More than a quarter of residential properties sold in Australia’s eastern states last year were bought without a mortgage, suggesting there is a sizeable cohort unaffected by aggressive interest rate rises aimed at taming inflation., Queensland and Victoria were made without a mortgage, according to the property data firm PEXA.
Its analysis suggests the proportion of cash purchases has stayed stable since before Covid-19 – but their total value is higher due to the pandemic property boom.About $122.5bn worth of homes were cash funded in 2022, making up 25.6% of residential sales in the three states. This was slightly less than the $124.8bn worth of housing exchanged without a home loan in 2021 but well above the $83.6bn recorded in 2020.
PEXA’s head of research, Mike Gill, said the data suggested most cash buyers were older homeowners who had paid off their mortgages and were buying homes to retire in.