Columbus multifamily investment guide

We try not to write a guide around a single number. This metro produced two that have to be read together, and read together they are the most direct supply warning in this series.

The first is that total nonfarm employment in July 2026 was 1,199,000, a change of exactly 0.0 percent over twelve months. That is not a rounding artifact on a small base. It is a metro of nearly 1.2 million jobs that finished the year with the same number it started with. Unemployment was 3.2 percent, down from 3.3, which tells you the labor force is not growing much either.¹

The second is that mining, logging and construction employment grew 13.6 percent over the same period, to 71,100. That is the second largest single-sector growth in our coverage, behind St. Louis at 14.0 percent and well ahead of Columbia, South Carolina at 9.4.¹

Franklin County confirms it on the permit line: 10,494 residential permits authorized in 2025 against a stock of 616,365 units, about 1.70 percent on our arithmetic, ahead of Salt Lake County at 1.5 percent and far ahead of Cook County at 0.22.²

Underneath the flat headline, the composition is worse than flat. Five of the ten reported sectors contracted: professional and business services fell 3.0 percent on 188,300 jobs, information 3.8 percent, education and health services 1.6 percent, other services 0.7 percent and government 0.6 percent. Trade, transportation and utilities, the largest sector at 225,800, was exactly flat. Only leisure and hospitality at 1.6 percent, manufacturing at 0.5, financial activities at 0.4 and construction itself grew.¹

One of those deserves separate attention. We checked education and health services in every guide we had published before this one, and this is the first market in our coverage where that sector is contracting. It has been the anchor everywhere else, growing 6.2 percent in Salt Lake City, 3.7 in Denver, 3.6 in Minneapolis-St. Paul and 1.8 in Chicago. In a metro that hosts a major university and a large hospital system, a negative print on education and health is the figure we would want a sponsor to explain before anything else.¹

Population is the one clean positive: Franklin County reached 1,361,536, up 2.9 percent from its April 2020 base. People are still arriving. The jobs, for the moment, are not.¹²

• Total nonfarm employment change: exactly 0.0 percent.¹
• Construction employment: up 13.6 percent, second only to St. Louis.¹
• 10,494 permits, about 1.70 percent of stock.²
• Five of ten sectors contracted, including education and health for the first time anywhere we cover.

Supply is arriving fast into a job market that added nothing. Those are the two blades of the same pair of scissors.

The second Ohio mechanism is less well known outside the state and it is arguably worth more over a hold period than the first.

In most of the markets in this series, a county reappraisal that lifts your assessed value lifts your tax bill roughly in proportion. Ohio interrupts that. Under Ohio Revised Code Section 319.301, the tax commissioner must determine "by what percentage, if any, the sums levied by such tax against the carryover property in each class would have to be reduced for the tax to levy the same number of dollars against such property in that class in the current year as were charged against such property by such tax in the preceding year." The county auditor then reduces the sum levied against each parcel by the certified percentage for its class.⁴

In plain terms, when values rise on reappraisal, the effective millage on existing voted levies is rolled back so that the levy collects approximately the same dollars it collected the year before. Rising valuations do not, by themselves, fund a windfall. New revenue in Ohio generally has to come from a new levy put to voters, which is a visible and datable event rather than a silent reassessment.

For an owner this changes what the tax line does across a hold. In a market like Harris County, Texas or Cook County, Illinois, the sensible assumption is that the tax expense grows with value and must be actively contested. In Franklin County the sensible assumption is that it grows with new levies on the ballot, which can be researched, and not with the appraiser’s opinion.

A caution about how we are reading the cost data, because it matters. Franklin County’s median monthly owner cost with a mortgage is $1,781 on a median home value of $288,400. Cook County pays $2,270 on a value of $324,500: about 12 percent more value, about 27 percent more monthly cost. That gap is consistent with a materially lighter property tax burden here, and we think that is the main driver. But median owner cost bundles mortgage payment, taxes, insurance and utilities, so we are inferring the tax component rather than isolating it. Treat it as a strong signal to go and pull the actual tax bills on any specific asset, not as a measurement.²

In Ohio, a higher appraisal does not by itself produce a higher bill on existing levies. New tax revenue generally requires a new levy on a ballot, which you can research before you buy.

We are not buying here at present, and we want to be plain about why, because the tax law is genuinely attractive and it would be easy to let that carry the decision. A metro that added zero net jobs, that saw five sectors contract including education and health for the first time anywhere we cover, and that is permitting at 1.70 percent of stock while construction employment grows 13.6 percent, is a market where supply and demand are moving apart. We would want to see either the employment line turn or the delivery pipeline clear before we underwrote rent growth here. Our method is set out in how we evaluate a market, and the full ranked list is on the markets index.¹²

• How many units are under construction and permitted within three miles of the subject?
• What explains education and health services contracting, and is it expected to continue?
• Does the model assume rent growth, and what employment growth is it implicitly relying on?
• Has the seller filed a valuation complaint, and is a counter-complaint from the school board outstanding?
• What levies are on the ballot in this taxing district over the hold period?
• What are the actual tax bills for the last three years, rather than an assumed millage?
• How sensitive is the resident base to a mortgage rate move, given owning costs only $479 a month more?
• What share of the projected return comes from operations rather than the exit?

The tax law here is the best we have found for an owner. It is not, on its own, a reason to buy into flat employment and the fastest construction growth we have measured.