More Than Half of Sales Remain All-Cash in Some Markets

The influence of cash sales on the residential real estaternmarket continued to decline in February with those sales accounting for 37.9rnpercent of total home sales.  This isrnstill a significant number, before the housing crisis such sales typically madernup a quarter of sales, but the percentage has fallen consistently on an annual basisrnfor 26 straight months from its 46.5 percent January 2011 peak.</p

The February figures reported by CoreLogic were down 2.7rnpercentage points from a year earlier and were 1 point lower than cash sales inrnJanuary.  CoreLogic says due to thernseasonality of the housing market comparisons should be made on an annualrnrather than a monthly basis.  The companyrnprojects that, at the current rate of decline, the cash sales share will returnrnto the pre-crisis level of 25 percent by mid-2018.</p

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Cash continues to be a major factor inrnsales of real estate-owned (REO) properties at 59.8 percent but those salesrnthemselves are shrinking, down to 9.7 percent in February, so have a dwindlingrneffect on the overall market.  Cashrnaccounted for 37.6 percent of resales, 34.3 percent of short sales, and 15.8rnpercent of newly constructed home sales.  </p

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More than half of home sales in Floridarn(54.6 percent) and Alabama (51.9 percent) were all cash.  Other states where cash sales continued to bernelevated included New York (48.4 percent), Indiana (47.8 percent) and Michiganrn(44.9 percent). Of the nation’s largest 100 Core Based Statistical Areasrn(CBSAs) measured by population, Detroit had the highest share of cash sales atrn60.5 percent, followed by Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla. (59.4 percent),rnMiami-Miami Beach (59.3 percent), Fort Lauderdale (58.5 percent) and West PalmrnBeach-Boca Raton (58.4 percent). The Washington D.C. metro area had the lowestrncash sales share at 16.9 percent.

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