All-cash offers crushing first-time homebuyers | Chappaqua NY Homes

Insatiable demand from hedge funds, private equity investors and foreign buyers, all armed with ready cash, are elbowing first-time buyers out of the housing market.

First-time buyers tend to purchase lower-priced homes, but all-cash investors have cornered the market on those, leaving little behind. All-cash purchases accounted for 42.1 percent of all U.S. residential sales in December, up from 38.1 percent in November, and up from 18.0 percent in December 2012, according to a new report from RealtyTrac.

The phenomenon is putting up another roadblock for young Americans already assailed by high student loan debt, poor wage growth and less-than-pristine credit.

First-time homebuyers, historically about 40 percent of the market, accounted for just 27 percent of sales nationally in December, the lowest since the National Association of Realtors began tracking this cohort in 2008.

The investors are largely hedge funds and private equity, as well as international buyers, such as upper middle class Chinese buying in California — all part of the new single-family rental trade.
While the Realtors show a smaller share of all-cash buyers, 32 percent, they don't capture sales of homes outside their "multiple listing services," which would include sales of homes at auctions or by banks. In any case, the share is a, "phenomenal, very, very high percentage," according to the Realtors' chief economist, Lawrence Yun.

That leaves out would-be buyers such as Morgan and Tyler Brasfield, who are "dying" to buy a home, especially since the birth of their second child six months ago.



http://www.nbcnews.com/business/all-cash-offers-crushing-first-time-homebuyers-2D11980306?ocid=msnhp&pos=1