20% of Homes Purchased in DC in 2016 Were All-Cash Transactions

• July 29, 2016

by UrbanTurf Staff

A home on Capitol Hill that sold in an all-cash transaction.

The term “all-cash” is music to the ears of a home seller, and in DC this year, approximately one out of five sellers heard this phrase from a successful buyer.

Of the 4,100 homes sold in the city since January, 19 percent went to buyers paying all cash. In some neighborhoods, like Georgetown, about half of all homes purchased this year were done in all-cash transactions. On Capitol Hill, homes like this one on East Capitol Street that incited a feverish bidding war, went to the buyer paying all cash.

As The New York Times recently pointed out, all-cash deals are so attractive because there is “no lender red tape to slow down the process, like appraisal requirements and concerns about whether those appraisals will come in high enough and whether buyers can borrow as much as they need.”

The number of all-cash transactions as a percentage of total sales has hovered around 20 percent in DC for the last few years, rising from 13 percent back in 2009. Of course, our city has a ways to go to catch up with places like Manhattan in this department: 44 percent of home sales in the Big Apple this year were all-cash.

In this article, the term “home” is defined as any single-family house, condo or co-op that sold in the city in 2016.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/20_of_homes_purchased_in_dc_in_2016_were_all-cash_transactions/11526