Cash Sales Share Continues Slide; still 10+ points Higher than Pre-Crash

While the share of residential realrnestate transactions that are all cash continues to decline they remain wellrnabove historic levels CoreLogic said on Wednesday.  In May 34.4 percent of home purchases were inrncash, down from 36.9 percent in April and 37.4 percent in May 2013.  The May share was the lowest inn fourrnyears.   Before the housing crisis such sales typicallyrnaccounted for 25 percent of the market.</p

CoreLogic said that sharerncomparisons should be made on a year-over-year basis because of the seasonalrnnature of the housing market.  Thatrnmeasure has fallen every month since January 2013.  The peak share of cash sales, 46.2 percent ofrnthe total, occurred in January 2011.</p

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Sales of lender-owned property (REO)rncommanded the largest share of cash sales, 55.5 percent in May, followed byrnre-sales at 34 percent, short sales (32.8 percent) and newly constructed homesrn(16.8 percent.)  While REO sales made uprn24 percent of all home sales when cash sales peaked in January 2011, they madernup only 8.2 percent of the total in May. rnThus the high percentage of REO cash sales had little impact on overallrnnumbers.   </p

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Florida had the largest share of cashrnsales of any state at 53.4 percent, followed by New York (50.3 percent),rnAlabama (48.9 percent), West Virginia (48.3 percent) and South Dakota (46.3rnpercent). Of the nation’s largest 100 Core Based Statistical Areas (CBSAs)rnmeasured by population, Nassau County-Suffolk County, N.Y. had the highestrnshare of cash sales at 66.4 percent, followed by Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla.rn(64 percent), West Palm Beach-Boca Raton-Delray Beach, Fla. (62.8 percent),rnNorth Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, Fla. (62.7 percent) andrnDetroit-Livonia-Dearborn, Mich.(61.1 percent).

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