Real estate market becoming purvue for straight cash homeys

RealtyTrac® ... today released its December and Year-End 2013 U.S. Residential & Foreclosure Sales Report, which shows that ...

All-cash purchases accounted for 42.1 percent of all U.S. residential sales in December, up from a revised 38.1 percent in November, and up from 18.0 percent in December 2012.

States where all-cash sales accounted for more than 50 percent of all residential sales in December included Florida (62.5 percent), Wisconsin (59.8 percent), Alabama (55.7 percent), South Carolina (51.3 percent), and Georgia (51.3 percent).

For all of 2013, 29.1 percent of U.S. residential sales were all-cash purchases, but the percentage trended substantially higher in the second half of the year. The 29.1 percent in 2013 was up from 19.4 percent in 2012 and 20.6 percent in 2011.
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Two things are going on--the primary cause is that hedge funds have gotten into property investment in a big way, and they are paying cash. The secondary reason is that many buyers who are having to compete against the hedge funds for the same property, but have the cash to do so but would prefer to finance, are paying cash to close quicker (using cash on hand or 401-K loans). These buyers may or may not then do a cash-out refinance to replenish savings.

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RealtyTrac®, the nation’s leading source for comprehensive housing data, today released its Q1 2014 U.S. Institutional Investor & Cash Sales Report, which shows the share of all-cash sales reached a new high in the first quarter even as the share of institutional investor purchases dropped to the lowest level since the first quarter of 2012.

The report shows 42.7 percent of all U.S. residential property sales in the first quarter were all-cash purchases, up from 37.8 percent in the previous quarter and up from 19.1 percent in the first quarter of 2013 to the highest level since RealtyTrac began tracking all-cash purchases in the first quarter of 2011.
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