Following the trend of previous months, October saw an increase in cash sales, according to a report from CoreLogic.

Cash sales slipped to 31.8% of total home sales in October, down 2.7 percentage points from the year before. However, it is a slight increase from September’s 31.7%, marking the fourth consecutive monthly increase.

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(Source: CoreLogic)

Before the housing crisis, cash sales made up about 25% of total home sales, a mark that could be hit by mid-2018 is the share continues to fall at the same annual rate it did in October.

Real estate owned sales held the largest cash sales share in October at 59.2%, followed by resales at 31.7%, short sales at 30.2% and newly constructed homes at 15.9%.

While cash sales make up many of the sales in the REO category, its share in the market continues to decrease. Within the distressed sales category, REOs made up 5% of the market sales and short sales made up 2.6% of sales in October. The total share of distressed sales came in at 7.7%, the lowest share for any month since October 2007.

The pre-crisis share of distressed sales held steady around 2%. At the current rate of annual decreases, distressed sales could hit that mark by mid-2018.

While distressed sales continue to decrease, some states are still struggling more than others. Maryland had the largest share of distressed sales with 18.6%, followed by Connecticut with 18.3%, Michigan with 17%, New Jersey with 15.8% and Illinois with 14.7%.

On the other end of the spectrum, North Dakota held the smallest share of distressed sales at 2.7%, and, along with the District of Columbia, is within one percentage point of its pre-crisis level.

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(Source: CoreLogic)