Cash is not king in Washington’s housing market

WASHINGTON — The share of all-cash home sale deals in Washington remains the lowest in the nation among the 100 biggest cities, and the all-cash share continues to shrink.

Real estate firm CoreLogic Inc. says in October, just 15 percent of sales were all-cash deals, compared to 33.9 percent nationwide.

The share of all-cash deals in the Washington market was 1.5 percentage points lower than a year ago.

Nationally, all-cash transactions also continue to decline. Cash buyers peaked in January 2011, when they represented 46.6 percent of all home sales nationally.

Before the housing crisis, the cash sales share of total home sales averaged about 25 percent.

CoreLogic says at the current pace, the all-cash share of sales should return to those levels by mid-2018.

Cash buyers continue to flock to Florida.

In Miami, all-cash sales in October accounted for 51.6 percent of all sales, the highest in the nation, followed by 50.9 percent in West Palm Beach-Boca Raton-Delray Beach, Florida.

Jeff Clabaugh

Jeff Clabaugh has spent 20 years covering the Washington region's economy and financial markets for WTOP as part of a partnership with the Washington Business Journal, and officially joined the WTOP newsroom staff in January 2016.

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