Purchasing a home in an all-cash transaction has become more common across the board, but Chinese speakers have grown far more likely to pay in cash in 2015 compared with 10 years ago, according to data from RealtyTrac.
The share of Chinese-speaking homebuyers paying in cash has spiked 229% from 2005, to 46% in 2015. In contrast, the share of all homebuyers who paid all-cash increased 65% during this same period of time, to 33%.
RealtyTrac also reported that Mandarin Chinese-speaking buyers increased as a share of overall buyers by 9% between 2005 and 2015, more than any other language group. Fueling these increases, in share of overall buyers and in the frequency of all-cash deals, is the prominence of foreign investors.
"Cash buyers across the board are playing a much bigger role in the housing market now than they were 10 years ago, and that is particularly true for Chinese Mandarin-speaking cash buyers, who are more likely to be foreign nationals," said Daren Blomquist, RealtyTrac vice president, in an Oct. 6 news release. "Foreign cash buyers have helped to accelerate U.S. home-price appreciation over the past few years given that these buyers are often not as constrained by income as local, traditionally financed buyers."
Blomquist cautioned that the boost these foreign investors can give to markets should not be relied upon as all-cash deals can evaporate as soon as demand tapers off.
Looking more generally at the presence of ethnic communities in the housing market, Asian, Hispanic and African-American consumers are set to make up half of the U.S. market, according to Zachary Wilhoit, chief executive of Ethnic Technologies.
