Buying Land in Howard County, Indiana

Zoning: one joint Plan Commission for Kokomo and the county together

Howard County is unusual among Indiana's counties in that it doesn't split zoning authority between a county body and a separate municipal one for its largest city. Instead, the Kokomo-Howard County Plan Commission administers zoning and subdivision control for both the City of Kokomo and unincorporated Howard County under a long-running interlocal agreement -- a planning partnership with roots going back to a Kokomo-Howard County Administrative Committee formed in 1964. In practice, that means a buyer doesn't need to separately track down a city zoning department and a county one; the same commission, headquartered at 224 N. Main Street in Kokomo, handles both.

There's a related statutory wrinkle worth knowing about even though it's largely superseded by the joint arrangement: Indiana law lets a city in a county under 84,000 population extend its own zoning jurisdiction up to two miles beyond its corporate limits into unincorporated territory without needing county commissioners' consent. Howard County's most recent population estimate (83,831 as of 2023) sits close enough to that 84,000 threshold that it's a genuinely live question for the county's governance, even if the existing joint Plan Commission arrangement means it doesn't currently produce the kind of jurisdictional conflict it could in a county without one.

Kokomo's farmland annexation for industrial growth -- see our dedicated page

The most consequential recent land-use event in Howard County wasn't a zoning-code rewrite -- it was a large annexation. In February and March 2026, the Kokomo Common Council approved annexing roughly 746 to 750 acres of previously unincorporated Howard County farmland and rezoning it for High Intensity Industrial/Heavy Manufacturing use, with landowners including the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (more than 220 acres), a private developer buying more than 400 additional acres, and Samsung SDI. The stated goal is attracting electric-vehicle suppliers to complement the StarPlus Energy battery-manufacturing plants -- Stellantis and Samsung SDI's joint venture, which has committed well over $5 billion combined across two battery facilities in Kokomo. See our dedicated zoning topic page for Howard County for the full annexation timeline and what it means for land nearby.

No specific end-user has been publicly identified for the newly annexed acreage as of this research pass, and residents raised concern during the public process that the rezoning could eventually accommodate a data center rather than the EV-supplier use being promoted -- worth watching if you own or are considering land adjacent to the annexed area.

Manufacturing as the backbone of the county economy

Beyond the annexation itself, Stellantis's existing Kokomo operations (transmission, casting, and engine plants) have seen continued investment -- reporting describes more than $100 million and 100-plus new jobs tied to a new four-cylinder engine program, alongside a separate $250 million U.S. Department of Energy grant to help convert part of a Kokomo transmission plant to produce electric drive modules. Regional economic forecasting expects Howard County's employment growth, which had lagged neighboring counties, to improve in 2025 and 2026 as these investments and the StarPlus battery plants ramp up. For a land buyer, that translates into steady demand for both industrial-zoned land near Kokomo and, secondarily, residential land as the workforce grows -- though this research pass did not find a specific new residential subdivision publicly tied to this growth the way some other Indiana counties' single-employer stories have produced.

Septic and other departments to know

For a parcel outside Kokomo's sewer service area, the Howard County Health Department's Bureau of Environmental Health (120 E. Mulberry, Room 210, Kokomo) handles septic permitting -- but only for an already-approved subdivision lot or a legal lot of record, so confirm a raw parcel's lot status before assuming a septic permit is available at all. The process requires a certified soil scientist's evaluation, after which the department issues minimum system specifications for the homeowner or contractor to build to.

Given the annexation and industrial rezoning activity described above, a buyer anywhere near Kokomo's growing edge -- not just adjacent to the specific newly-annexed acreage -- should confirm current zoning jurisdiction and check for any pending annexation petition before relying on an older plat or listing description.