While the share of all-cash home sales was down last year in the Tri-Cities it doesn’t mean cash still isn’t a big player. Better than one of every three existing home sales in both of the area’s two metro areas were all-cash deals, according to Attom Data Solution’s 2019 Year-End Home Sales Report.

Locally all-cash deals accounted for 35.8% of all single-family home and condo sales in the Johnson City Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). That area includes Carter, Washington, and Unicoi counties in NE Tenn.

All-cash deals in the Kingsport-Bristol MSA accounted for 34.1% of all residential resales. The metro area includes Hawkins and Washington counties in NE Tenn. and Scott and Washington counties in SW Va.

Nationally all-cash purchases accounted for 25.3% of residential sales, the lowest level since 2007.

It’s also good to remember that while the share of all-cash sales is down, the total number of sales is up.

While Attom’s report doesn’t let us know who the all-cash buyers were, a separate component for the share of institutional investors shows no activity in the Tri-Cities region for 2019. When that class of investors was buying properties here, their share of sales was almost less than 3%.

That doesn’t mean investors are not among the ranks of cash buyers. Some are flippers buying homes to renovate and sell – or to add to their rental inventory. Some are local owners who are scaling down and plowing the profit from the sale of their previous home into a new residence, and some are the folks relocating here who have sold home in other – more expensive – markets and are flush when the hit the local market.

Attom defines institutional investor purchases and residential sales to non-lending entities that purchased at least 10 properties in a calendar year.

Attom defines all-cash purchases as a sale where no loan is recorded at the time of sales where Attom has coverage of loan data.

Categories: REAL ESTATE