The percentage of home sales conducted in cash continued its trend back towards pre-crisis levels during the month of September, a new report from CoreLogic showed.
According to CoreLogic’s latest cash sales report, 32.5% of all home sales in the month of September were cash sales, a decrease of 3.4 percentage points from Sept. 2014, when the cash sales share was 35.9%.
September’s share of cash sales increased slightly over August’s total of cash sales, by a mere 0.2 percentage points, but CoreLogic notes in its report that cash sales typically increase in September, so a more apt comparison of the trend of cash sales is year-over-year, not month-over-month.
Considering that factor, the share of cash sales fell year-over-year in the month of September, continuing its downward trend towards what CoreLogic views as a normal amount of cash sales.
According to CoreLogic’s report, the cash sales share peaked in Jan. 2011 when cash transactions accounted for 46.6% of total home sales nationally.
Prior to the housing crisis, the cash sales share of total home sales averaged approximately 25%, CoreLogic notes in its report.
And if the cash sales share continues to fall at the same rate it did in Sep. 2015, the share should hit 25% by mid-2017.
According to CoreLogic’s report, real estate-owned sales had the largest cash sales share in September 2015 at 58.3%.
Resales had the next highest cash sales share at 32%, followed by short sales at 29.1% and newly constructed homes at 15.9%, CoreLogic noted.
According to CoreLogic, while the percentage of REO sales that were all-cash transactions remained high, REO transactions accounted for only 6.4% of all sales in September.
For comparison, in Jan. 2011 when the cash sales share was at its peak, REO sales represented 23.9% of total home sales.
Broken down by state, Alabama had the largest share of cash sales of any state at 48.2%, followed by West Virginia (46%), Florida (45.2%), New York (44.1%) and Kentucky (39.6%).
And for the nation’s largest metro areas, Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall, Fla. had the highest cash sales share at 50.8%, followed by West Palm Beach-Boca Raton-Delray Beach, Fla. (50.6%), Philadelphia, Pa. (48.9%), Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach-Deerfield Beach, Fla. (47.9%) and North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, Fla. (47.2%).
On the other end of the scale, Syracuse, N.Y. had the lowest cash sales share at 14.1%.
