IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
Cash sales accounted for 29.9 percent of all home sales in the Inland Empire in January, a three-percent increase year-over-year, according to data released this week.
That was below the national rate – 36.5 percent- for the first month of the year, Irvine-based CoreLogic reported.
Nationwide, cash sales peaked in January 2011, when they accounted for 46.6 percent of all home sales. Before the housing crisis hit in 2008, cash sales averaged about 25 percent of total U.S. home sales, according to CoreLogic.
Cash sales are considered an indication of how many speculative buyers – someone who buys a house to resell it rather than live in it – are operating in a market. Speculative buyers are often accused by economists and housing industry officials of artificially driving up housing prices.
