All-in cost first, always. Estimate only — not a loan quote or pre-approval.
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Tell us your income and savings instead, and we'll work out the max home price and a qualification signal for Ohio.
How much house can I afford in Ohio? →Ohio Housing Finance Agency's 30-year fixed-rate FHA, VA, USDA-RD, or conventional first mortgage, available to first-time homebuyers statewide (first-time requirement waived for veterans and buyers purchasing in an OHFA-designated target area, or under the Next Home non-first-time-buyer variant); subject to county-specific income and purchase-price limits.
Forgivable down payment and closing cost assistance of 3% of the purchase price for conventional loans or 3.5% for government loans (FHA/VA/USDA); forgiven after 7 years of continued ownership/occupancy, fully repayable if the home is sold before then. Must be paired with an OHFA first mortgage.
Fewer listings, fewer buyers, and sellers who have a reason to be on the market in December. Here is what a winter discount is actually worth on a $400,000 house — in monthly payment, in lifetime interest, and in the seller concessions a quiet market makes possible — and the three ways a winter purchase goes wrong.
Ohio's transfer tax on a median $245,500 home is $246 — and the seller usually pays it. Here's where your Ohio closing money actually goes instead.
The operational guide to buying property with a partner, friend, sibling, or parent — credit and DTI mechanics, title vesting, a clause-by-clause co-ownership agreement, and how the exit actually works.
A month-by-month plan for the year before you buy: what to do in each phase, what never to touch, how to document every dollar, and how to survive closing day.
Ohio guide
Most state closing-cost articles open with a scary transfer tax. Ohio's is $246.
That's the whole state-level bill on the $245,500 median home price. Ohio's transfer tax is a conveyance fee set at $1.00 per $1,000 of value — 0.1% — one of the smallest deed taxes in the country. On a $350,000 purchase it's $350. Not $3,500.
There's a catch, and it's small. Counties may add a permissive real property transfer tax of up to $0.30 per $100 of value on top of the mandatory state fee. That's 0.3%, so a county levying the maximum brings the combined rate to about 0.4% — four times the state rate, which sounds alarming until you multiply: 0.4% of $245,500 is $982. The rate genuinely varies by county line — worth one phone call, not a renegotiated offer.
Then the part that matters most to buyers: in Ohio the conveyance fee is customarily paid by the seller. The single line item that dominates closing costs in states like New York or Pennsylvania is one a typical Ohio buyer never funds.
Which means the interesting question here isn't the transfer tax. It's everything else — lender charges, title work, prepaids — set by your lender and your contract, not Columbus. Our line-by-line breakdown of every closing cost is the companion to this page.
A note before you start: this is general education, not financial, legal, or tax advice. Every figure below is a statewide number drawn from CalculatorByState's sourced dataset, and your county, lender, title company, and purchase contract will all move the total. Ohio's permissive county transfer tax in particular is set county by county, so the only combined rate that matters is the one for the county you're buying in. Your Loan Estimate and Closing Disclosure are the authoritative documents. Use this to sanity-check them, not to replace them.
Read the full Ohio guide →9 min read · Updated 2026-08-24