A few years after leaving Columbus for Chicago, Freda Owusu returned home ready to put down roots.
At 40 years old and earning just under six figures, the lifelong renter figured buying her first house would be fairly simple. Instead, she found herself struggling to find any type of starter home under $265,000 in the city she thought she knew.
"Only three-and-a-half years had passed, and I was expecting the same prices as before I left," she said. "That wasn't the case at all. It was like everything had doubled."
Owusu is one of countless first-time homebuyers across the region and country who have found that the entry into homeownership is no longer the routine rite of passage it was for generations past, leading her to even doubt whether she
should stop renting. Last year, the national median buyer age increased to a record 59 years old, and first-time buyers made up the lowest share of the country's market since the National Association of Realtors began collecting data in 1981 at 21%.
Meanwhile, prices continue to rise at a local level, with the Columbus-area median sales price at $350,000 as of August. In August 2019, that number was $213,500.
But to comfortably afford a $350,000 home, a household's income would need to be around $110,000 a year, according to Affordable Housing Alliance of Central Ohio assistant executive director Anna Teye-Kasongo. That, she said, is why the conventional starter home – that first property a buyer will live in for several years before moving on to something bigger and better – no longer exists in Columbus.
“In the past, it would be maybe less than 1,000 square feet, probably two-bedroom, one-bath – that is probably what our parents and grandparents considered a starter home,” she said. “But it was always at a price point that did not make it impossible for them to actually acquire that home. That is not the case today.”
Other housing experts reject the notion that the starter home has disappeared altogether, but agree its definition has changed. Local real estate market analyst Rob Vogt said central Ohio still has quality homes at or below $200,000, a common benchmark for starter homes in the region, but those properties often come with trade-offs like needed repairs, smaller footprints or less desirable locations.
"It's just a complicated issue," he said. "So many people break it down by saying, 'Oh my gosh, I don't have a choice at $240,000.' There are options out there, it just may not be the option that you want."
Is the Columbus starter home dead?
Thirty-five years ago, Curtiss Williams and his wife bought their first home on Columbus' South Side. For two beds, one bath and a full basement, they paid $30,000.
"That kind of scenario, to be quite honest, I don't think exists, at least at those price points," Williams, now president and CEO of the Central Ohio Community Improvement Corporation (COCIC), said. "In the places that I know of, especially in Columbus, I can't even imagine a price around $150,000."
Within the COCIC is the Central Ohio Community Land Trust, a nonprofit that works with the city of Columbus and Franklin County in pursuit of widespread and permanent affordable housing across the region. It works with developers to build market-rate-value homes for people earning up to 120% of the Area Median Income – or up to $133,800 for a family of four – and sells them for under $200,000 through a shared-equity model that allows the buyer to keep 25% of the appreciation value.
The land trust program often works with people who have tried to find their starter home for years to no avail, and Owusu is one such example. After struggling to find a starter home in her budget for months, she turned to the land trust and is now preparing to close on a home in Linden.
The lack of starter homes has been a consistent issue over the past decade but has worsened in recent years, Teye-Kasongo said. In 2023, she said, only about 25% of homes were priced under $200,000 across the central Ohio market.
Teye-Kasongo said the disappearance of starter homes can be traced to a range of market dynamics. Locally, she pointed to corporate investors, who often buy up homes in neighborhoods with low-to-moderate incomes and return them to the market as higher-priced rentals. In 2025, over 6,000 central Ohio homes were bought by corporate investors, she added.
She also cited zoning policies that can limit housing options. Duplexes, for example, are often attractive to millennial and Gen Z buyers, but an Affordable Housing Alliance of Central Ohio study found only 17% of central Ohio parcels are zoned to allow them. The city is in the midst of overhauling its 70-year-old zoning code through an initiative called Zone In to help make it easier to increase housing in Columbus.
"We need to create more variety instead of building a one-size-fits-all, conventional front yard, back yard and over 1,000-square-foot [property] because we think that is what the people of today need," she said, "when truthfully, that's what the people of 70 years ago said they needed."
Tod Bowen, executive officer of the Building Industry Association of Central Ohio, doesn't believe starter homes have vanished, but rather that first-time buyers may have to be more flexible with their search. From a builder's perspective, he said some central Ohio neighborhoods offer more affordable land options, making them a better fit for entry-level buyers.
"I think it's an important thing for the younger home-buyer to keep in mind that when you're buying your starter home, you are looking for something that you – generally speaking – expect to move on from, and there are some great neighborhoods in central Ohio, like Linden, that would be perfect examples of that," he said.
Owusu acknowledged that Linden wasn't where she originally envisioned buying her first home, but it was home to the best options. Still, she worries that affordability could prove temporary if housing development and other investment continue to drive up prices in the area.
"I don't think it's easy to have a home, but it's still something that I wanted to try to do," she said. "Hopefully, this one will last me some years, and I'll move on to what's next."
Reporter Emma Wozniak can be reached at ewozniak@dispatch.com or @emma_wozniak_ on X.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: The Columbus starter home has vanished, some say. Others say it just evolved
