In October of 2016, cash sales comprised 31.8% of all home sales, down from 34.7% in October of 2015, marking the 46th consecutive year-over-year monthly decline. Cash sales rose by 0.1 percentage points month-over-month.

Cash home sales reached a peak in January of 2011 when 46.6% of all home sales in the U.S. were sold for cash. That peak was nearly double the pre-housing crisis average of around 25%. If cash sales continue to fall at the October rate, the 25% rate should be achieved by mid-2018.

October data was reported Wednesday by CoreLogic. For all of 2015, 33.9% of all home sales were cash transactions, the lowest total since 2008.

Cash sales for real-estate owned (REO) properties accounted for 59.4% of all cash sales, while cash sales for resales and short sales accounted for about 31.7% and 30.2%, respectively. All-cash sales of new homes came in at 15.5% of all new home sales in October. Alabama had the largest October cash sales share of any state at 47.5%, followed by New York (44.5%), Indiana (41.8%), Florida (41.5%) and Missouri (38.8%).

Sales of distressed properties accounted for 7.7% of all October home sales. The five states posting the largest share of distressed sales in September were:

• Maryland: 18.6%
• Connecticut: 18.3%
• Michigan: 17%
• New Jersey: 15.8%
• Illinois: 14.7%

As a percentage of all sales, REOs accounted for 5% of total October real-estate sales. In January 2011 REO sales accounted for nearly 24% of all sales. At their peak January 2009, distressed sales accounted for 32.4% of all REO sales. Prior to the housing crisis, the share of distressed sales traditionally held at around 2%.

The state with the lowest percentage of distressed sales was North Dakota, with 2.7%.

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