March Cash Home Sales Tops in Alabama, New York

In March of 2016, cash sales comprised 33% of all home sales, down from 35.7% in March of 2015, and marking the 39th consecutive year-over-year monthly decline. Cash sales fell by 2.8 percentage points month over month in March.

Cash home sales reached a peak in January of 2011, when 46.6% of all home sales in the United States 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 December rate, the 25% rate should be achieved by mid-2018.

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

The five states where cash sales were highest in March were Alabama (49.8%), New York (47.5%), Florida (45.9%), Michigan (41.8%) and Indiana (41.0%). Sales include new construction, resales, real-estate owned (REO) and short sales.

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Cash sales for REO properties accounted for 57.2% of all cash sales, while cash sales for resales and short sales accounted for about 32.9% and 30.6%, respectively. All-cash sales of new homes came in at 14.4% of all new home sales in March.

As a percentage of all sales, REOs accounted for 6.8% of total March real-estate sales. In January 2011 REO sales accounted for nearly 24% of all sales.

Of the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas, the five Core-Based Statistical Areas with the greatest percentage of cash sales in March were:

• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — 55.7%
• West Palm Beach-Boca Raton-Delray Beach, Florida — 54.4%
• Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Florida — 52.6%
• North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, Florida — 51.6%
• Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall, Florida — 51.4%

The metro area with the lowest percentage of cash sales was Syracuse, New York, with a cash sales share of 11.7% of all sales.

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