CoreLogic: Cash sales fall in February

CORELOGIC SAID the cash sales share of home sales in the Providence-Warwick-Fall River metropolitan area fell to 22.7 percent in February. / COURTESY CORELOGIC
CORELOGIC SAID the cash sales share of home sales in the Providence-Warwick-Fall River metropolitan area fell to 22.7 percent in February. / COURTESY CORELOGIC

PROVIDENCE – Cash sales of homes fell 9.6 percentage points to 22.7 percent of all sales in the Providence-Warwick-Fall River metropolitan area in February compared with February 2015, CoreLogic said Thursday.

The cash sales share was lower than the 35.7 percent national rate, which also fell 2.5 percentage points over the year.

For the first two months of 2016, the cash sales share averaged 35.6 percent, the lowest start to any year since 2008, CoreLogic reported, noting that the cash sales share peaked in January 2011 when cash transactions accounted for 46.6 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 February 2016, the share should hit 25 percent by mid-2018, CoreLogic said.

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By sale type, real estate-owned sales had the largest cash sales share in February at 59.2 percent. Resales were next at 35.6 percent, followed by short sales at 32.6 percent and newly constructed homes at 15.2 percent.

The percentage of REO sales that were all-cash transactions remained high, but REO transactions accounted for only 7.8 percent of all sales in February. In January 2011, REO sales represented 23.9 percent of total home sales. Resales typically make up the majority of home sales (about 79 percent in February), making the biggest impact on the total cash sales share.
Alabama had the largest cash sales share of any state at 51.7 percent in February. Maryland had the lowest at 19 percent. Of the nation’s largest 100 core-based statistical areas measured by population, Philadelphia had the highest cash sales share at 54.5 percent, followed by Detroit (53.8 percent), West Palm Beach-Boca Raton-Delray Beach, Fla. (53.4 percent), Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall, Fla. (52.5 percent) and Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla. (51.8 percent). Syracuse, N.Y., had the lowest cash sales share at 11.5 percent.

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