If you punched "Westerville home values" into Google last week, you got three different answers. Redfin said the median sale price was $402,000 and down 10.7 percent year over year. Zillow's Home Value Index said the average Westerville home is worth $411,803 and up 1.7 percent. The Columbus REALTORS MLS-based report inside the Westerville City School District said the median sale price was $449,900 and up 16.1 percent.
Three numbers. Three different directions. All published by credible sources in the same window. If you are getting ready to sell, you are probably wondering which one is right.
The straight answer is all of them are. They are measuring different things. The longer answer is that only one of the three belongs in a serious pricing conversation, and none of them belongs on your listing. Here is how to read them without getting talked into the wrong price.
The three numbers, explained
Redfin's number is a median sale price from its MLS feed for the city of Westerville for a single month. It is the actual middle transaction. It captures real closings. It also lags by a couple of months, because closing dates are when the data records, not contract dates. A January closing was a home that went under contract in November or December. That number is real, but it tells you what was happening over the holidays, not what is happening now.
Zillow's number is an index, not a sale price. The Zillow Home Value Index runs a statistical model across every home in Westerville, sold or not, and produces a smoothed monthly estimate. It is the equivalent of taking everyone's house value, including yours and the one across the street that has not sold in fourteen years, averaging them, and smoothing the curve. It is good for direction, not for pricing a single listing.
The Columbus REALTORS MLS report is the median sale price for homes that closed inside the Westerville City School District boundary that month. That number is current, real, and tied to the boundary that drives the most buyer demand. It is the closest thing to the truth on the ground for what Westerville homes are actually trading at right now.
Different sources. Different methodologies. Different time windows. Different boundaries. That is why the numbers do not match.
Why three numbers point three different directions
How can one source say down, one say up a little, and one say up a lot, all in the same window?
Time window. A single month against the same month last year is a snapshot, not a trend. Last year's comp month may have been stronger because contracts had not yet adjusted to where rates ended up. The year-over-year delta on one month tells you almost nothing about the direction of the market.
Geography. Redfin counts the city of Westerville. Zillow's index covers a similar area but smooths across years. The Columbus REALTORS report uses the Westerville City School District boundary, which extends past city lines into pockets of Genoa Township and Blendon Township. School-district boundaries do not always follow the city line, so always confirm the assigned schools for a specific address.
Method. Sale-price medians are closings. Index values are model estimates. Two of these numbers measure what changed hands. One measures what a model thinks every home is worth, even the ones nobody listed.
Three different definitions of "Westerville" and "median" produce three different numbers. None of them are wrong. None of them are the same.
What each number is actually good for
The portal sale-price number is the one your buyer reads first. They are shopping on Redfin or Zillow because they are shoppers, not pricers. They see the median and they anchor there. When you list above it, they internally compare and ask why this home is priced over the Westerville median. Knowing what your buyer is anchored to is useful, even if it is not the number that should price your listing.
The Zillow index is the one your sphere asks you about at the cookout. Your neighbor saw their Zestimate, googled the city, and now wants your read on whether Westerville is up or down. The index answers the sphere question, and it is a fine sanity check on your own equity story when you are weighing a refinance or HELOC.
The MLS school-district number is the one that carries weight inside a negotiation. It comes from the same data the appraiser will use to comp your house. It is the closest match to what a buyer's agent sees when they pull recent solds inside the same boundary. It is the only one of the three that belongs in a serious pricing conversation.
Which one belongs on your listing
None of them, actually. That is the trap.
A median is a citywide or boundary-wide statistic. It does not know your street, your floor plan, your finishes, your lot size, your roof age, or whether your basement is finished. It does not know that the comp two doors down sold to a flipper at a discount, or that the comp four blocks away had a renovated kitchen.
The right number for your listing is a hand-picked set of three to five recent solds within a quarter mile of your home, same product type, same general condition, adjusted for the differences your house actually has. That set produces a tighter, narrower range than any of these three medians. It is the only number that survives an appraisal and the only one that should end up on your for-sale sign.
The median numbers are the conversation. The comp set is the price.
The trap I see people fall into
The temptation is to pick the median that flatters your story. If the highest number fits your plan to list aggressively, that is the one you tell your spouse about. If the lowest number fits a "just want to sell fast" mindset, you anchor there and talk yourself into pricing low.
Neither decision is grounded in your actual house. Both are grounded in confirmation bias. The right way to do this is to ignore the citywide medians until after you have built the comp set for your specific block, then use the medians only to sanity-check whether your block is trading above or below the broader market. If your comp set says your house is worth more than the citywide median, you are above market, and there should be a reason that holds up under buyer scrutiny. If it says less, you are below market, same logic.
How this changes your listing conversation
If you are interviewing agents this spring, ask which median they used to suggest your price. If the answer is one of the three above, keep interviewing. If the answer is a specific comp set with addresses you can drive by, you are talking to someone who is going to price your house, not your city.
I do not list a house on a citywide median. I list it on a tight comp set inside your boundary, pressure-tested against the three medians for context and against current active inventory for the buyer's mindset. The medians are useful. They are not the answer.
I am not telling you which way the Westerville market is going. The three sources do not even agree on the direction. What I can tell you is that picking the median that flatters your timeline is the fastest way to mis-price a Westerville home this year.
If you want a real read on what your home is worth right now, send me your address. I will pull the comps within a quarter mile, show you what each of the three medians says about your market, and tell you which one belongs in the conversation when an offer comes in. If you are weighing whether to sell first or buy first on a move-up, I broke that down in the 2026 decision tree, and there is more on the local market on my Westerville guide.
Adam Geuy at NextHome Experience. 937-239-2919.