Economic news continues to fluctuate with foreclosures rising in the third quarter and new homes sales falling, while sales on existing homes rose in September. The ups and downs in the real estate market are nothing new, but these current reports may be related in part to the confidence of consumers.
Consumer Confidence
The latest report on the Consumer Confidence Index from The Conference Board showed a decline in October. The confidence level from American consumers came in at 97.6 for October, dropping from 102.6 in September.
The Conference Board, which is an independent economic research organization, measures the confidence level of consumers by helping define their degree of optimism on the state of the economy through their spending and savings. This may include home buys, like Coral Springs homes for sale, Oviedo real estate, etc.
The slight month to month drop is related to a less positive appraisal of business conditions as well as the overall job market. The numbers for October breakdown as follows:
- Confidence that business conditions are good decreased to 26.5 percent from 28.1 percent in September.
- Confidence that business conditions are bad increased to 18.3 percent from 16.4 percent in September.
- Consumers expecting business conditions to improve over the next 6 months remained unchanged at 18.1 percent.
- Consumers expecting business conditions to worsen over the next 6 months increased from 10.4 percent to 10.6 percent.
- Consumers expecting a positive job market outlook dropped to 22.2 percent from 24.8 percent.
- Consumers expecting a worsening job market outlook increased from 24.9 percent to 25.8 percent.
Although U.S. consumers are reportedly less optimistic about the present-day conditions and moderately less optimistic about the short-term outlook, they aren’t closing the door on their confidence.
Home Cash Sales
Looking back to July, home sale nationwide made with cash transactions dropped year to year with 30.8 percent of home sale paid in cash in July 2015. Last year at the same time, 34.2 percent of homes were paid with cash sales.
This is good news since 56 percent of all cash home purchases are real estate owned (REO), and are a result of foreclosure. Numbers from CoreLogic, show a slip of 0.5 percentage points of cash transactions on a month-to-month basis.
For the month of July, the five states where cash transaction deals were highest include:
- Alabama with 47.4 percent
- Floridawith 44.7 percent
- New York with 42.8 percent
- West Virginia with 41.1 percent
- New Jersey with 39.5 percent
When examining the 100 biggest metro areas in the U.S., Florida captured the top five markets with the greatest percentage of July cash sales, including Coral Gables luxury homes, Coral Springs homes for sale, and Cape Coral luxury homes, among others.
The five real estate markets claiming the top five spots included:
- West Palm Beach-Boca Raton-Delray Beach with 53.2 percent
- Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall with 52.2 percent
- North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton with 50.1 percent
- Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach-Deerfield Beach with4 percent
- Cape Coral-Fort Myers with 47.9 percent
