Ask anyone selling a house in Lewis Center what makes the area different from Powell or Dublin, and the answer comes fast: no city income tax. It's true. Lewis Center sits inside unincorporated Orange Township, which means there's no city hall levying 2 percent on your paycheck the way Powell does, or 2 percent to 2.5 percent the way most of Powell's incorporated neighbors in the Columbus metro do.
It's also the wrong number to fixate on if you're actually trying to figure out what a house in Lewis Center will cost you every month. The bigger swing sits somewhere buyers rarely compare side by side: the HOA line, which can run anywhere from about $14 a month to $71 a month depending on which specific community you buy into, and which is doing more to your budget than the tax line most listings lead with.
The tax math, run straight
Powell's finance department confirms the city's income tax rate at 2 percent as of January 1, 2022, applied to residents' full income with a credit for tax already paid elsewhere. A household earning $140,000, roughly Lewis Center's reported median, would owe $2,800 a year at that rate if they lived inside Powell's city limits instead of the township next door. Push that to a suburb charging 2.5 percent and the gap widens to $3,500.
That's real money, and it's the number every Lewis Center listing sheet repeats. What those same sheets rarely mention is that Delaware County, which contains all of Lewis Center, collects the highest property tax bill in Ohio in dollar terms: a median of $3,732 a year, or 1.48 percent of median home value. Depending on whether you calculate off assessed value or market value, other estimates put the effective rate closer to 1.6 percent. Either way, the property tax bill takes back a meaningful share of whatever the income tax line saved you, and it does it regardless of which specific neighborhood you choose.
So the income tax pitch is accurate, but it's a wash against a property tax bill that's already high before you've picked a street. The number that actually moves once you start comparing specific communities is the one nobody puts next to it.
What the HOA line actually looks like, community by community
Here's where the comparison gets useful, because Lewis Center isn't one HOA structure. It's several, and they're priced for very different things.
| Community | HOA type | Approximate annual cost | What it funds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oak Creek | Established, deed-restricted | Deed enforcement, basic common-area upkeep | |
| Winterbrooke Place | New construction, Rockford Homes | ~$600/year ($50/month) | Trails, playgrounds, a fitness park, a bocce court across 30 acres of reserve space |
| Parkside at Evans Farm | New construction, Rockford Homes | ~$852/year ($71/month) | Ground maintenance inside a larger master-planned development |
Oak Creek Association's own site lists 2026 dues around $172 when paid online, payable to a volunteer treasurer, funding little beyond deed compliance and shared green space. That's the low end of Lewis Center ownership cost, and it's the number a lot of "no income tax" marketing quietly assumes when it runs the math on total housing cost.
Buy into Winterbrooke Place or Parkside at Evans Farm instead, both built by Rockford Homes, and the HOA line jumps to $600 or $852 a year before you've added a single dollar of property tax. Run that gap against the income tax savings from living in unincorporated Orange Township instead of Powell, and a chunk of that $2,800 to $3,500 advantage is already gone before your first mortgage payment posts. Pick the wrong two communities to compare and the entire "no city income tax" advantage can shrink to a rounding error.
None of this means the higher-fee communities are a bad deal. It means the fee is buying something specific, and that something is worth pricing out before you assume the number on the tax pitch is the number that matters.
What the higher fee is actually buying right now
The case for paying more HOA in a community like Evans Farm isn't abstract anymore. Jennings Sports Park, a 56-acre facility with soccer and multi-sport fields, baseball and softball diamonds, batting cages and a pavilion, opened on the development's western edge in spring 2025. Johnson's Real Ice Cream, a Bexley-founded brand opening its tenth central Ohio location, announced plans in January 2026 to open at 5915 Evans Farm Drive, according to NBC4's roundup of new central Ohio restaurants, an opening a local summer field guide still listed as pending as of this year's market season. Market on Orange, a weekly farmers market paired with a food truck and live music, runs Tuesdays from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. at 3467 E. Orange Road through August 11, 2026.
That's a different proposition than paying a fee for amenities still on a rendering. The commercial build-out inside Evans Farm has been slower to arrive than the housing, but 2026 is the year several of those promised pieces, alongside Sexton's Pizza, which has been operating inside the community for a while, are actually landing on the ground. If you're comparing a $71-a-month HOA against a $172-a-year one, the question isn't which number is smaller. It's whether the difference is funding a park that's already open and a farmers market that's already running, or a plan that hasn't broken ground.
Why the market's own data is already split on this
Here's the part that should make a buyer pause before trusting a single headline stat. Different listing trackers reporting on Lewis Center in the same window this year don't agree with each other. One puts median days on market at 78 in August 2026, essentially flat from a year earlier. Another, tracking April 2026 closings, shows homes sitting a median of 89 days, up sharply from 38 days the prior year. A third source covering the same spring stretch reports homes moving in 30 to 45 days, with inventory up roughly 16 percent year over year and "move-in ready" homes still selling fast.
That's not one tracker being wrong. It's a market where the answer to "how fast are Lewis Center homes selling" depends heavily on which homes you're averaging. Turnkey new construction with a defined amenity package attached tends to move on one timeline. Older resale inventory, priced without a built-in HOA story to explain the extra fee, tends to move on another. When a 50-day gap shows up in the same market during the same season, it's usually because two different products are being sold to two different buyers, and averaging them together produces a number that describes neither one accurately.
What to actually check before you write an offer
- Ask for the specific HOA's current fee, billing frequency, and reserve fund balance, not the average for "Lewis Center" as a whole. The gap between $172 and $852 a year is the difference between two real communities, not a rounding error in a marketing sheet.
- Pull the property's specific tax district from the Delaware County Auditor before you assume a countywide average applies to your parcel.
- If you're comparing Lewis Center to an incorporated suburb, run the income tax math against your actual household income and the specific city's rate, not a generic percentage.
- Ask whether the amenities an HOA fee funds are already open or still planned. Jennings Sports Park and Market on Orange are operating now. Confirm the same is true for whatever a listing agent points to.
A property tax wrinkle worth knowing before you budget
Olentangy Local School District, which serves Lewis Center, isn't sitting still on funding either. Voters approved a $235 million bond in November 2025 to build a new high school and elementary school, structured as a 1.77-mill, 37-year issue that district officials say won't raise the current tax rate. That's a meaningful signal that the district is financing growth through structured debt rather than a rate hike, at least for this specific bond.
There's a separate wrinkle from the county level that's easy to miss. According to a January 2026 statement from the Delaware County Auditor, new state legislation creates an inflation tax credit for school districts sitting at Ohio's 20-mill funding floor, but Olentangy, along with Dublin and Westerville, won't receive it because the district wasn't at that floor during the 2023 reappraisal. Any future increase in an Olentangy-area tax bill will come from levies voters actually pass, not from inflation on existing millage, and this particular state-level relief valve simply doesn't apply here the way it does in some neighboring districts.
Frequently asked questions
Does any part of Lewis Center have its own city income tax? No. Lewis Center is entirely within unincorporated Orange Township, which has no municipal government structure to levy one. The income tax comparison only matters if you're weighing Lewis Center against an incorporated city like Powell, Dublin, or Westerville.
Is the HOA fee gap specific to new construction, or does it show up in resale too? It's mostly a new-construction pattern. Communities built more recently by builders like Rockford Homes tend to carry monthly dues tied to amenity packages, while older established neighborhoods like Oak Creek were set up with small annual dues meant to cover deed compliance rather than shared recreation.
Will Olentangy property taxes keep climbing after the 2025 bond? The bond itself was structured not to raise the current rate. Future increases would come from separate levies that voters would need to approve, and Olentangy's exclusion from the new inflation tax credit means it won't get automatic relief the way some other Delaware County districts will.
If you're weighing Lewis Center against a suburb like Powell or Dublin and want the actual numbers run against your household income, specific communities, and current tax district, that's exactly the kind of comparison the Dedra Lucas Group puts together before you ever write an offer. Let's Connect.
