A recent report by information provider CoreLogic has revealed that cash sales accounted for 36.5% of total property purchases in America during January.
This figure is unchanged since the same time last year, but significantly up since prior to the housing crisis when cash purchases accounted for around 25% of the housing market.
The amount of cash buyers actually peaked in January 2011 when cash transactions accounted for 46.6% of total home sales within the USA.
Real-estate owned (REO) – whereby the property is owned by a lender (such as a bank) – property saw the largest share of cash buyers this January at 61.2%, followed by resales at 36.5% and new-build homes at 17.7%.
CoreLogic pointed out that, while the percentage of REO sales within the all-cash category remained high, REO transactions have declined since peaking in January 2011.
Of all the distressed sales (whereby the owner is in default on the mortgage) in the USA, REO sales made up 5.9% and short sales (when the net proceeds from selling the property will fall short of the debts secured against it) made up 1.1%.
The total distressed sales share of 7% was 4.6 percentage points below the January 2016 share, and was the lowest distressed sales share for any month since September 2007.
All but eight states throughout the US recorded lower distressed sales shares in January 2017 compared with a year earlier.
