November Cash Home Sales Highest in Michigan, Alabama, Florida

In November of 2015, cash sales comprised 36.4% of all home sales, down from 37.1% in November of 2014, marking the 35th consecutive year-over-year monthly decline. Cash sales rose by 2.5 percentage points month over month.

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%.

November data were reported Friday by CoreLogic. The year-over-year decline is the smallest in nearly three years, well below the range of 1.4% to 5.1% drops. CoreLogic noted:

The elevated cash share for November was most likely related to the new federal mortgage rules that took effect in October 2015 (TRID) as some mortgage deals were delayed while the industry adjusted to the new mortgage rules. These delays are not expected to carry forward in future months.

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The five states where cash sales were highest in October were Michigan (53.4%), Alabama (51.4%), Florida (50.2%), Kentucky (49.1%) and New York (47.0%). Sales include new construction, resales, real-estate owned (REO) and short sales, and the data were reported Thursday by CoreLogic.

Cash sales for REO properties accounted for 63.2% of all cash sales, while cash sales for resales and short sales accounted for about 35.7% and 34.3%, respectively. All-cash sales of new homes came in at 16.7% of all new home sales.

As a percentage of all sales, REOs accounted for 8.7% of total November real-estate sales. In January 2011 REO sales accounted for nearly 24% of all sales.

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

• Detroit, Mich., 61.5%
• West Palm Beach-Boca Raton-Delray Beach, Fla., 53.4%
• Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall, Fla., 52.5%
• Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach-Deerfield Beach, Fla., 50.4%
• North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, Fla., 50.1%

The metro area with the lowest percentage of cash sales was Syracuse, N.Y., with a cash sales share of 13.1% of all sales.