Comparatively, in Butler County, new listings were down by 14% while sales dropped by 35.7%. Prices showed a smaller increase in Butler County, but still grew by 1%.
The national interest rates on 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages was at 6.7% entering into Oct. of this year, while the same rate was at 3.0% entering into October 2021 — a 122.6% increase over the course of 12 months.
This October showed only 532 completed sales of homes in Warren and Butler Counties combined, compared to 868 closed sales in October 2021, a 38.7% decrease year-over-year. Similarly, there were only 680 new residences listed in both counties combined this Oct., while last year boasted 824 new listings, which comes out to a 17.5% decrease.
Warren County Auditor Matt Nolan said there tends to be a 60-day delay between the actual sale of a property and the signals of that home’s sale, at least to his office. Nolan tracks conveyances, or, a $3 fee per $1,000 in value that the property sold for.
“That’s kind of how we measure how many properties are being sold and how much money is being generated by those properties,” Nolan said.
So far, the Warren County’s auditor office has yet to see negative changes to the conveyance fees it receives.
“We haven’t seen it in our numbers yet,” Nolan said. “You can’t read too much into that — it’s very big, broad data. But, if there’s a difference between ‘22 and ‘23, it’s only positive.”
Nolan said his office has actually seen a 10% increase in total conveyance fees from this October compared to last, and said the office has seen “almost the exact number of sales that we had this time last year,” before he again noted the 60-day delay in reports.
“There’s usually 60 days or so for them to get everything in to us, so we would see at the end of the year, the start of next year, we would start to see the decrease in our conveyance amounts,” Nolan said.
However, Nolan noted an obvious downturn in folks who are seeking to refinance mortgages in the county.
“You’d have to be out of your mind to refinance right now because, if you got a loan in the past 10 years, your rate was better than it is now, so nobody’s refinancing,” Nolan said. “That’s where we’re seeing a significant decrease in volume.”
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