The map · Prototype scoring · Page 3 of 8
Every one of Marion County's 253 census tracts, scored on five housing-market indicators from two federal sources. Type an address and see what the abatement schedule would be there.
Click any tract, or type a Marion County street address. The lookup uses the Census Bureau's public geocoder and sends nothing to me.
Reinvestment tracts
6775,913 one-to-four family homes
Growth tracts
113146,625 homes
Strong Market tracts
71106,226 homes
Not scored
2Fewer than 100 homes, or too little data
Home counts are the FFIEC's tract estimates of one-to-four family homes, carried on 2024 mortgage-disclosure records. Download the full scoring table as a CSV.
The Assessor's records for all 318,167 residential parcels, cut by prototype zone. The weakest tracts are not owned by out-of-state speculators. They are owned, four houses in ten, by someone who does not live there, and three of those four have an Indiana address.
| Houses, 1–3 family | Count | Out-of-state | Absentee | Absentee, Indiana address | Entity-owned | Vacant lots | Lots out-of-state |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reinvestment tracts | 57,714 | 10.3% | 42.8% | 32.6% | 23.2% | 5,420 | 5.6% |
| Growth tracts | 114,538 | 7.0% | 24.4% | 17.4% | 15.4% | 7,722 | 4.3% |
| Strong Market tracts | 102,064 | 7.2% | 16.3% | 9.1% | 12.1% | 6,147 | 5.6% |
| Marion County | 274,320 | 7.7% | 25.2% | 17.5% | 15.8% | 19,291 | 5.1% |
Absentee: owner's tax mailing address is not the property. Entity: LLC, corporation, trust or similar owner of record. Use the "Color by" buttons above the map to see any of these by tract; the panel shows the largest entity owner in a tract when one holds five or more houses. Individuals are never named. What to do about it is on the accountability page.
Five indicators. For each one, a tract earns a point if it is on the strong side of the county median. Zero or one point is Reinvestment. Two or three is Growth. Four or five is Strong Market.
| Indicator | What is measured | Source | County median | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income | Tract median household income as a percent of the metro's ($79,852) | Census ACS 2020–2024, table B19013, tract and metro | 79.3% | Federal, final. Cincinnati uses the same measure. |
| Vacancy | Vacant housing units as a share of all housing units | Census ACS 2020–2024, table B25002 | 8.2% | Federal, final. Counts empty houses and apartments, not just empty lots. The Assessor's vacant-lot count is shown in the panel for context. |
| Mortgage activity | Home-purchase loans originated per 100 one-to-four family homes, averaged 2022 to 2024 | HMDA via the CFPB | 3.1 | Federal, final |
| Value change | Change in the median value of financed home purchases, 2019 to 2024 | HMDA property values | 55.2% | Proxy. Replace with Assessor assessed-value history. Missing where 2020 tract boundaries changed. |
| New construction | Share of housing units built in 2010 or later | Census ACS 2020–2024, table B25034 | 3.8% | Federal, final. City permit counts would sharpen it to the last five years. |
Tracts with fewer than 100 one-to-four family homes or fewer than 500 residents are hatched and not scored. Downtown, the airport and industrial tracts land here. A tract with fewer than three usable indicators is grey and also not scored.
One indicator is a stand-in: the Assessor's assessed-value history would replace financed-purchase values, and would also restore the 81 tracts where 2020 boundary changes leave that indicator blank. City permit counts would sharpen the new-construction measure from "since 2010" to the last five years. The point thresholds were set to match the schedule on the abatement page and would be calibrated with DMD. All five indicators now come from federal sources, three from the Census Bureau and two from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is the strongest answer available to anyone who says the map was drawn to favor a district.
Everything on this page was computed on September 6, 2026 from the sources named, the Census tables through the Bureau's data API. The scoring code is short and I will share it with anyone who asks.
Even as a prototype, the pattern is legible. Of the 67 Reinvestment tracts, 29 are in Center Township and 14 are in Wayne Township on the west side, with the rest scattered through the near north side of Washington Township and the older parts of Warren, Lawrence and Perry. Warren Township, where I live, splits 4 Reinvestment, 11 Growth and 11 Strong Market, which is the tiering working as intended: the older neighborhoods west of Shadeland score differently from the subdivisions east of German Church. The Strong Market tracts sit in Pike, Franklin and the northern half of the county, where new homes get built without help.
That is the argument for the tiering in one map. The strongest incentive goes to roughly 76,000 one-to-four family homes' worth of neighborhood where almost nothing new gets built, the middle tier covers about 147,000, and the 106,000 homes in Strong Market tracts get nothing automatic. It is fiscally responsible precisely because it gives nothing where nothing is needed.
The most useful thing a partner can do with this page is break it. If a tract is scored in a way that anyone who works there knows is wrong, that is a data problem I want to find now, not in a hearing.
What this means for you
Pick who you are in the bar at the top and this section changes.
Pick the tracts where you already own lots or have looked at land, and check the prototype zone. If the schedule would change your decision about which lot to build on first, tell me which tracts and why. That is the single most useful thing a builder can give me.
Try the address lookup on three listings you have now. If the zone lines cut through a neighborhood in a way that would confuse a buyer, say so. I also want to know what the MLS would need to display an abatement the way it displays a homestead exemption today.
The Reinvestment tracts are mostly older platted lots of 30 to 40 feet. An owner-occupied duplex that fits one, and that a buyer at 100 percent of area median income can carry, is the product this program is built for. Show me one.
The mortgage-activity indicator comes straight from your industry's disclosure data. If a tract shows almost no purchase lending, I want to know whether that is demand, appraisal gaps, or something else, because the abatement only fixes one of those.
Overlay your pipeline. If your next twenty lots are in Reinvestment tracts, the ten-year abatement on the improvement value changes the math on every one of them, and I want your numbers before I claim that in public.
Type your address. If your tract is Reinvestment or Growth, a new or substantially rebuilt home on your block would carry the abatement, and the tax on your own existing home would not change. If your tract is Strong Market, nothing on this page affects you.
All five indicators come from outside the City-County Building, and the scoring rule is one sentence. That is deliberate. Before any adoption, DMD would replace the one remaining proxy, publish the method, and re-score every three years, which is what Cincinnati's ordinance requires of that city.