Cash deals drop to 46% of South Florida home sales

Cash purchases as a percentage of house and condo sales in tri-county South Florida slid to an eight-year low of 46 percent in the third quarter, according to a real estate research firm.

Irvine, California-based ATTOM Data Solutions said among all U.S. metro areas, only Raleigh, North Carolina, had a bigger percentage of all-cash home sales in the third quarter, 52 percent. Nationwide, cash sales of houses and condos accounted for 26 percent of the third-quarter total.

Irvine, California-based ATTOM reported that the 46 percent share of cash sales of South Florida homes in the third quarter was down from 52 percent in the same period last year and 56 percent in 2014.

Daren Blomquist, a vice president of ATTOM, told the Sun-Sentinel that the cash-sales percentage in South Florida peaked at 72 percent in the first quarter of 2011, then declined after the area’s real estate market recovery started in 2012, discouraging all-cash buyers as bargain-priced property became scarcer.

Blomquist also told the newspaper that some of the downward pressure on cash sales has come from Treasury Department regulations that require title insurance companies to disclose the identities of owners of companies that make all-cash property purchases in South Florida and other U.S. metropolitan areas. [Sun-Sentinel] — Mike Seemuth