A new survey from real estate brokerage Redfin found that Asian home buyers are among the least likely to buy a home with all cash.
Stories of home buyers from Asian countries swooping in with all-cash deals seemed to spike in the mid-2010s.
A 2014 article from CBS Bay Area connected all cash buyers from China with a spike in home prices in the Bay Area.
An undated article in New Home Source cited a 2016 survey from John Burns Real Estate Consulting that found Chinese nationals usually pay cash when buying a home and that 60 percent of Asian consumers use cash.
If the Redfin survey is correct, that is no longer accurate if it ever was.
Nexstar reports that the Redfin survey found 33% of home buyers paid with all cash in the month of April. That’s the highest since 2014.
23% percent of those all-cash buyers were White, 15% were Black or African American and just 8% are Asian or Hispanic.
Many are single women.
“Single women can be coming from a past marriage, whether they are recently widowed or divorced, and so they may be moving actually from a family home into their own property for the first time and so as they make that purchase, they are more likely to pay all cash and not have to take on a mortgage,” Jessica Lautz of the National Association of Realtors said.
The Redfin survey is a snapshot of one month’s data and does not represent a trend. However, barriers to Asian homeownership is a trend.
The Urban Institute found in 2021 that Asians had the lowest level of home ownership of any other group among people at the same income level.
The homeownership rate among Asian households is significantly lower than White households and closer to that of Black and Hispanic households. The homeownership rates of Asians with an income of $100,000 to $150,000 is 66% compared to 83% for White people and 68 and 67% for Black and Hispanic households.
Language barriers and limited English proficiency are barriers to homeownership for many Asian families.
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