The surge in all-cash home purchases seen during the pandemic has receded, with these transactions accounting for 31.4% of U.S. home sales in the first four months of 2026, a decrease from 32.3% a year prior, according to Realtor.com research. The number of cash sales has fallen 11.2% year-over-year, outpacing the 8.5% decline in total home sales.
This trend marks a shift from the pandemic era when cash offers were a primary strategy for buyers navigating intense competition and limited inventory. While the market has become less competitive in many regions as inventory has recovered, all-cash offers still offer sellers a degree of certainty that financing-dependent deals may lack.
"We’re really just in this holding pattern," said Hannah Jones, senior economic research analyst at Realtor.com and author of the report. "In a lot of the country, the market is a lot less competitive. You don’t have to come forward with cash in every situation."
However, the national decline masks significant disparities across the market. More than two-thirds of homes sold for less than $100,000 were purchased without a mortgage. At the upper end, cash sales remain robust, with over 40% of homes priced at $1 million or more bought with cash, and a majority of purchases exceeding $2 million requiring no financing. This phenomenon has been described as a "K-shaped housing market," where different buyer segments experience vastly different realities.
Miami continues to lead major metropolitan areas in all-cash purchases, with 43.2% of sales in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro completed without a mortgage in early 2026. This is attributed to a demographic mix of affluent buyers, retirees, and second-home owners. Other metros with a high prevalence of cash sales include Kansas City, Houston, San Antonio, and St. Louis, indicating the trend is not exclusive to high-value markets.
Conversely, some cities are bucking the national trend. Pittsburgh saw a 22.6% increase in cash purchases, the largest among major metros, while San Francisco experienced a 7.7% rise. The increase in San Francisco, where the average sale price exceeds $1.1 million, aligns with the influx of wealth from the artificial-intelligence boom, potentially providing tech workers with liquidity to bypass traditional financing.
In contrast, the New York-Newark-Jersey City metro area has seen a notable retreat in cash sales, which accounted for 32% of transactions from January through May, down 3.2 percentage points from the previous year. Cash sales in this region dropped by 25%, a sharper decline than the 18.5% decrease in overall transactions. This shift is occurring as inventory has climbed and prices have eased, coupled with lower mortgage rates earlier in the year, creating more opportunities for buyers relying on financing.
New Jersey has also shown a pronounced shift, with all-cash sales comprising just 24.6% of home sales from January through May, a decrease of 3.7 percentage points year-over-year. Despite a significant increase in median sale prices since 2019, inventory has grown since April 2024, and asking prices have fallen for 14 months, offering more breathing room for mortgage-dependent buyers. "There is now a little bit more slack in the New Jersey market, allowing financed buyers to compete after several punishing years," Jones stated.
The decline in cash sales nationally suggests that buyers may no longer need to offer all cash to remain competitive, or that financing has become more accessible. While mortgage rates have recently climbed again, the overall trend points toward a market inching toward greater balance, which could offer some relief to buyers who have long been sidelined by cash offers.