6.4% $280,646 → $298,682
- Madison +6.3% $301,717 → $320,727
- Morrow +6.3% $268,687 → $285,679
- Delaware +5.6% $492,195 → $519,772
- Harrison +3.6% $140,871 → $145,883
- Meigs +2.7% $109,661 → $112,642
- Jackson -1.1% $150,000 → $148,395
- Wayne -4.1% $280,199 → $268,696
Zillow Home Value Index, all homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted. A typical home's value, not a sale price average.
The pattern in Ohio is almost the opposite of the one people expect. The counties that gained most are the ones where homes started out most affordable — Trumbull and Mahoning in the Mahoning Valley, Scioto on the river, Richland and Van Wert — all with a typical home under $165,000. The counties that barely moved are the ones with the highest prices: Delaware at $492,000 gained 5.6%, Franklin at $281,000 gained 6.4%.
The correlation between a county’s 2023 price and its three-year gain is −0.30: the higher the starting price, the less it moved. Two counties lost ground outright, Jackson and Wayne, and 86 gained.
A lot of it is about Columbus. The Columbus metro — Franklin and the ring of Delaware, Union, Madison and Morrow — had its run early: every one of those five gained between 27% and 37% from 2020 to 2023, and all five have been catching their breath since. The Mahoning Valley ran the other way round, and where the typical home is $145,000 it does not take many buyers to move the figure 23%.
Worth saying plainly, because a chart like this is easy to read the wrong way: a 23% gain in Trumbull County is not a county overtaking anybody. Trumbull’s typical home went from $141,000 to $174,000, which is a third of Delaware County’s $520,000. What the ranking measures is which direction prices moved, not which places are doing well — and for an owner in Trumbull the same figure cuts both ways, because it is also the number the auditor will be looking at.
Now the part that surprises people
Between tax year 2022 and tax year 2025, the taxable value of Ohio’s residential property rose 36% — from $225 billion to $306 billion. Over those same three valuation years, the market rose 21.4%.
Two things to say about that 36% before anyone quotes it, because it is easy to quote wrongly.
It is the whole stock, not your house. That figure is every residential property in Ohio added together, so it grows when houses are built as well as when they are revalued. We can measure how much: in a year when a county does not revalue, its existing values are frozen, and its total still creeps up 0.7–0.9%. That is new construction, and over three years it is about 2.4 points of the 36.
It does not mean the county outran the market. It means the county was behind it and caught up in one step.
Taxable value does not drift. It steps.
Ohio counties revalue on a fixed cycle, and the median county's taxable residential value moves in one jump in that year and barely at all in the other two. The last column is what the market did over the three years that jump was catching up on.
| Counties that last revalued | Taxable value, that year | Their other two years | Market over the three years before |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 (41 counties) | +32.5% | +0.8% | +33.4% |
| 2024 (24 counties) | +29.8% | +0.7% | +26.0% |
| 2025 (23 counties) | +27.7% | +0.7% | +21.4% |
Swipe sideways for more columns.
Taxable value: Ohio Department of Taxation table PD-31, Class I residential. Cycle: Ohio Department of Taxation reappraisal and update schedule. Market: Zillow ZHVI, Ohio.
Taxable value in Ohio does not drift upward. It sits still for two years and jumps in the third — the year that county revalues. And the size of the jump is close to what the market actually did over the three years the county was not looking. For the 41 counties that last revalued in 2023: assessed value up 32.5%, market up 33.4% over the three years to that valuation date. Within a point.
So nobody is being overcharged relative to the market. The county is simply reading a three-year-old market, all at once.
Two clocks, running at different times
Taxable value is what the county charges you on. It follows the market — but the market of several years ago, because a county only looks every three years and the books close before the notice reaches you.
| County | Taxable value 2022→2025 | Market 2020→2023 | Market 2023→2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Union | +52.3% | +31.0% | +8.0% |
| Franklin | +48.6% | +36.7% | +6.4% |
| Delaware | +45.1% | +35.6% | +5.6% |
| Hamilton | +35.0% | +35.9% | +8.9% |
| Montgomery | +36.1% | +34.9% | +15.3% |
| Cuyahoga | +32.8% | +33.5% | +17.4% |
| Mahoning | +40.2% | +44.8% | +23.1% |
| Trumbull | +37.4% | +39.5% | +23.5% |
Swipe sideways for more columns.
Taxable value: Ohio Department of Taxation, abstract of real property, Class I residential. Market value: Zillow ZHVI.
Which is where it gets expensive for individual owners. Look at Franklin County: taxable value up 48.6% since 2022, market value up 6.4% since 2023. Now look one column left, at what Franklin’s market did between 2020 and 2023: up 36.7%. Franklin’s assessment is carrying a boom that has since stopped.
We measured how tight that lag is, across all 88 counties:
- Taxable value growth against the earlier market (2020–2023): +0.53
- Taxable value growth against the current market (2023–2026): −0.07
The number the county taxes you on tracks the market of three to six years ago, and has no relationship at all with the market of today. That is not a scandal — it is what a periodic reappraisal system is. But it has a consequence that almost nobody acts on.
Why that gap is worth money to you
If your county’s valuation reflects 2022 and your local market has been flat or falling since, then the county’s number is above what your house would fetch — and the evidence that it is sits in public sales records on your own street.
That is the entire basis of a property tax appeal. Not that the increase felt unfair, and not that you cannot afford it: a Board of Revision decides market value, and market value is a question of evidence. In the counties at the bottom of our first chart — the ones where values have stalled since a reappraisal caught the boom — that evidence is unusually easy to find.
The window is 1 January to 31 March each year — or until first-half collection closes, if your county’s is later — and filing costs nothing.
What people could not pay
What Ohio did not pay
Property tax owed and still unpaid at the end of each tax year, statewide, in constant dollars — so this is not inflation. It is the part of the story a value chart cannot show.
- Unpaid$2,804,015,422
Ohio Department of Taxation, delinquency by county, deflated by the CPI-U.
One more series, because it is the part a value chart cannot show. Owed on property tax bills and unpaid at the end of the year, statewide, in constant dollars: $2.19 billion in 2019, $2.80 billion in 2024. A 28% rise in real terms, with inflation already taken out.
Read the shape rather than the headline, though. Most of that came at once: +22% between 2019 and 2021, which is the pandemic, and only +5% in the three years since. So this is not a bill crisis building steadily — it is a step up during COVID that has never come back down. Unpaid tax settled at a new level and stayed there, which is its own kind of bad news.
Rising values do not usually mean rising bills in Ohio; HB 920 sees to most of that, and we explain the mechanism here. But “most” is not “all”, and the part that does get through lands on the households with the least room. Unpaid tax is the clearest measure we have of where that line sits.
What to do with all this
Find your own county before you conclude anything. The state’s 13.5% is eleven points short of what Shelby County did and eighteen points ahead of what Wayne County did, and your taxing district — your township or city plus your school district — is narrower still.
Check when your county last reappraised. If it was 2023, your taxable value is carrying the 2020–2022 boom, and your market may have gone quiet since. That gap is the case.
Then check the arithmetic. Our property tax check takes the two figures from your valuation notice and your last bill, uses your district’s certified rates, and tells you where your next bill lands — in about a minute, with no account and nothing to pay.