VIDEO: Cash Sales 2021

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Our statisticians have been hard at work crunching numbers and analyzing data. And the much-anticipated percentage of cash sales in Jefferson County has been determined. This is for last year… 2021. And the percentage of cash sales was… drum roll please…

29.64%

That’s slightly lower than 2020 when we saw 34% cash sales.

Now if you trust me, you can stop listening now. But if you want to hear details on how our team of mathematicians (i.e., me) tallied these figures, keep watching.

First, we know how many transactions were financed in Jefferson County because of our Top Lender Report. A company called Black Knight compiles this data using public records. Every time a transaction is financed, a Deed of Trust is recorded at the courthouse. The Deed of Trust is the document that secures the lien to the house. That’s the document that says, “if you don’t pay your mortgage, your lender can foreclose.”

Black Knight counts these deeds and sells the data in the form of a Top Lender Report to lenders, title companies, and anyone else who wants to pay for it. You can see details of this Top Lender Report on my web site.

This report tells us that there were 432 financed purchase transactions in Jefferson County in 2021. And we know this number is pretty accurate. If you’re financing the purchase of a house, you would have a Deed of Trust recorded at the courthouse whether your financing was through a traditional mortgage lender or private financing through a seller, a family member, or someone else. So 432 financed purchase transactions.

Now when calculating the total number of sales… That’s where things get a little tricky. It’s easy to determine how many real estate sales occurred if those sales were handled by a real estate agent. REALTORs enter data about each sale in the Northwest MLS computer system. And that system tells us there were 614 sales in Jefferson County in 2021. Now, that’s only what we refer to as single family residential. So that includes properties of one to four units, condos, townhomes, and manufactured homes. It doesn’t include the sale of vacant land or commercial properties or things like apartment buildings.

If we had 614 sales, 432 of which were financed, that means 29.64% of transactions were cash sales.

But that 614 number only includes listed transactions. So homes that were listed for sale on the open market by a REALTOR. It doesn’t include off-market transactions – so landlords selling to tenants, sales among family members, sales between neighbors, or any transaction where the house wasn’t listed for sale on the MLS.

At Team Emily Caryl Ingram, 14% of our purchase transactions last year were off-market transactions. That’s up from just 8% in 2020.

Now some of those transactions – a little less than half – had at least one REALTOR involved in the transaction, even if the house wasn’t listed. And for off-market transactions that a REALTOR knows about or is involved in – they can report these transactions to the MLS. And some of them do. If off-market sales are reported, data from those sales can be utilized to price other similar properties.

If we include both listed and off-market sales that were reported to the MLS by a REALTOR, then we have 668 sales of real estate in Jefferson County in 2021. That increases our percentage of cash sales to 35.33% of transactions.

And we know the true number of sales must actually be higher than 668. Because some off-market sales don’t have a REALTOR involved and are never reported to the MLS. How many? We have no idea. There were 54 off-market sales reported to the MLS. If there were a similar number that weren’t reported to the MLS, we’d be looking at cash sales approaching 40%. But that’s a data point we just don’t have.

So there you have it, kids. Cash sales accounted for 29.64% of listed transactions, 35.33% if we include unlisted transactions reported to the MLS, and somewhere north of that number if we include every conceivable transaction in the county. How’s that for unequivocable, precise data?

I’m happy to share my tried-and-true strategies for competing with cash sales. You can find my contact info on my web site or text me at 360-301-7575.

My name is Emily Caryl Ingram. I lead a team of Mortgage Loan Specialists at New American Funding in Port Townsend, WA. Thanks for watching!