Register: Property transactions down a third

The conventional wisdom that says High Country real estate is immune to the effects of a national recession might now be unconventional, if not totally wrong.

Watauga County Register of Deeds JoAnn Townsend said property transactions appear to be down about a third from the same period a year ago.

Townsend said she’d been informally tracking transactions as the economy slowed, though the deeds office doesn’t track whether a property is undeveloped, commercial, residential or agricultural when it is sold or transferred.

“Based on deed stamp revenue, we’re down about 30 percent from this same time period last year,” she said. “We actually saw a slowdown in (deeds) recording in the last quarter of 2007.”

Revenue stamps are based on $2 per $1,000 of a property’s purchase price. Townsend’s office compiles annual reports during budget preparation each fiscal year, and the money is transferred to the county finance office monthly, with half the revenues going to the state.

“What we’re seeing is some movement in commercial property,” Townsend said. “But the drop seems to be across the board, because we have no idea of what is sitting on the property. There are still some higher-end transactions, so I believe those tend to be commercial.”

The county may be preparing to make departmental cuts if property-tax collections remain slow. Finance officer Doris Isaacs said the administration is waiting to get collection data through December before making any decisions.

The county’s portion of sales-tax revenue also comes in a couple of months after it is paid to the state, making it a little challenging to predict the short-term budget outlook, Isaacs said.

Isaacs said generally the county has withstood previous economic downturns. She said while sales taxes might have been lower, other economic indicators