Boomers Fuel Cash Real Estate Market Trend
Now more than ever, cash is king in real estate
WASHINGTON — One in three buyers of U.S. homes is paying cash, a record high number, according to data made available to McClatchy.
The trend is being driven by retiring baby boomers and rich investors, who unlike most first-time buyers can bypass tighter lending requirements to pay cash. They now rule the roost, composing record percentages of residential home sales.
It’s meant the field is closed off for conventional purchasers in some hot markets, but in others it’s meant forward momentum for the struggling housing sector.
All-cash sales as a percentage of residential real estate sales stood at 33 percent from January to March this year. That’s up from 31 percent for all of 2013 and 2011 and 29 percent for 2012. These are the highest percentages since the National Association of Realtors started collecting the data in 2008. Before that, it estimated that cash buyers historically represented less than 10 percent of all sales.
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Category: Articles, Retirement Planning
