Revenue is up

A story in yesterday's Globe reported that state revenue collections are rebounding and show indications of improving even more next year. This news tends to corroborate other reports that the overall economy is improving.

To see if the same thing is happening locally, I've looked at the revenue we've collected here at the registry of deeds this year and have compared it to that collected last year. During 2008, we collected a total of $12,191,884 in recording fees, excise tax and surcharges. Through the end of November 2009, our total was only $11,203,505. Our December collections to date - $436,746 - suggest that we won't meet last year's total. The good news is that our month to month figures for this year have become quite positive. From January through May of 2009, each month showed substantial decreases in collections when compared to the same months in 2008. Since the beginning of July, however, that trend has reversed and we're seeing double digit percentage increases when compared to the same month last year. Overall, every income category but excise tax is up, suggesting that the volume of documents being recorded is increasing. Excise collections are substantially less - $6.3 million in 2008 vs $4.8 million in 2009 - which reflects diminishing property values since the excise tax is calculated based on the sales price of property.