Source: SiLive.com —
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — At the height of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, hordes of frenzied home buyers snapped up real estate at an alarming rate, swooping in with astounding all-cash offers to secure property in a rather unconventional way.
But according to some new real estate data and recent reporting, sidestepping a mortgage is no longer an offbeat move: Last year, nearly a third of U.S. homes were purchased with cash. Which begs the question — how are such exorbitant purchases possible?
“Only the wealthy are essentially buying homes,” Lawrence Yun, chief economist at National Association of Realtors, recently told the Wall Street Journal, responding to data provided by the realty company Redfin, which indicates a sudden rise in all-cash sales. “If this trend was to continue, that means something fundamentally is wrong with society.”
The trend isn’t happening equally across the country, but more accurately in pockets, the Journal reported. In Washington, D.C., and its immediate surroundings, almost a fifth of homes purchased in 2022 were bought with cash. Forty miles north, in Frederick, Md., that rate nearly doubled. A little closer to home, in Nassau and Suffolk counties, almost half of all homes purchased since 2020 were bought in cash. Most likely because cash-rich city-dwellers living in condos and apartments suddenly wanted more.
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