IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
Cash sales accounted for 24.2 percent of all home sales in the Inland Empire during May, according to data released Thursday.
That was a 0.5 percent year-over-year drop, Irvine-based CoreLogic reported.
The Inland Empire was well below the national rate: cash sales accounted for 30 percent of all home sales nationwide during May.
During the first five months of this year, cash sales made up 33 percent of all U.S. sales, the slowest start to any year since 2008, when the recession kicked in.
Before that, cash sales were about 25 percent of all home sales. If the present trend continues, cash sales should return to that level by the middle of 2018.
Cash sales are considered significant, and are watched closely by people in the housing and real estate industries, because they’re considered an indication of how many speculative buyers there are in the market.
