Published October 7, 2026 in Market Update

Cash buyers here took just as long as everyone else

By Pamella Haynes

Real estate, market update cleaned

Everyone assumes a cash buyer is a fast buyer. Sellers hear "cash offer" and picture a quick close, no lender delays, no appraisal drama. I pulled every sale through October 6, 2026, and what I found does not match that picture at all.

Cash did not move faster, and the price edge was almost nothing

Of the 499 sales where I could see how the buyer paid, 113 were cash. That is 22.6% of all sales. Not a small number. But the typical cash buyer took 24 days to close. The typical loan buyer took 23 days. One day apart.

The price gap is just as flat. The typical cash sale closed at 97.1% of what the home first asked. Loan buyers paid 96.7%. That is a difference of less than half a point. Cash did not buy a faster sale here, and the price advantage it did carry was barely worth mentioning.

Nationally, cash sales made up 26% of transactions in July 2026, down from 31% a year earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors. Here, the share sits at 22.6%, a little below that national figure. Cash is less common here than the country as a whole, yet sellers still treat it like a golden ticket.

Does paying cash really speed things up?

The honest answer, in this market, is no. The chart below shows the typical days to sell by how the buyer paid. The bars land in almost the same place.

There is a reason the gap is so small. The 30-year fixed mortgage averaged 7.28% as of October 1, 2026, according to Freddie Mac's weekly rate survey. At that rate, loan buyers are motivated. They are not dragging their feet. They want to close just as badly as a cash buyer does, and lenders have kept up.

There is also something worth knowing about what cash buyers paid. The typical cash sale closed at $690,000. The typical loan sale closed at $725,000. Cash buyers bought cheaper homes, on average. That alone could slow things down a little, since cheaper homes sometimes have more back-and-forth on condition. Yet even with that, the closing times were nearly identical.

It is also worth looking at what happens when a home sits. Homes that found a buyer in the first month got 99% of what they first asked. By the second month, that number dropped to 93.9%. By months five and six, it fell to 86.5%. The payment type did not drive those gaps. Time did. A loan buyer who shows up on day three is worth far more than a cash buyer who shows up on day 45.

The homes that came off the market with no sale at all first asked $789,900 on average. The homes that sold first asked $764,500. That $25,400 gap tells you more about why a home fails to sell than any conversation about cash versus a loan. Price is the lever that matters most, and no payment type fixes a price that is set too high.

What this means for you right now

If you are selling, a cash offer is worth reading carefully, but it is not automatically worth a discount. The data shows loan buyers closed in 23 days and paid 96.7% of your first asking price. A strong loan offer with good terms is not a lesser offer. The mistake is giving away money at the table for a speed advantage that the numbers say you will not actually get.

If you are buying with a loan, you are not at a real disadvantage here. The market has 2.8 months of homes for sale right now, which still favors sellers, but loan buyers are winning deals every day and closing just as fast. Right now, nearly half of the 110 homes for sale have already dropped their price, with a typical cut of $55,950. That is room to negotiate, and you do not need cash to do it. The U.S. added only 29,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in September 2026, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which suggests the economy is not running hot. Sellers know that. Use it.