Dive Brief:

• Fewer homeowners—just 33%—paid cash for their new places in June than during any month since September 2008, the month considered by many as the official start of the recession.

• Cash transactions peaked in January 2011, when they accounted for 46.2% of home sales, according to real estate data and information company CoreLogic. Before the housing crisis began, cash sales typically made up 25% of sales.

• More buyers paid cash for homes in Florida than in any other state in June. Homeowners in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area were the least likely to fork over cash at closing.

Dive Insight:

Fewer cash sales can be a good thing for the housing market. A high percentage of all-cash buyers can indicate that younger, first-time buyers—those who take out mortgages because they don’t have enough cash on hand to buy homes outright—are not investing in real estate. A healthy real estate market depends, in part, on new buyers to replace older Americans who no longer want to own the homes they live in.