Twenty-seven percent of existing-home sales in August 2026 closed as all-cash transactions, according to the National Association of Realtors, while another 15% of buyers were individual investors or second-home purchasers who often skip financing entirely or move fast enough to beat a mortgage-backed offer. That leaves a shrinking pool of sales going to buyers who need a lender’s approval before they can even make an offer. A financed buyer submitting a strong bid on paper can still lose to someone who simply doesn’t need an appraisal contingency, an underwriting timeline, or a lender’s blessing to close. In enough markets right now, the highest number on the table isn’t the one that wins.
What the national numbers actually show
NAR’s August 2026 existing-home sales report puts cash sales at 27% of transactions, with first-time buyers making up 30% and individual investors or second-home buyers accounting for 15%. Separately, real estate brokerage Redfin’s own analysis of March 2026 closings found 28.8% of U.S. home purchases were made entirely in cash, the lowest March share since 2020 even as it remained close to three in ten sales nationally. NAR’s broader annual buyer survey found the cash share among primary-residence purchases hit an all-time high of 26% for the year, driven largely by repeat buyers cashing out home equity from a prior sale rather than first-time buyers, who rarely have that option available.
Where it’s worse than the national average
Aggregate national figures understate how lopsided the competition gets in specific metros. Redfin’s metro-level data found Cleveland and West Palm Beach tied for the highest all-cash share in the country at 51.1%, meaning a majority of sales in those markets closed without a mortgage at all. Detroit followed close behind at 45.8%, with Riverside, California and Fort Lauderdale, Florida both landing near 38%. A financed buyer competing in any of those metros isn’t just up against other financed buyers bidding similar numbers. They’re up against a market where cash offers are the norm rather than the exception, which changes what a seller is willing to accept even before price becomes the deciding factor.
Why cash keeps winning even at a lower price
Sellers and their agents aren’t only chasing the top-line number on an offer sheet. A cash buyer removes financing contingencies, appraisal gaps, and underwriting delays that can sink a deal weeks into escrow, and that certainty has real value to a seller who wants a predictable closing date. A financed offer can come in higher and still get passed over if the seller has been burned before by a deal that fell through during underwriting. Cash buyers can also often close in one to two weeks instead of the thirty to forty-five days a typical mortgage requires, which matters enormously to a seller already under contract on their next home.
What this means for a buyer relying on a mortgage
None of this makes financing impossible, but it does change the strategy. A pre-underwritten loan, a larger earnest money deposit, and a willingness to waive minor contingencies where it’s safe to do so all narrow the gap between a financed offer and a cash one. Buyers competing in the highest cash-share metros are increasingly working with lenders who can commit to underwriting timelines closer to what a cash close offers, since matching the seller’s preference for speed and certainty often matters more than adding another few thousand dollars to the top-line price.
Who the cash buyers actually are
The image of an all-cash buyer as a faceless investment fund isn’t the full picture, even though investors make up a real share of the total. NAR’s own research points to repeat buyers, particularly older homeowners who’ve built substantial equity in a previous house and are rolling that equity directly into the next purchase without ever taking out a new mortgage. That group tends to concentrate in markets with a lot of long-tenured homeowners and retirees relocating, which lines up closely with why Cleveland, Detroit, and Florida metros post such high cash shares compared with faster-growing, younger metros where more buyers are purchasing their first home and depend on financing by necessity.
That distinction matters for a financed buyer trying to read the market correctly. Losing to an investor bidding under market value for a rental property is a different competitive problem than losing to a retiree who simply valued speed and certainty enough to offer close to asking price in cash. Understanding which kind of cash buyer dominates a given metro helps explain whether the right response is bidding higher or restructuring the offer to remove friction instead.
The share of buyers who don’t need a lender at all keeps climbing back toward record territory, and that’s reshaping what “competitive” even means at the closing table.
