If you've looked at new construction in Pataskala this year, you've probably read some version of the same pitch: Intel is coming, demand is surging, buy now before the wave hits. Land listings advertise parcels "5.5 miles from the new INTEL project" or "7 miles from Intel," builders frame their communities around proximity to "Google, Amazon, Intel, and Facebook offices," and relocation guides describe an "unprecedented wave" reshaping the eastern corridor. It's a good story. It's also running on a construction schedule that no longer exists.
Intel's own filings with the state of Ohio tell a different story than the sales copy. And the mayor of Pataskala has already told a local reporter, on the record, that he's relieved the timeline slipped.
The Filing Says Otherwise
When Intel announced its New Albany campus in January 2022, the plan was straightforward: two semiconductor fabrication plants, production starting by the end of 2025. That date has moved four times since. By February 2024 it had slipped to late 2026. By March 2025, Intel told employees the first fab wouldn't be complete until 2030, with operations starting that year or the next, and the second fab following in 2031 and 2032. The most recent update, a filing with Ohio regulators reported in March 2026, confirmed that timeline again: fab one finished in 2030, production in 2030 or 2031, fab two wrapping construction in 2031 and easing into operation in 2032.
That's not a delay measured in months. It's a shift from a 2025 production target to a 2030-2031 operational date, reaffirmed as recently as this spring. Construction on the site continues, and hiring for trades and supplier roles is real, but the workforce surge that new-construction marketing treats as an imminent housing catalyst is still four to six years out from actually showing up for a shift.
What the Mayor Already Said
Pataskala's mayor has spoken publicly about the delay. In February 2025, Mike Compton told a Licking County outlet how he viewed the pushed-back timeline.
"I welcome it because I think it helps slow things down and lets things happen a little bit more naturally without any panic. Build it and build it right."
That's not the language of a city bracing for a housing shock. It's the language of someone who watched the 2022 announcement trigger a scramble across St. Albans Township, Alexandria, Johnstown, Jersey Township, and Pataskala itself, and who is glad to have more runway before the next wave of demand actually needs somewhere to live. If the person running the city isn't treating this as a countdown, a buyer forty-five minutes away shouldn't feel one either.
Three Numbers, Three Different Answers
Here's the part that should make any buyer pause before trusting a single headline figure. Ask what Pataskala's median home price is right now, and the answer changes depending on who's counting.
| Source | Metric | Figure | Time Window |
|---|---|---|---|
| Columbus REALTORS (MLS) | Median sale price | $401,500 | June 2026 |
| Portal aggregator | Median closed price | $451,990 | April 2026 |
| Portal aggregator | Median list price | $454,000 | August 2026 |
| Portal aggregator | Average days on market | 146 days (vs. 29 days a year earlier) | April 2026 |
A $50,000 gap between the official regional MLS median and a national portal's closed-price median isn't a rounding error. It reflects different sampling windows, different property mixes, and in some cases the difference between what a listing agent typed in and what a buyer's agent actually closed. If you've seen a single "Pataskala's median home price is $X" claim anywhere, that number was chosen from somewhere in this range, not agreed upon across the market.
The days-on-market swing is the number that matters more than any of the price figures. A jump from 29 days to 146 days in the same month, one year apart, is not a market accelerating toward an Intel-driven land grab. It's a market where sellers are pricing ahead of what buyers are willing to pay right now, and where a "hot suburb" narrative and a cooling sell-through rate are coexisting in the same data set.
What "Near Intel" Actually Means on a Map
Part of the reason the urgency pitch works is that "close to Intel" gets stretched to fit whatever needs selling. One rural parcel listing describes itself as 7 miles from the Intel site. Another, similarly positioned property calls itself 5.5 miles away and "only a 10-minute drive." A new-construction guide for the corridor promises a "seamless 15-to-20-minute commute" from communities that, depending on the specific subdivision, sit anywhere from 12 to 15 miles south of the actual campus.
These figures differ because each is measured from a different starting point along Hazelton-Etna Road (State Route 310) or Mink Street, and the results are then grouped under a single description of "the corridor." A buyer evaluating a specific address should ask for an actual drive time from that address at a specific hour, not a corridor-wide average pulled from whichever parcel happens to be closest.
The Building That's Actually Happening
None of this means Pataskala isn't growing. It means the growth is happening on builder timelines, not Intel's operational calendar. M/I Homes broke ground on Forest Ridge, its first Pataskala community, situated between State Route 161 and Broad Street. Maronda Homes has two active projects in the city, Borders Place and Smoke Creek, the latter less than a mile from Watkins Memorial High School. Scenic View Estates, a gated custom-lot community off SR 310, released select lots for sale earlier this year.
This is the kind of construction that happens in a city with steady, unforced demand, not a market bracing for a workforce that won't need housing for another four to six years. Pataskala Municipal Park's 15-acre grounds and the Thomas J. Evans Foundation Park continue to anchor the city's existing neighborhoods regardless of what's happening at the Intel site to the north.
What This Means If You're Timing a Purchase
If you're weighing a move to Pataskala, the Intel narrative isn't wrong, it's just not urgent in the way the sales copy implies. There's no ticking clock this year or next that requires you to overpay to beat a workforce surge that Intel's own filings say is still years away. The wider, more useful lesson is in that price table: a citywide median, whichever version you're handed, tells you almost nothing about what a specific house is worth. The $50,000 spread between the MLS figure and the portal figures exists because medians blend very different homes together. The only number that actually matters for an offer is what comparable homes near your target address have closed for recently, not what a headline says the city averaged last month.
If you're comparing a Pataskala listing against other Licking or Franklin County options and trying to figure out whether the asking price reflects real demand or just optimistic pricing in a market where days on market quintupled in a year, that's a comps conversation worth having before you write an offer, not after. Kim Kovacs and Partners can pull the actual closed sales for a specific Pataskala address and tell you where it really sits, no Intel countdown required.
