Is New Construction Worth It? What 20,899 Columbus Closings Show

Usually yes, and the sticker price is why most buyers think otherwise. In Hilliard, the median new-construction home closed at $617,382 against $375,000 for resale, a 65 percent gap. Per finished square foot those same homes ran $234 against $230, a difference of 2 percent. New builds are not priced higher. They are bigger, 2,817 square feet against 1,542.

That pattern holds across central Ohio, and in four suburbs new construction closed below resale outright.

I ran every closing recorded in the Columbus MLS from January 2 through August 3, 2026, which is 20,899 sales, with new construction flagged by the MLS itself, and compared the two on both measures in every suburb with enough volume to be meaningful. Below is the full table, the three markets where you do pay a meaningful premium, the four where new is the cheaper buy, what you gain and give up with a new build, and the finish-out costs that decide the question in practice.

People type "is new construction worth it" into Google every single day, and most of the answers they find are written by someone selling one side of it. Builder marketing says always. Agents who do not understand construction say be careful, in a tone that means no. I am a contractor's kid. My dad, my grandpa, my uncle and my great-grandpa were builders, and I grew up on their job sites long before I held a real estate license. So I will answer it the way I would for a friend, with the numbers first.

Why Does New Construction Look So Much More Expensive?

Start with Hilliard, where the difference is starkest.

The median new-construction closing in Hilliard was $617,382. The median resale closing was $375,000. That is a 65 percent premium, and it is the number that makes buyers assume new construction is out of reach.

Now the same two homes measured per square foot: $234 for new construction, $230 for resale. A two percent difference.

The new builds were not more expensive. They were bigger. Median new-construction size in Hilliard ran 2,817 square feet against 1,542 for resale, nearly double the house.

What Does New Construction Cost Per Square Foot in Each Columbus Suburb?

Suburb	New build	Resale	Sticker gap	New $/sqft	Resale $/sqft	True gap
Hilliard	$617,382	$375,000	+65%	$234	$230	+2%
Grove City	$527,280	$340,000	+55%	$212	$205	+4%
Westerville	$610,000	$437,950	+39%	$257	$227	+13%
Dublin	$719,000	$532,000	+35%	$262	$240	+9%
Delaware	$546,370	$405,000	+35%	$221	$216	+3%
Pickerington	$534,095	$420,000	+27%	$218	$190	+15%
Lewis Center	$590,015	$510,000	+16%	$260	$231	+12%
Sunbury	$585,334	$508,750	+15%	$207	$244	-15%
Plain City	$585,082	$570,900	+2%	$224	$227	-1%
Powell	$481,870	$551,912	-13%	$219	$246	-11%
Galena	$496,200	$682,500	-27%	$217	$249	-13%

Read the last column and the picture inverts. Sticker gaps run from +65 percent to -27 percent. True per-foot gaps cluster tightly between -15 percent and +15 percent.

The same buyer budget behaves completely differently across the metro, because the land, the builders and the price bands change every few miles. I ran one of those head-to-heads house against house in the Westerville new construction versus resale comparison, and the winner changed based on which costs you count and how long you plan to stay.

Which Columbus Suburbs Charge a Meaningful Premium for New Construction?

Three markets charge a meaningful premium per square foot:

Pickerington, +15 percent. New builds at $218 per foot against $190 for resale. Notably, the size gap here is small (2,459 versus 2,280 square feet), so buyers here are paying for new rather than for space.

Westerville, +13 percent. $257 versus $227. Westerville has very little new construction, only three percent of 2026 sales, so what does get built is priced into a scarce market.

Lewis Center, +12 percent. $260 versus $231, the highest new-build cost per foot in the study.

In those three towns, choosing new is a serious financial decision. Everywhere else the premium is small enough that the question stops being about money and starts being about what you want to live in.

Where Is New Construction Cheaper Than Resale?

Four markets flip it:

Galena, -13 percent per foot. New builds at $217 against $249 for resale, and a sticker price $186,300 lower. Galena's established housing stock skews to larger, more expensive homes on acreage, so builders are selling a smaller, newer product to a different buyer.

Powell, -11 percent. New builds at $219 against $246. Same dynamic: an established, expensive resale market with builders working the entry lane beneath it.

Sunbury, -15 percent and Plain City, -1 percent round out the group.

If you are shopping in these four towns and comparing on price alone, new construction is not the splurge. It is often the value play, and buyers who rule it out on sticker price never find that out.

Why Are New Builds So Much Bigger Than Resale Homes?

New builds ran roughly 2,200 to 2,900 square feet across every suburb measured. Resale ran roughly 1,500 to 2,500. That gap is not an accident.

Builders design to current buyer demand and current lot economics. Once you are paying for land, permits, utilities and a foundation, the marginal cost of another 400 square feet upstairs is comparatively small, so the floor plans grow. Meanwhile the resale stock reflects what buyers wanted in 1985 or 1998, when a 1,500 square foot ranch was a normal three-bedroom home.

That is why the sticker comparison misleads. You are not comparing the same house at two prices. You are comparing two different houses.

What Are You Buying With a New Build?

Systems with a known starting point. A new build means a roof, furnace, water heater, windows and wiring that all start at year zero, wrapped in a warranty. On a resale, those systems are somewhere in their lifespan and your inspection is an educated guess about where. There is financial value in knowing your first decade of ownership is unlikely to include a five-figure mechanical surprise. For buyers without deep repair reserves, that predictability alone can justify the premium.

The floor plan you actually want. Open kitchens, first-floor flex rooms, true primary suites, a laundry room that is not a closet. The way people live in a house changed, and most of the resale stock was built for a different pattern. If your must-have list reads like a 2020s floor plan, fighting for the rare renovated resale can cost more than building it right the first time.

A negotiation counterpart with no feelings. This surprises people, and it is one of my favorite parts of builder deals. A builder does not love the house and has no memories in it. They negotiate on math, which makes them the most rational seller you will ever face. More on how that plays out in the buydown section below.

What Are You Giving Up With a New Build?

Timelines are estimates wearing confident fonts. Are new builds usually delayed? Often enough that the planning answer is yes. Weather moves foundations. Inspection schedules move drywall. A missing window package can idle a finished-looking house for weeks. None of this means your builder is bad. Construction is a sequenced physical process and the date quoted at contract is the optimistic middle of a range. If your lease ends on a specific day with no flexibility behind it, that is a solid argument for resale, and I say that as the agent who sells more new construction than anything else.

Young trees and unfinished streets. A new community spends its first years looking like one. Sod lines, builder traffic, empty lots that will eventually be neighbors. It all fills in, but if an established canopy street matters to your daily happiness, no design center credit buys that.

The registration trap can cost you your representation. Walk into a model alone, sign the visitor sheet, and in many communities you have just told the builder you came unrepresented, which can eliminate your ability to bring your own agent into the deal afterward. The builder's on-site staff are professionals and they work for the builder. It costs you nothing to bring your own eyes, but only if you bring them to the first visit. I wrote the whole playbook in why you need your own agent for new construction.

What Costs Do Buyers Forget on a New Build?

The per-foot math above compares closed sale prices. What it cannot capture is the gap between the advertised price and the as-built house, or what happens after closing, and this is where new-construction buyers get surprised.

The sticker is the base house on the base lot. The model you toured is wearing the upgraded elevation, the extended island, the built-ins, the trim package and the landscaping, and none of that is in the number on the sign. Lot premiums stack on top. Structural options stack on top. Design center selections stack on top of that. I walk clients through the as-built math before they fall in love with a model, and I compared where the per-square-foot money goes in the entry-level versus luxury builder breakdown.

Landscaping. Most builder base packages include a graded yard and minimal foundation plantings. A finished yard with sod, beds, trees and irrigation routinely runs $8,000 to $25,000 depending on lot size. The resale down the street has thirty years of it already.

Window treatments. A new house has bare windows in every room. Blinds and shades across a 2,600 square foot home is a four-figure expense that nobody budgets for at contract.

The basement. Many new builds close with an unfinished lower level. Finishing it later costs considerably more per foot than having it built out during construction, which is why builders push the upgrade hard.

Fencing and outdoor living. Decks, patios and fences are frequently excluded or offered as upgrades at prices above what an independent contractor would charge after closing.

Add those together on a typical new build and you are often looking at $40,000 to $70,000 of finish-out that the comparable resale already has in place. That does not make new construction a bad deal. It means the fair comparison is finished house against finished house, not base price against resale price. A resale carries its own version of this, its price plus its deferred maintenance plus its renovation gap, and anyone who answers the cost question with one number is selling you something.

Are Builder Rate Buydowns Worth Taking?

Builders compete on financing in a way individual sellers cannot. A builder carrying unsold spec inventory at the end of a quarter has both the motivation and the budget to buy your rate down, cover closing costs, or throw in the finished basement.

They protect their base prices fiercely, because every future sale in that community comps against them. So the money moves on incentives instead: closing costs, rate buydowns through their lender, design center credits and lot premium relief. Buyers who demand ten percent off the price get nowhere. Buyers who know which levers builders pull do well.

That creates opportunities and one trap. The opportunity is that a well-timed new-build purchase can come with concessions worth tens of thousands. The trap is that the incentive is often tied to using the builder's lender at a rate that may not be competitive once the buydown period ends.

Read what the rate reverts to and when. A two-year buydown on a thirty-year loan is a two-year benefit attached to a twenty-eight year obligation.

Should You Buy New Construction or an Existing Home?

If you need square footage, price new construction seriously. In Hilliard, Grove City, Delaware and Plain City, additional space through new construction costs within a few percent of what resale space costs. If you need 2,600 feet, a new build may be the cheapest route to it.

If you want a specific established neighborhood, resale usually wins. Mature trees, shorter commutes, walkable older cores and finished landscaping are not available in a new subdivision at any price, because they take thirty years to grow.

Compare the finished cost, not the contract price. This is where I see buyers get hurt. A builder's base price rarely includes window treatments, a finished basement, landscaping, a deck or a fence. The resale down the street often has all of it. I walk buyers through that line by line, because a $30,000 incentive can evaporate against $45,000 of finish-out.

Ask what the builder is offering this month. Incentives move constantly and vary by community and by how many spec homes a builder is carrying. That is a live number, not a published one, and it is one of the more useful things I bring to a new-construction conversation.

After years of doing these deals, the pattern is consistent. New construction tends to fit when:

• Your must-have list is really a floor plan list, and the resale stock keeps failing it
• You have timeline flexibility, a month-to-month option, or a patient sale behind you
• You want your first decade of ownership to be mechanically boring
• You are disciplined enough to compare all-in numbers instead of falling for a staged model
• You bring representation to the first visit, not the fourth

Resale tends to fit when the move date is fixed, the mature street matters, or your dollar needs to stretch into more square feet than new construction offers at your price point in close-in locations. Neither answer is a personality. I put clients in both, sometimes the same client in different years of their life.

What Would I Do Before Touring a Single Model?

First, get your financing fully set, including a conversation about builder lender incentives. The rate buydowns builders offer through their preferred lenders are often the largest single concession on the table, and you cannot evaluate them without knowing what your outside option costs.

Second, take me with you. I do not need the tour. The first visit is when your representation is decided, the model is designed to sell you upgrades, and I grew up around this work, so I notice which lots drain badly, which elevations hide cheap siding swaps, and which builder's punch-out crews show up in year two. The brochure does not cover any of that, and it is the difference between a new build that was worth it and one that just looked worth it on a sign.

What Do These Numbers Not Tell You?

These are recorded MLS closings, not an official board report. My export, my computation, January 2 through August 3, 2026, with new construction flagged by the MLS rather than inferred.

Square footage is as reported in the MLS. It is generally reliable and occasionally imprecise, especially on older homes where finished basement space may or may not be counted.

Medians describe the middle, not your house. Every town here spans a wide range, and a per-foot median cannot account for lot size, condition, finish level or location within the town.

Some samples are small. The suburbs shown all had at least 20 new-construction closings, but a 20-sale sample is directional rather than precise.

How Do You Compare a Specific New Build to a Specific Resale?

If you are weighing a specific new build against a specific resale, the useful exercise is not a town median. It is those two houses, on price per finished foot, with the incentive and the finish-out costs both counted.

Send me the two addresses and I will put them side by side on finished cost per foot: base price plus the finish-out the resale already has, against what the resale needs. Most buyers find the gap is half what they assumed, and occasionally it runs the other way. If you have a list of communities instead, tell me which ones and I will give you my read on each, including the all-in math the model home is dressed to make you forget.

Start with what your current home would bring, since for most buyers that funds the next one: get a home value estimate here.

For the market-speed side of the builder question, I broke down how builder activity affects resale timelines in the Columbus suburb speed map.

Thinking about a new build or a resale in central Ohio? Let's talk. Contact Adam Geuy, Realtor with Blacktree Realty (ABR, PSA, SRS), at 937.239.2919, or grab a time at calendly.com/adam-geuy.