U.S. Cash Sales Down, Short Sales Up

RealtyTrac released its first-ever U.S. Residential Sales Report, finding that all-cash purchases made up 30 percent of all sales in June, down from 31 percent of all sales in the previous month and a year ago.

A number of Florida metro areas had a high percentage of cash sales, including Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla. (70 percent), Miami (64 percent), Sarasota, Fla. (59 percent) and Tampa (58 percent). Las Vegas (62 percent) and Detroit (56 percent) also recorded a high percentage of cash sales.

Institutional investor purchases (sales to non-lending entities that purchased at least 10 properties in the last 12 months) accounted for 9 percent of all U.S. residential sales in June. Florida ranked No. 6 nationally with 12 percent of sales going to institutional investors. Top states include Georgia (23 percent), Nevada (16 percent), Arizona (15 percent), Oklahoma (13 percent) and North Carolina (12 percent).

Sales of bank-owned properties (REO) accounted for 9 percent of all residential sales in June, down from 10 percent in May 2013 and on par with a year ago.

Short sales accounted for 14 percent of all residential U.S. sales in June, according to RealtyTrac, with Florida No. 2 nationally with 29 percent of all sales short sales. Other high short-sale states include Nevada (30 percent), Maryland (21 percent), Tennessee (19 percent) and Arizona (19 percent).

“The U.S. housing market is slowly but surely moving toward a more normalized and sustainable pattern after a flurry of institutional and cash buyers flocked to residential real estate last year, pushing up prices and picking clean the best inventory available in many areas,” says Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac.

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