Cash sales accounted for 33.4 percent of total home sales in December 2015 and 33.9 percent of total home sales for the full year 2015, the lowest since 2008, according to CoreLogic, a property information and analytics company.

The December cash sales share was down 3.3 percent year over year from 36.7 percent in December 2014. On a month-over-month basis, the cash sales share fell by 2.8 percentage points in December 2015 compared with November 2015. The month-over-month decrease in the cash sales share was larger than normal for the month of December, indicating that the elevated share reported for November, which was attributed to the TRID implementation was temporary.

Cash sales peaked in January 2011 when cash transactions accounted for 46.6 percent of total home sales nationally. Prior to the housing crisis, the cash sales share of total home sales averaged approximately 25 percent. If the cash sales share continues to fall at the same rate it did in December 2015, the share should hit 25 percent by mid-2017, according to CoreLogic.

Real estate-owned (REO) sales had the largest cash sales share in December 2015 at 59.2 percent. Resales had the next highest cash sales share at 33.4 percent, followed by short sales at 30.9 percent and newly constructed homes at 15.4 percent. While the percentage of REO sales that were all-cash transactions remained high, REO transactions accounted for only 6.9 percent of all sales in December 2015. In January 2011 when the cash sales share was at its peak, REO sales represented 23.9 percent of total home sales. Resales typically make up the majority of home sales (about 79 percent in December 2015), and therefore have the biggest impact on the total cash sales share.