Cash Still Buys Nearly One in Three U.S. Homes

All-cash purchases made up 31.4 percent of U.S. home sales from January through April 2026, down from 32.3 percent a year earlier, according to Realtor.com. Cash deals fell 11.2 percent, faster than the 8.5 percent drop in all sales, as Robb Report and other outlets framed a fading grip.

That 0.9-point move still leaves cash above the pre-pandemic cash-buying average of 28.6 percent from 2015 through 2019. The people stepping back look more like investors hunting starter homes than rich families paying outright.

Cash Buying Is Still Above the Old Normal

Realtor.com’s Aug. 18 study, built from deed records, put the early-2026 cash share of 31.4 percent only a tick below 31.6 percent for all of 2025 and 31.7 percent for 2024. Full-year 2023 sat at 33.2 percent, the highest reading in a decade in that series, after the cash share climbed from 27.5 percent in 2019 to 31.2 percent in 2022 and a recent peak near 34 percent in 2023.

Hannah Jones, a senior economist at Realtor.com, said in the research release that cash buyers are not disappearing, and that they are becoming less dominant as the market finds its footing. HousingWire and CNBC carried the same line from that release.

THE CASH SHARE SINCE THE LAST HOUSING CRASH

1. 2012: Cash buying peaks at 35.4 percent after the Great Recession, the high point in Realtor.com’s deed series back to 2001.
2. 2015 to 2019: The share averages 28.6 percent, with 2019 itself at 27.5 percent, the last full pre-pandemic year.
3. 2021: About 2 million homes sell for cash, the largest count in the firm’s history, as bidding wars and cheap money overlap.
4. 2023: The share hits a recent peak near 34 percent, then 33.2 percent for the full year, the highest in a decade.
5. 2024: About 1.4 million cash purchases, the lowest count since 2016, even though the share is still 31.7 percent.
6. January to April 2026: The share is 31.4 percent, 0.9 points under the same stretch of 2025.

The count fell harder than the share because overall sales were already thin. When fewer financed buyers show up, cash can look huge as a percentage even while cash closings themselves shrink. That is the plateau the “losing their grip” headlines are describing.

Investors Cut Starter-Home Purchases to a Decade Low

The faster drop in cash closings lines up with a pullback among the buyers who most often skip the bank. Redfin reported that U.S. investor purchases fell 6 percent year over year in the first quarter of 2026, the lowest first-quarter total since 2020. Investors still took 19 percent of homes that sold, down from 20 percent a year earlier.

The cut was sharpest where first-time buyers actually shop. Investor purchases of low-priced homes fell 10 percent from a year earlier, Redfin said, to the lowest first-quarter level in a decade. Mid-priced investor buys were down 6 percent. High-priced ones were down only 1 percent. Condo investor buys fell 8 percent, the weakest first quarter since 2015, as HOA fees and insurance ate into rents.

Nevada shows the same pattern in the cash data. Realtor.com found cash sales there fell about 28 percent while overall sales fell about 14 percent, which the firm read as cooling investor activity as margins narrowed. Idaho went the other way on volume: total sales grew about 6 percent while cash sales fell, a sign the pandemic wave of remote cash buyers is fading.

Tamara Mattox-Kabat, a Redfin Premier agent in Denver, said flippers and investors are scaling back and being much more strategic when they do buy. Large institutions, she added, are focusing more on building new homes than buying existing ones. Investors held 7.8 percent of U.S. listings in the first quarter, Redfin said, the smallest share in five years.

The National Association of Realtors’ July survey, which covers existing homes and is a different gauge from Realtor.com’s deeds, found individual investors or second-home buyers accounted for 14 percent of transactions, down from 20 percent a year earlier. That is a larger retreat than the 0.9-point shift in the national cash share, and it is the slice of the market that most often collides with people who need a loan.

Cheap Homes and Mansions Still Sell for Cash

Cash did not spread evenly across the price chart in early 2026. Realtor.com again found a U-shape: more than two-thirds of homes that sold for under $100,000 were paid in cash, more than 40 percent of homes over $1 million were cash, and a majority of homes priced at $2 million or more were cash. Credit gaps and small investors sit at the bottom. Wealth sits at the top.

Most of the market is in the middle, where mortgages still do the work. Homes priced between $200,000 and $750,000 accounted for 63.9 percent of all sales in the first four months of 2026. That bulk is what keeps the national cash share near 31 percent rather than the 40-plus percent readings at the tails.

CASH SHARE BY PRICE TIER, EARLY 2026

A financed buyer in that fat middle can compete again when listings sit and prices stall. They still lose, often, at the very cheap end, where a mortgage is hard to obtain, and at the very high end, where the other party may not need one.

Miami Leads as Seattle Stays a Mortgage Town

The map splits into wealth, retirees, and cheap inland cities on one side, and job-center metros with young borrowers on the other. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach led major metros at 43.2 percent cash, down just 0.3 points. Mississippi led the states at 47.2 percent, with a median sale price of $271,000. Montana (45.9 percent), New Mexico (43.8 percent), Missouri (42.0 percent), and Florida (41.3 percent) filled out the top five states.

Kansas City (38.9 percent), Houston (38.8 percent), San Antonio (38.7 percent), and St. Louis (37.5 percent) clustered just behind Miami. Realtor.com split those cities into two stories. Miami is older, richer, and heavy on second homes. Houston and San Antonio are Sun Belt markets where prices and sales have cooled, so cash buyers are holding up better than people who need a loan. Kansas City and St. Louis still have enough competition, with sales and prices up 3 to 4 percent, that cash is a way to win the house.

CASH SHARE IN 10 LARGE METROS, JAN. TO APRIL 2026

Pittsburgh posted the largest cash-share gain among major metros, up 6.8 points, and cash transaction counts there rose 22.6 percent even as total sales dipped slightly. San Francisco cash purchases rose 7.7 percent against about 4 percent overall sales growth in a market already averaging north of $1.1 million, which Realtor.com tied to AI-sector fundraising, IPOs, and stock pay. Redfin’s investor file showed the same Bay Area tilt: investor purchases in San Francisco rose 19 percent in the first quarter, with San Jose up 12 percent, while Detroit investors were down 35 percent and Orlando down 25 percent.

Seattle (16.4 percent), Washington, D.C. (18.2 percent), Denver (18.8 percent), Virginia Beach (20.0 percent), and San Jose (20.2 percent) had the lowest cash shares. Those are expensive job markets with younger buyers and deep lending networks. Washington state overall was at 18.7 percent. A Seattle software engineer and a Miami retiree are not in the same cash market, even if they live in the same country.

Why Sellers Still Want a Certain Close

Competition has cooled in many metros, which is the whole point of the “cash is fading” frame. Realtor.com says that is also why a cash offer still matters. Homes are sitting longer, and a deal that will not fail on the appraisal or the loan is worth more to a seller, not less.

Cash buyers aren’t disappearing; they’re simply becoming less dominant as the housing market finds its footing.

Hannah Jones, senior economist at Realtor.com, research release

Jones also said more inventory and moderating prices are giving financed buyers more chances to compete, and that cash’s biggest edge now is giving sellers confidence a deal will close quickly with fewer surprises. Opendoor, cited in the same Realtor.com report, said an all-cash Opendoor offer lets sellers close in 29 days on average, against a typical 60 to 85 days from listing to close nationally last year.

The National Association of Realtors said the median existing home sat 29 days in July, up from 28 days a month earlier and a year earlier. National median sale prices in the Realtor.com file were up just 0.2 percent year over year in early 2026, after 1.8 percent growth in 2025 and a 15.4 percent peak in 2021. Speed is no longer about beating six other offers. It is about not watching a contract die in underwriting.

Luxury Agents Are Seeing More Cash Deals

The high end is not following the national dip. Coldwell Banker’s Global Luxury 2026 Mid-Year Report, released July 14, surveyed Luxury Property Specialists in May and found almost two-thirds reported an increase in all-cash purchases among their clients, up from 51 percent who said the same in May 2025. In the full survey write-up, 33.3 percent saw no change and only 3.9 percent saw a decrease.

WHAT THE LUXURY SURVEY FOUND

• The cash call: Almost 63 percent of specialists saw a slight or significant rise in cash among luxury clients, up from 51 percent a year earlier.
• Who writes the check: Fifty-one percent said Baby Boomers were the group most often paying cash; Gen X move-up buyers and younger millennial first-time luxury buyers together were 33.4 percent.
• The split inside luxury: The top 5 percent of luxury deals took 65.6 percent of single-family dollar volume in the first five months of 2026, and more than a quarter of specialists called the wealth divide an active trend, up from 20.4 percent a year earlier.
• The land habit: Coldwell Banker described affluent buyers “landmaxxing,” buying larger parcels or neighboring homes for privacy, views, and multigenerational living, a theme Sotheby’s International Realty also flagged, with nearly one in five U.S. luxury purchases involving buyers who planned to live with extended family.

Jessica Lautz of the National Association of Realtors, quoted in that Coldwell Banker report, called the cash habit sticky. Before COVID, she said, 15 percent of cash purchases were from primary-residence repeat buyers; now about 30 percent pay cash. Ultra-wealthy buyers can ignore a 6 percent mortgage. The national share can fall a point and that group can still write more checks.

The Mortgage Window Is Already Narrowing

The opening for financed buyers in early 2026 was real, and it was rate-driven. Realtor.com said mortgage rates, though climbing later, were still below year-ago levels during the January-to-April window it measured, and that lower borrowing costs plus easier asking prices pulled some loan-dependent buyers back in. Freddie Mac’s weekly survey, as cited by NAR, put the average 30-year fixed rate at 6.54 percent in July, down from 6.72 percent a year earlier. By the week of Aug. 27, Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey printed 6.66 percent.

A separate NAR gauge of existing-home sales, released Aug. 11, found cash sales represented 26 percent of July transactions, up from 25 percent in June and down from 31 percent in July 2025. That survey is not the same as Realtor.com’s deed file, which includes new homes and a different method, so the two numbers should not be mashed into one trend line. They do point the same way: cash is off its recent highs, and it is still a large minority of closings.

Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, said home sales have been remarkably stable even as rates rose in recent months, and that year-to-date sales were up 2.4 percent. July existing-home sales ran at a 4.06 million annual rate, down 1.7 percent from June and up 0.7 percent from a year earlier. The median existing-home price was $434,100, up 2.0 percent, the 37th straight year-over-year increase. First-time buyers were 29 percent of July sales, down from 33 percent in June and up from 28 percent a year earlier. Inventory was 1.54 million units, a 4.6-month supply.

A small cash-share dip does not rewrite the payment math. At rates near 6.7 percent, a typical financed buyer still needs a high household income to carry a median-priced house after taxes and insurance. Cash remains the path around that payment for people who already have the equity, the stock grant, or the investor balance sheet. The national percentage can ease and those buyers can still set the tone at both ends of the market.

Financed buyers got a slightly larger slice of a smaller pie in early 2026. They did not get the 2019 market back. Cash’s share is still higher than it was for the whole half-decade before the pandemic, luxury agents are seeing more of it, and the retreat that actually shows up in the counts is investors leaving the cheap tier. That is a rebalancing. It is not a handover.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Does Realtor.com Define an All-Cash Home Sale?

A sale is counted as all-cash when the recorded deed shows no mortgage lien at closing. Realtor.com uses deed records dating to 2001 and divides those cash transactions by all home sales in the same place and period, covering both new and existing homes, which is why its 31.4 percent reading sits above NAR’s agent survey of existing homes only.

When Did the U.S. Cash-Sale Share Last Peak?

The post-Great Recession peak in Realtor.com’s series was 35.4 percent in 2012, higher than the recent 2023 peak near 34 percent. The 2012 wave was tied to distressed sales and investors buying after the crash, not to the pandemic bidding wars that lifted cash again after 2020.

What Share of July Existing-Home Sales Went to First-Time Buyers?

First-time buyers accounted for 29 percent of existing-home sales in July 2026, according to NAR, down from 33 percent in June and up from 28 percent in July 2025. NAR has long treated a share near 40 percent as a healthier mix, so even a modest cash fade has not restored a classic first-time market.

How Many Months of Housing Supply Did the U.S. Have in July 2026?

NAR counted 1.54 million unsold existing homes in July, equal to a 4.6-month supply, unchanged from June and from July 2025. A range of about 4.5 to 6 months is the association’s rule of thumb for a balanced market, which is the setting in which a cash offer buys certainty rather than a win over a dozen other bids.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of published housing-market research, and it is for information only. It is not mortgage advice, real-estate advice, or an investment recommendation, and it does not tell anyone whether to buy, sell, or finance a home. Readers who are considering a purchase or a loan should speak with a licensed mortgage lender, a REALTOR, or another qualified housing professional who knows their local market and their finances. Figures and market conditions here reflect the cited sources as of Sept. 1, 2026, and shares, rates, and prices can change with the next monthly report.