Real Property
Real Estate Taxes:
Real Property Conveyance (Transfer) Fees:
Amounts Collected, by County, Calendar Year 2001
Ohio Revised Code Section 319.54(F)(3) establishes a
mandatory transfer fee on the conveyance of real property.
The fee is one dollar per thousand dollars of value of real
property transferred. In addition, Ohio Revised Code Section
322.02 allows the board of county commissioners of each
county to levy a permissive real property transfer fee of up
to three dollars per thousand dollars of value of real
property transferred. In simple terms, both the mandatory fee
and the permissive county fee (a maximum of 4 mills) apply to
the selling price of real estate at the time of sale. The
revenue from both the mandatory fee and the permissive fee is
deposited in the general fund of the county--none of the
revenue goes to the state.
There were five counties that did not submit calendar year
2001 data. Using prior year's collections, it is estimated
that conveyance fees generated $93.1 million ($35.8 million
mandatory fees and $57.2 million from the permissive fees) in
collections during 2001. The number of conveyances by county
on which the mandatory transfer fees were collected ranged
from 316 in Vinton County to 29,287 in Franklin County. The
total mandatory transfer fees collected by each county ranged
from $14,863 in Monroe County to $4.9 million in Franklin
County. The average mandatory transfer fee collected by each
county ranged from $32.31 in Monroe County to $233.44 in
Delaware County, with a statewide average of $123.44. (The
average total transfer fee,
including both mandatory and permissive fees, collected by
each county ranged from $38.67 in Morgan County to $773.49 in
Geauga County, with a statewide average of $320.53.) For the
73 counties having a permissive real property transfer fee in
effect in 2001, the total collected (both mandatory fee and
permissive fee) ranged from $31,472 in Noble County to $16.7
million in Cuyahoga County.
Ohio Revised Code Section 319.54(F)(3) exempts certain
conveyances from the mandatory transfer fee. During 2001, a
total of 230,939 (44.3 percent of the total) transfer fee
statements filed with the county auditors were exempted from
the fee. The lowest percentage exempted was in Warren County
with 28.3 percent exempted. Wyandot County, with 69.8
percent, had the highest percentage exempted.
Table PC-1 shows the revenues collected by each county from
both the mandatory transfer fee and the permissive real
property transfer fee. The data presented in the table were
compiled from a survey of county auditors conducted by the
Ohio Department of Taxation.