HOUSTON – If cash isn’t king in Texas home buying, then it’s at least the Crown Prince of the Texas home market.
According to a third quarter study by RealtyTrac, all-cash home purchases accounted for 32.4 percent of Texas home sales compared to 21.5 percent a year ago.
Houston led the nation, followed by San Antonio, as the nation’s biggest gainers in all-cash home purchases, RealtyTrac reported.
“Cash sales continue to be an important piece of the real estate puzzle right now, representing one in every three home sales nationwide in the third quarter of 2014 and helping to drive up U.S. median home prices 38 percent over the last two and half years,” said Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac.
“Institutional investors are still actively purchasing single family rentals, but continue to gravitate toward markets where lower-end inventory is still available,” Blomquist said. “Meanwhile there has been a recent surge in cash buyers in some markets, often coinciding with either a rebound in distressed sales attracting bargain-hunting cash buyers or a booming job market engendering a competitive bidding environment where cash is king.”
Among major metro areas, the biggest increases in the share of cash sales were in Houston (36.3 percent compared to 22.6 percent a year ago); San Antonio (30.9 percent compared with 21.1 percent a year ago), Boston (29.1 percent compared to 20.7 percent a year ago) and Dallas (30.0 percent compared to 21.5 percent a year ago).
Meanwhile all-cash sales accounted for 33.9 percent of all sales of single family homes and condos nationwide in the third quarter, down from 36.9 percent in the second quarter 2014, said Realty Trac, a national housing data firm based in Irvine, Calif.
Miami, which has a huge influx of South American buyers and a major condo boom, leads the nation with 59 percent cash buyers.