Westchester County”™s mortgage tax revenue, after climbing to its highest level in five years in 2013, has dropped this year to its lowest first-quarter level in five years, said Westchester County Clerk Timothy C. Idoni.
The approximately $2.81 million in mortgage taxes collected by the county clerk”™s office from January through March was a 20 percent decrease from the first quarter of 2013, when the county took in approximately $3.5 million in taxes from mortgage transactions. It was the lowest first-quarter collection since 2009, when the county received approximately $2.62 million in mortgage taxes.
Mortgage tax revenue in the recent first quarter was highest in January, when the county collected $1,013,744. Revenue dipped to $899,047 in February and rose slightly again in March to $905,597. Revenue from mortgage deals was down each month compared with monthly collections at the start of 2013.
Idoni said county officials budgeted $19,826,409 in anticipated mortgage tax revenue in 2014, an approximately 17 percent increase from the $17 million the county collected from real estate loan deals in 2013. Idoni noted that this year”™s projected mortgage tax revenue is less than half of the approximately $39.8 million the county collected in 2005 as the real estate market peaked here.
“We are hopeful that the improvement we are seeing in our local real estate market will result in a steady increase in this important revenue source in the second half of the year,” Idoni said in a press release.
