City guides / Columbus
Endcap Design is a web design agency that designs and builds websites for businesses, with the branding and marketing to match, and works remotely with clients outside Southern California. This guide collects the business numbers, building activity, and Ohio rules we would look at before designing a site for a business in Columbus or elsewhere in the metro, including Newark, Dublin, Delaware, and Grove City.
Updated October 2026 with building permits through August 2026, from U.S. Census Bureau data. Sources are listed at the end of this page.
Endcap is based in Orange County, California, and works remotely with clients outside Southern California by video call, phone, and email.
The market
The figures that shape who a Columbus website is for and what it needs to do. Each figure is the most recent Census release in this guide’s data, with its year shown.
2,242,028
residents in the metro
Census population estimate, July 2025
+4.7%
population change since 2020
April 2020 to July 2025; the US grew 3.1%
46,419
business locations with employees
County Business Patterns 2023
2,487
real estate businesses
NAICS 531, 2023
494
property management companies
Residential and nonresidential, 2023
8,906
new housing units permitted
January through August 2026
$82,938
median household income
American Community Survey 2024
38%
of households rent their home
332,895 renter households
Business mix
Restaurants and bars are the most concentrated of these businesses in the Columbus metro: 201 for every 100,000 residents, and their share of local businesses is 1.14 times the national share. Property management companies follow at 1.13 times the national share. Builders and developers are less common here than nationally, at 0.75 times the national share.
The chart compares each sector’s share of Columbus-area business locations with its share nationally (a location quotient). 1.00× matches the US; higher means the sector is more concentrated here. County Business Patterns 2023.
Building activity
New buildings mean new properties to lease and new businesses to open. Census Building Permits Survey, August 2026.
Builders in the Columbus metro were authorized to build 8,906 new housing units from January through August 2026, 24% fewer than the 11,656 in the same months of 2025.
53% of those units are in buildings with five or more homes, against 32% nationally.
That is an apartment-heavy pipeline. Each new community needs a leasing website, usually before construction finishes, and the developer often needs a project site for investors and the city as well.
What this means for your site
What we would plan into a Columbus website, based on the numbers above.
Talk through your site38% of households here rent, against 35% nationally. Property management and apartment sites should put available rentals, the application, and the resident portal at the top of the homepage on phones.
53% of new homes permitted this year are in buildings of five or more units. Pre-leasing websites need to be live months before the first move-in.
Brokerage websites in Ohio carry specific disclosure requirements (R.C. 4735.16; Ohio Adm. Code 1301:5-1-02; Ohio Adm. Code 1301:5-1-21). We build them into the footer and listing templates, so every page that advertises a property has them.
Every site we build follows WCAG 2.2 AA practice: readable contrast, keyboard navigation, labeled forms, and text alternatives for images. Federal ADA website lawsuits run into the thousands each year, most of them filed in New York, Florida, and Illinois.
Ohio rules
State rules that change what goes on a business or real estate website in Ohio, checked against official sources as of October 9, 2026. This is general information, not legal advice; your counsel owns the final wording.
Worth knowing Ohio brokerage websites must show the brokerage name on every viewable page and disclose the date the site was last updated, under Ohio Adm. Code 1301:5-1-02.
Privacy
Ohio has not enacted a comprehensive consumer data privacy law as of October 9, 2026. This reflects published state privacy-law trackers. Privacy laws in other states, and federal rules, can still apply when a site collects data from their residents.
Real estate advertising
Ohio requires real estate advertising to identify the licensee by name and to show the name of the brokerage in at least equal prominence with the salesperson's name. Brokerage websites and other Internet advertising must show the brokerage name on every viewable web page and must disclose the date the site was last updated.
Accessibility
Title III of the ADA covers businesses open to the public, but the Department of Justice has no regulation that sets a technical standard for private business websites. DOJ's web guidance says businesses have flexibility in how they make their websites accessible and points to WCAG as a helpful existing technical standard. Federal appeals courts have not agreed on when a website is covered, so a website's legal status can depend on where a lawsuit is filed and whether the site is connected to a physical location. Ohio has no separate website accessibility statute for private businesses in our research, so WCAG 2.2 AA is the practical target.
What we design
Ordered by how concentrated each kind of business is in the Columbus metro. We design for every kind of business.
Portfolio
Websites and identities we have designed and built for our clients. See all of our work.
Client words
We own ten homes at Casa De Laguna and were still sending people to a site built in 2013. Noah pulled the photos and details out of the old site, designed a logo from the rooflines and the pond, and put the community, the homes and current availability in one place. It’s the first time the website has looked like the place we actually rent.
“Highly recommend. Great work.”
The Census Bureau counted 2,487 real estate business locations with employees in the Columbus metro in 2023, including 932 offices of agents and brokers and 494 property management companies.
From January through August 2026, the Columbus metro permitted 8,906 new housing units, 24% fewer than a year earlier, according to the Census Building Permits Survey.
Ohio has not enacted a comprehensive consumer data privacy law as of October 9, 2026. Privacy laws in other states can still apply when a website collects data from their residents.
Ohio requires real estate advertising to identify the licensee by name and to show the name of the brokerage in at least equal prominence with the salesperson's name. Brokerage websites and other Internet advertising must show the brokerage name on every viewable web page and must disclose the date the site was last updated. (R.C. 4735.16 (eff. Sept. 29, 2011); Ohio Adm. Code 1301:5-1-02 (eff. Feb. 10, 2019); Ohio Adm. Code 1301:5-1-21 (eff. July 1, 2021))
Yes. Endcap is based in Orange County, California, and works remotely with clients outside Southern California by video call, phone, and email. You review the design and the working site online before launch.
We quote each project after a short conversation, once we know the pages, content, and features it needs. The proposal lists the deliverables, schedule, and price, and we agree on it before work begins.
Most websites take two to four weeks once the content is ready. The proposal confirms the schedule.
Nearby city guides
National rankings: where the US is building, property managers by metro, brokerages by metro, and commercial landlords by metro.
Sources
Figures are for the metropolitan statistical area unless noted. Business counts cover locations with paid employees. Data refreshed 2026-10-10.
Contact Endcap
A website, a brand, or a complete set of materials.
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Start a project or call or text Noah at (425) 233-0769
