Westchester County is on pace to come up well short of its projected 2014 mortgage tax revenues from residential and commercial property deals, according to County Clerk Tim Idoni.
Idoni said Tuesday that mortgage tax receipts in the first half of the year, totaling $6.1 million, were down 19 percent from 2013, when the county collected $7.5 million in the first half of the year and $16.9 million over the entire year. That figure was a post-recession high and $3.2 million, or 23 percent, more than the amount collected in 2012, according to Idoni.
The total projected revenue from mortgage tax this year is $19.8 million ”“ which in itself is less than half of the $39.8 collected in 2005 at the height of the real estate bubble, according to the clerk. These figures represent only the county portion of total taxes collected.
Idoni, whose office collects county taxes, said that mortgage taxes saw a spike in the latter halves of 2012 and 2013. “However, monthly revenues dropped at the end of 2013 and have not recovered,” he said.
Westchester collected about $889,000 and $905,000 in February and March, respectively, the lowest monthly totals in the first half of any year since 2009, when the county collected less than $900,000 every month but one. The low-water mark for first-half collections in recent years was slightly more than $681,000, in May 2009.
