Buying Land in Floyd County, Indiana

Zoning: countywide, minus three municipalities

Floyd County's zoning ordinance, FCO-2006-06 (most recently updated November 21, 2023), applies to all county land except the planning jurisdictions of the City of New Albany and the incorporated towns of Georgetown and Greenville, plus any land owned by the state or federal government. The Floyd County Plan Commission -- which surveys county resources, adopts and maintains a comprehensive development plan, and reviews proposed commercial and residential developments -- administers and enforces the ordinance, meeting at the Pineview Government Center, Suite 104, in New Albany on the second Monday of each month at 7:00 p.m. A separate Board of Zoning Appeals handles variance requests. Before assuming the county ordinance governs a specific parcel, confirm it isn't actually inside New Albany's, Georgetown's, or Greenville's own planning jurisdiction instead, since each of those three has separate zoning authority.

The county's zoning code includes a Rural Residential (RR) district specifically intended for areas mixing residential and agricultural use -- allowing residential development compatible with ongoing farm operations and natural-resource protection nearby. That district matters here in particular: it's a direct acknowledgment that Floyd County's land use is genuinely in transition in parts of the county, rather than staying purely agricultural or purely urban.

Real subdivision pressure, parcel by parcel -- not a county-wide boom

Floyd County is the Indiana county closest to downtown Louisville, sitting directly across the Ohio River, and that proximity has produced genuine, documented rezone activity. Local news coverage has described Floyd County residents organizing against a proposed development near the I-65 Memphis Junction interchange, worried about traffic and losing the rural character of the area, and the Plan Commission's own 2025-2026 dockets show specific active applications -- including a January 2025 rezone request (Thieneman) and a March 2026 zoning map amendment (Ernstberger) -- moving through the county's public-hearing process.

It's worth being precise about the scale of this, though: Census Bureau estimates show Floyd County's population grew only modestly in recent years -- from 80,484 in the 2020 census to an estimated 81,931 as of July 2024, roughly 1.8% -- well below the 7.78% growth the county saw from 2010 to 2020. What's happening in Floyd County right now reads more like parcel-by-parcel rezone requests near specific attractive corridors (interstate access, proximity to Louisville) than a broad, county-wide population surge. If you're buying land near an area where a rezone application has been filed or discussed, checking the current docket with the Plan Commission directly is worth doing before you close, whether you're hoping a nearby rezone raises your land's value or worried it changes your rural surroundings.

Townships handle fire protection, not zoning

Floyd County has five townships -- Franklin, Georgetown, Greenville, Lafayette, and New Albany -- and, as everywhere in Indiana, none of them holds independent zoning authority; that power sits with the county Plan Commission and the three municipalities described above. What Floyd County townships do handle is fire protection: Lafayette and Greenville Townships merged their fire departments in 2024 to form the Highlander Fire Protection District, now covering roughly 60 square miles of southern Indiana. If you're buying rural land here, the township name on a parcel tells you which fire district serves it, not which zoning rules apply.

Septic, wells, and who to call

The Floyd County Health Department (1917 Bono Road, New Albany; (812) 948-4726, option 2 then option 1; environmental@floydcounty.in.gov) handles both septic-system and private-well permitting for the county under the statewide 410 IAC 6-8.3 rule, and it maintains a public, regularly updated list of licensed septic installers who have passed the department's installer test -- a straightforward way to confirm a contractor's standing before you hire one for new construction on raw land.