During the month of April, about one of three home purchases was paid for in cash, according to CoreLogic.
Although that seems like a steep percentage, it’s actually lower than the year before.
During April 2015, 34.4 percent of homes sold were cash sales. This year, however, that number dropped down to 31.6 percent, even declining 1.6 percentage points from the month before. Cash sales accounted for 33.9 percent of purchases from January to April this year.
Prior to the housing crisis, an average of 25 percent of home sales were cash sales, CoreLogic says.
The research firm forecasts that if cash sales continue to decline at the current rate, they will be back to pre-crisis numbers in 2018.
Corelogic
Cash sales peaked at the start of 2011, when 46.6 percent of sales were cash transactions.
Of the four types of sales (REO, resale, short sale, new construction) CoreLogic examined in its April report, REO sales had the highest number of cash sales, at a 56.7 percent share.
Out of all the resales in April, 31.3 percent were cash sales, and 28.6 percent of short sales were cash transactions. Historically, resales take the lion’s share of home sales (83 percent in April), and therefor have the biggest impact on cash sale data, according to CoreLogic.
Cash sales by market
In Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall, where cash sale transactions have been under a microscope since new regulations enacted in March, cash sales dropped 7.76 percent year-over-year, down to 49.6 percent.
The New York-Jersey City-White Plains market didn’t see a distinguishable decrease in cash sales share, dropping only 0.01 percent from the previous year and holding steady at 46.3 percent.
The cash sales share in April for Baltimore-Towson-Columbia dropped down to 27 percent — a 1.65 percent decline from the year before.
Washington D.C.’s cash sales only held a 15.5 percent share of the total sales, which is 0.77 percent less than April 2015.
The San Francisco metro area experienced 25.6 percent of home sales as cash transactions. Last year, this number was only a few basis points higher, at 26 percent. In Los Angeles, cash sales totaled 22.1 percent of total sales — a 1.37 percent decline from the year prior.
Houston saw a significant decline in cash sales from year-over-year, totaling 29 percent in April 2016, down 4.8 percent from 2015..
Chicago’s cash sales also inched closer to the aforementioned “normal” national average of 25 percent. The total cash sales in the Chicago metro area was 29.7 percent this year, a 4.6 drop percent year-over-year.
