Inland Empire Home Cash Sales are Flat

Cash sales of Inland Empire homes were essentially unchanged in July, according to data released Wednesday.

Cash transactions accounted for 23.2 percent of all homes sold in Riverside and San Bernardino counties during that month, a year-over-year drop of 0.6 percent, Irvine-based CoreLogic reported.

That was below the national rate, which was 29.7 percent. That was a drop of nearly two percent compared with July 2015.

Housing officials watch cash sales data closely because it’s a sign of how many speculative buyers there are in the market. Speculative buyers purchase a house to sell it, not live in it, and they’re often accused of artificially driving up housing prices.

At the current trend, cash purchases nationwide should hit 25 percent – the rate before the housing market collapsed – by the middle of 2018

Nationwide, distressed sales accounted for 7.2 percent of all houses sold during July, and real estate-owned sales accounted for 4.3 percent. That was the lowest percentage of real estate-owned sales since July 2007, before the recession hit, CoreLogic reported.

Data for distressed and real estate-owned transactions in the Inland Empire was not available.