Cash still rules home sales

SARASOTA-MANATEE — Fewer people are spending cash to buy houses in Manatee and Sarasota counties, but it still represents more than half of all home sales. According to the most recent monthly data available from CoreLogic Inc., 58.3% of all home sales in February were paid in cash. That was a decline of 3.1% percentage points from February 2014.

Data for much of the rest of the Gulf Coast were not immediately available.

Real estate owned by the lenders (REO) sales had largest share of the Manatee and Sarasota counties' cash sales in February, at 59.8%, followed by resales (37.6%), short sales (34.3%) and newly constructed homes (15.8%).