Cash sales of new and existing homes have fallen considerably since January 2011, when they accounted for 46.6% of total home sales, but they remain elevated compared with the pre-crisis years.
In March, all-cash sales represented about 33% of total home sales – down 2.8% compared with February and down 2.4% compared with March 2015 – according to CoreLogic.
For the first three months of 2016, cash sales represented an average of about 34.7% of all home sales – the lowest start to any year since 2008, according to a post on the CoreLogic Housing Insights blog.
Prior to the housing crisis, cash sales were about 25% of all sales.
“If the cash sales share continues to fall at the same rate it did in March 2016, the share should hit 25 percent by mid-2018,” writes Molly Boesel, senior economist at CoreLogic, in the post.
Of the all-cash sales recorded in March, about 57.2% were for bank-owned properties. Resales had the next highest cash sales share at 32.9%, followed by short sales at 30.6% and newly constructed homes at 14.4%.
Boesel notes that although the percentage of all-cash sales for real estate owned properties remains high, there are far fewer of these properties available for sale than there were a few years ago.
Alabama had the largest cash sales share of any state in March at 49.8%, followed by New York (47.5%), Florida (45.9%), Michigan (41.8%) and Indiana (41%).
A recent report from Black Knight Financial Services shows that all-cash sales are more prevalent for lower-priced properties than they are for higher-priced properties.
The firm’s Mortgage Monitor report finds that cash sales make up about 30% of purchases of homes in the top 20% of market value, yet they make up about 62% of purchases of homes in the lowest 20% of market value.