It’s a proxy for non wage earner real estate purchases. Either investments or buyers coming with all cash from equity of any sort (previous real estate holdings, securities, etc).

It’s important because it distorts local markets where wage earners who need a mortgage and are governed by a monthly payment are competing with these market participants.

Maybe. But some are homeowners who sold a property and use the proceeds to pay for another one, in which case there's not much change in net demand. This surely beats their taking out a low interest loan to speculate on an investment property.

That’s a possible explanation: people who hold title without encumbrance on their home are moving more often.

Another possible explanation is that there are more people/entities with large amounts of cash, or less people with enough income to buy a house, or both.

Or maybe all three.

> But some are homeowners who sold a property and use the proceeds to pay for another one, in which case there's not much change in net demand.

That's not a cash offer unless the property being purchased is far lower in purchase price than the profit off the sale of the first home (i.e. due to downsizing, or moving from a much higher to much lower cost area), in which case it is a different housing submarket, and there could be a net local demand increase.

Or the buyer is a long-time homeowner who has largely paid off the mortgage on their original residence, or at least paid it down such that inflation + payments has increased their home equity to near the purchase price of a new home.

This includes nearly all senior citizen purchases, but it's also a surprising number of 40/50-something wage earners who bought in HCOL areas around 2010, saw their $800K homes appreciate to about $2M, have paid the mortgage down to about $450K (or paid it off entirely, using stock price appreciation), and also have a couple million in appreciated stocks from saving abundantly during the 00s and 10s and enjoying the stock price appreciation.

If I understand correctly, what you're saying is that selling for $200k usually means you had $120k left on the mortgage, so you only get $80k and can't make a cash offer for a new $200k home.

> so you only get $80k and can't make a cash offer for a new $200k home.

Or if you are buying an $80k property with the proceeds, it is so different than the sold property - either much smaller or less desirable in some way - that you are buying in what is effectively a different market altogether.

In Australia actual suitcases of cash are allowed and sometimes used for buying houses because Lawyers, Realtors, and Accountants have zero accountability to report anything suspicious to anyone.

"Anti Money Laundering" laws to stop that happening never managed to actually be passed into legislation in Australia [0] despite many "attempts" since 2006 (the politicians forming discussion groups of committees for re-reviewing the potential idea of AML every few years then seemingly deciding it's too scary to be labelled as the cohort who stopped the vast money laundering into property in Australia).

KYC only exists for banks here, and we are near the bottom of the barrel when it comes to money laundering compliance [1] (Australia is one of only 8% of countries assessed by the FATF’s 4th Mutual Evaluation process as being totally non-compliant)

A suitcase of cash buys a criminal the choicest realestate plus a chain of anonymous Australian shell companies controlled by Panamian or Cayman Islands companies.

The actual beneficial owner of the property can rarely be determined in these cases.

Or even worse, they leverage their crime proceeds and get fat bank loans. Our largest bank was in on it too, they've been caught so many times [1]

A new book [2] titled "The Lucky Laundry, How the Aussie Economy Got Hooked on the World’s Dirtiest Cash" was recently published about Australia's wilful ignorance in turning a blind eye to crime because of greed and rampant capital appreciation (many yearly house price rises are greater than the owner's annual gross salary/wage before tax)

[0] https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2021/09/australian-property...

[1] https://michaelwest.com.au/do-not-stuff-up-this-institution-...

[2] https://michaelwest.com.au/lucky-laundry-review-aml-australi...

That's good, people should be able to do that. If people want to exchange cash for items of value there should be nothing stopping them. Police should just investigate crimes and stop laying totalitarian dragnets and checkpoints for everything people do that in some cases might also be done by a criminal.

The problem is barely anyone with any authority will ever want to investigate anything because they don't want to stop their own personal profits of sales commissions, legal/accounting fees, and the never-ending "equity mate" debt capital redraw from the magic pudding of upwardly inflating property valuations for 20+ years with hardly a pause.

It it open slather anything goes.

Meth money buys a lot of houses.

Global embezzlers flee their defrauded victims and find safe havens in Australia.

Lots of people clip the ticket and the govt makes more tax money, so why rock the boat and ask why a 22 year old has $2 million in cash?

Let me set you up with a few shell companies for blind asset holdings then we will visit my friend the real-estate agent...

It's slightly confusing because when a lot people (at least in CA) talk about competing with cash buyers it just means the deal isn't contingent on a mortgage. They may very well be mortgaging the property, but the deal isn't going to fall through because they can't secure financing.

Kind of. It means that the person making the offer already has the cash - if it’s a corporate/business purchase that cash may indeed come in the form of financing elsewhere, however the cash is already available so by definition isn’t secured by ownership of your property and so is not a “mortgage”. In a practical sense it likely means something like failing to make a repayment doesn’t automatically give possession of the property they bought.

All that said, in the Bay Area at least a cash offer from an individual means just that: the person buying it likely just sold a ton of stock, or their startup got bought, etc. I personally know people have done that (in some cases out of necessity: sellers favour short closing and no financing issues)

Or, taking a securities backed line of credit against personal investments. Making the purchase promptly, then mortgaging afterwards