Marysville.

Marysville is the Honda town, and that shapes the whole market. Honda, Scotts Miracle-Gro, and Memorial Health anchor the local economy, and relocation buyers arrive in waves tied to plant hiring. The median price sits around $370K, the lowest of the featured suburbs, which makes Marysville the closest place inside a reasonable drive where buyers can still get new construction in this band. Subdivisions like Mill Valley and Watkins Trace lead the new-build inventory. The Census median household income, near $92,000, fits a working corridor with steady demand.

Marysville has a real downtown, not a reproduction of one. Uptown Marysville was built between the 1860s and early 1900s and still centers on the Union County courthouse, with local shops, restaurants, and the restored 1936 Avalon Theatre on Main Street running movies and live shows. A downtown nonprofit keeps an event calendar going through the year, and the Union County Farmers Market runs Saturday mornings from mid-May into October. Honda's Heritage Center on the campus covers four decades of building cars in the county.

The commute is the clear tradeoff. The Honda auto plant sits about 42 miles northwest of downtown Columbus, so a downtown commute is long, often around an hour. For corridor workers, that math flips: many people here live minutes from the plant. Marysville Exempted Village Schools serve the area. The pitch is simple. Newer home, lower price, short corridor commute. The cost is distance from Columbus proper.