Cash still dominates Miami housing market

Cash continues to be king in the Miami housing market, and that’s bad news for conventional homebuyers reliant on financing.

The abundance of cash buyers in Miami should limit opportunities to obtain standard 30-year mortgages this year, Miami Today reported. Rising interest rates are not helping either, especially when it comes to the refinancing market.

“The whole ‘refi’ boom has gone away in the past 12 months,” Chris Damian, a Coral Gables-based executive vice president and chief lending office at Gibraltar Private Bank & Trust, told the newspaper.

Earlier this month, the Mortgage Bankers Association reduced its national forecast for mortgage originations in 2014 by $57 billion to $1.1 trillion. It cited a drop in mortgage activity and surging interest rates for the revised projection. [Miami Today] — Eric Kalis