IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
Cash sales of Inland Empire homes dropped slightly in November.
Overall, 25.6 percent of all home sales in Riverside and San Bernardino counties during that month were cash transactions, a year-over-year decline of 1.4 percent, according to data released Friday by CoreLogic Irvine.
That was well below the national rate of 36.4 percent.
Cash sales are significant because they’re a gauge of how many speculative buyers there are in a market. Speculative buyers buy a home to sell it rather than live in it, and they’re often accused by economists and housing officials of artificially driving up housing prices.
The year-over-year decrease in November was lowest drop of its kind locally in nearly three years. From January 2013 to October of last year, the Inland Empire averaged a monthly 2.7 percent year-over-year drop in cash sales.
