Cash sales 33% of home sales in April in Prov. metro

CASH SALES accounted for 35.6 percent of total home sales in Rhode Island in April, according to CoreLogic. / COURTESY CORELOGIC
CASH SALES accounted for 35.6 percent of total home sales in Rhode Island in April, according to CoreLogic. / COURTESY CORELOGIC

PROVIDENCE – Cash sales accounted for nearly 33 percent of total home sales in the Providence-Warwick metropolitan area in April, an increase of 3.3 percentage points compared with last year, according to CoreLogic.
The cash sales share in Providence-Warwick was lower than the 33.7 percent national rate and Rhode Island’s overall rate of 35.6 percent, CoreLogic said. Rhode Island’s cash sales share increased 3.5 percentage points year over year.
Nationally, the year-over-year share has fallen each month since January 2013, making April 2015 the 28th consecutive month of declines.
The cash sales share peak occurred in January 2011 when cash transactions accounted for 46.5 percent of total home sales nationally. Before the housing crisis, the cash sales share of total home sales averaged approximately 25 percent. If the cash sales share continues to fall at the same rate it did in April 2015, the share should hit 25 percent by mid-2017, CoreLogic said.
Nationally, real estate-owned (REO) sales had the largest cash sales share in April 2015 at 56.6 percent and was the only sales category to see a year-over-year increase in the cash sales share.
Resales had the next highest cash share at 33.3 percent, followed by short sales at 30.4 percent and newly constructed homes at 15.3 percent.
While the percentage of REO sales that were all-cash transactions remained high, REO transactions made up only 7.4 percent of all sales in April 2015. In January 2011, when the cash sales share was at its peak, REO sales made up 23.9 percent of total home sales. Resales, according to CoreLogic, make up the majority of home sales – about 81 percent in April – and, as a result, have the biggest impact on the total cash sales share.
Florida had the largest cash sales share of any state at 51.4 percent, followed by Alabama (48.5 percent), West Virginia (48.3 percent), New York (45.4 percent) and Kentucky (41.4 percent).
Of the nation’s largest 100 core-based statistical areas measured by population, West Palm Beach-Boca Raton-Delray Beach, Fla. had the highest share of cash sales at 59.1 percent, followed by North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, Fla. (58.5 percent), Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla. (58.1 percent), Detroit-Dearborn-Livonia, Mich. (58.0 percent) and Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach-Deerfield Beach, Fla. (56.9 percent). Syracuse, N.Y. had the lowest cash sales share at 11 percent.

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