Cash Buyer Statistics 2026: What Share of Homes Sell All-Cash, and Where the Cash Buyers Are

If you have ever tried to nail down a single "X% of homes are bought in cash" number, you already know the trap. Two of the most-cited sources in real estate give you two answers that are about 10 points apart, and people grab whichever one fits the story they want to tell. That is how you end up with a stat that is both quoted everywhere and basically wrong in context.

So let me lay it out the way I would for one of our investor clients before we build them a cash buyer list. Here is what the cash buyer numbers actually say in 2026, why the two big sources disagree, which direction the trend is moving, and where the cash buyers are physically concentrated, because that last part is the only one that changes how you build a dispo list.

1. What Share of Homes Are All-Cash in 2026

Two numbers, two methods, both legitimate. Redfin and ATTOM are measuring different things, and once you see how, the gap stops being confusing.

Redfin says about 29%. In its December 2025 read, Redfin found 29% of U.S. home purchases were made in cash, down from 30.3% in December 2024. That is the lowest December share since 2020. Redfin builds this from an analysis of county records across the 38 most populous U.S. metros, reported February 16, 2026. So it is a purchase-share figure across big metros, not a full national census.

ATTOM says about 39%. ATTOM's year-end report put 39.1% of all home purchases in full-year 2025 as all-cash, the highest since 2013 and essentially flat against 39.0% in 2024. ATTOM counts any recorded sale with no loan on the deed as cash, across far broader county coverage than Redfin's 38-metro set. Its Q3 2025 figure was 38.9% of home sales nationally, up from 37.6% a year earlier, so that series held near its multi-year high through the year even as mortgage rates eased.

The reason ATTOM runs about 10 points higher is the wider net. A deed with no recorded loan gets counted as cash, and ATTOM looks at far more counties than Redfin's metro set. Redfin's purchase-share method, anchored to the 38 biggest metros, lands lower. Neither is the "national rate" without that qualification. If you take one thing from this section, take that.

2. The Trend Since the 2023 Peak

This is where you have to be careful which series you are talking about, because the two sources are pointing in slightly different directions.

The Redfin series cooled off a 2023 peak. Redfin's all-cash share peaked at nearly 35% in late 2023, when 30-year mortgage rates were sitting in the high 7% range. When financing is that expensive, more buyers go all-cash because the cost of borrowing is brutal and cash wins bidding wars. As rates eased, averaging around 6.09% in Redfin's early-2026 reference point, borrowing got cheaper and the cash share drifted down off that peak to 29%. So when anyone frames the story as "cash buyers are pulling back off the 2023 high," that is the Redfin series, and you should anchor it there explicitly.

The ATTOM series did not peak and fall the same way. ATTOM was already higher and stayed near a decade high through 2025, around 39%, flat year over year. Do not pair the roughly 35% peak with ATTOM's roughly 39% as if they are the same line on the same chart. They are not. One is declining off a peak, the other is flat near its top.

There is one more signal worth flagging for anyone on the dispo side. Investor activity, which is the cash-heavy cohort that drives a lot of this, cooled into 2026. Redfin reported that investor home purchases fell to their lowest level since 2020 (reported May 28, 2026). That matters because the institutional and cash-buyer pool tied to your dispo demand contracted. For trend narrative, HomeLight's 2026 agent report, fielded December 2-9, 2025 across 859 top agents, also flags the growing role of cash buyers and equity-funded downsizing purchases, which qualitatively backs up the demand picture even though it does not publish a clean cash-share percentage.

3. Cash-Buyer Share by Metro

Here is the part that actually changes how you build a list. Cash is not spread evenly across the country. It clusters hard, and the clustering is consistent across both sources even though the headline numbers differ. Keep each metro figure tied to its parent series, do not cross-list a Redfin metro with an ATTOM one.

The pattern is obvious once you line it up. Florida and the lower-price Sun Belt run far above the national average on both series. The expensive West Coast tech markets, Seattle, Oakland, Sacramento, run far below. Naples at 61.9% (ATTOM) and Seattle at 17.3% (Redfin) are roughly 45 points apart, which is a bigger spread than the gap between the two national numbers. Geography is the real story here.

4. Where Cash Buyers Cluster and Why

The clustering is not random, and the "why" tells you which markets will stay cash-heavy.

• Retirement and second-home markets. Naples, Myrtle Beach, and Hilo lead because buyers there are often older, equity-rich, and downsizing or buying a vacation property outright. They are paying with the proceeds of a prior home sale, not a new mortgage. HomeLight's 2026 agent report points at exactly this equity-funded downsizing dynamic.
• Lower-price Southern markets. Montgomery and Macon show up because the absolute dollar amount is small enough that more buyers can simply pay cash. When a house is affordable, financing is optional for a larger share of the buyer pool.
• Florida, broadly. West Palm Beach, Jacksonville, and Miami combine retiree inflow, investor activity, and out-of-state cash buyers relocating with home-sale proceeds. Florida runs hot on cash across both Redfin and ATTOM.
• Expensive coastal tech markets run cold. In Seattle, Oakland, and Sacramento, prices are so high that even well-paid buyers usually need a mortgage, and the retiree and investor cash mix is thinner. That is why these sit at the bottom.

For anyone building a buyers list, this is the actionable read. The markets where cash is concentrated are also the markets where dispo demand is deepest, because the cash buyers are the people you are selling contracts to. Florida and the Sun Belt are where a list built around all-cash investors will have the most names and the most active ones.

5. What This Means for Building a Dispo List

Dispo, short for disposition, is the back half of a wholesale deal: you have a property under contract, now you move it to a buyer. The quality of your buyers list is what decides whether that happens fast at a good assignment fee or drags out while the contract clock runs. Cash-buyer concentration data feeds directly into how you build that list.

The logic is simple. The more cash buyers active in a market, the deeper and more competitive your buyers list can be there. In a 60%-cash metro like Naples, you have a large pool of people who can close fast without financing contingencies, which is exactly what you want on the buy side of an assignment. In a 17%-cash metro like Seattle, the cash-buyer pool is thinner, so your list takes more work to build and the buyers move slower.

If you are starting from zero on the buy side, the mechanics of pulling and verifying cash buyers from recent transactions are covered in our walkthrough on how to build a cash buyers list for wholesaling. The short version: pull recent all-cash purchases, identify the repeat buyers, and verify they are still active before you count them.

6. Targeting Cash-Heavy Markets

Once you accept that cash is geographically lopsided, market selection becomes a real lever instead of an afterthought. You are not just picking where to find sellers, you are picking where the buyers on the other end of your deals actually have cash to close.

None of this says avoid the low-cash markets entirely, plenty of deals get done in Seattle. It says go in with your eyes open. If you are running outreach in a cash-light metro, your buyers list needs more depth and your dispo timeline needs more cushion. In a cash-heavy metro, the buyer side is the easy part and you can lean into volume on acquisition.

For most newer operators, the cleaner path is to build the buy side in a cash-heavy market first, where a deep list is achievable, and let that pull your acquisition focus. If you are working out where cash buyers fit in the broader real estate funnel, our real estate VA page lays out how the acquisition and dispo sides connect.

7. From Data to a Buyers List

Statistics are only useful if they change what you do. Here is how the cash-buyer data in this article turns into an actual buyers list and a working dispo motion.

• Pick the market by cash concentration. Use the metro data to weight toward cash-heavy Sun Belt and Florida markets if buyer depth is your constraint.
• Pull recent all-cash transactions in that market. Those deeds are your raw buyer pool. The high-cash metros give you the most names to start from.
• Verify the buyers are still active. Because the investor cohort thinned into 2026, a recent-and-verified filter matters more than ever. Drop the names that have gone quiet.
• Feed qualified seller leads into that list. A buyers list is only worth the deals you can move through it. The two sides have to run together.

That last point is where most operators stall. Building the buyers list and generating the seller leads to feed it are two full jobs, and trying to do both alone is how the pipeline backs up. A dedicated disposition manager owns the buyer side, the buyers list, the verification, the assignment, while the acquisition side keeps feeding qualified seller deals into it. That separation is what keeps a cash-heavy market actually producing instead of just looking good on paper.

Sources

Every figure in this article is tied to its source's basis. Redfin metro numbers stay with Redfin's purchase-share series, ATTOM metro numbers stay with ATTOM's deed-record series. They are not interchangeable.

• Redfin - All-Cash Home Purchases Ended 2025 at Five-Year Low (December 2025 all-cash share 29%, down from 30.3% year over year; lowest December since 2020; late-2023 peak near 35%; 30-year rate around 6.09%; 38-metro scope; metro figures West Palm Beach 47.2%, Jacksonville 39.3%, Miami 39.3%, Seattle 17.3%, Oakland 18.5%, Sacramento 19.6%)
• Redfin Press Release - All-Cash Home Purchases Ended 2025 at Five-Year Low (Feb 16, 2026) (confirms 29% December 2025 figure, 38-metro scope, buyer's-market context with sellers outnumbering buyers by 47%, and cash buyers winning 10-20% below appraised value)
• ATTOM - Year-End 2025 U.S. Home Sales Report (full-year 2025 all-cash share 39.1%, highest since 2013, flat against 39.0% in 2024; top metros Naples 61.9%, Montgomery 59.9%, Hilo 58.8%, Myrtle Beach 57.4%, Macon 56.3%)
• ATTOM - Q3 2025 Home Sales Report (Q3 2025 all-cash share 38.9% of home sales, up from 37.6% a year earlier)
• Redfin - Real Estate Investor Home Purchase Report hub (investor home purchases fell to their lowest level since 2020, reported May 28, 2026)
• HomeLight - Top Agent Insights & Predictions for 2026 (agent survey fielded December 2-9, 2025 across 859 top agents, flags the growing role of cash buyers and equity-funded downsizing purchases; cited for trend narrative, not a cash-share stat)