Cash sales accounted for 35.5 percent of total home sales in January 2016, down 4.2 percentage points year over year from 39.7 percent in January 2015, according to new data released from CoreLogic, a property information and analytics firm. Cash sales share increased by 1.9 percentage points in January 2016 compared with December 2015. The month-over-month increase was typical for the month of January.

In Massachusetts in January, 23 percent of all residential real estate transactions were cash sales. A more detailed look at cash sales in the Bay State was recently published in Banker & Tradesman

Nationally, the cash sales share 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 January 2016, the share should hit 25 percent by mid-2017.