More than half of South Florida homes now sell without a mortgage
In 2025, 53.4% of homes that closed in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach were bought with cash — up from 34.7% in 2020. Over the same six years the 30-year mortgage rate went from 3.11% to 6.60%. The rate roughly doubled. The share of buyers who did not need it went up anyway.
Share of homes bought with cash, against the 30-year mortgage rate
2020 to 2025 · hover or tap to read any year
Mortgage rate: 30-year fixed average, Freddie Mac via the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED, series MORTGAGE30US), averaged by year. Cash share: our own record of closed residential sales in the three counties, counting only sales where the financing used was recorded. Complete calendar years only. Years left out because they are not fully settled in the record yet: 2019, 2026.
The number
33,006 of the 61,841 South Florida homes that closed in 2025 with the financing on record were paid for in cash. That is 53.4% — 18.7 points higher than 2020.
It is not the rate doing this
The 30-year mortgage rate averaged 3.11% in 2020 and 6.60% in 2025, a move of 3.49 points. If cheap money were driving cash buying, the cash share should have fallen as borrowing got expensive. It rose in 4 of the 5 years instead.
The whole stretch
Across 2020–2025, 233,829 of 529,272 closings on record were cash. The high was 53.4% in 2025.
What it means for you
If you are buying with a loan
You are bidding against offers with no appraisal and no lender timeline. A rate cut helps your payment; it does not fix that. Your leverage is a clean, fast close and a price you can defend on the record — not a bigger pre-approval.
If you are selling
About half your buyer pool is not watching the Fed at all. Pricing as though every buyer needs a mortgage can leave money on the table, and waiting for rates to fall before you list assumes a buyer who may not be the one who actually buys it.
If you already own
Cash buying at this level is why South Florida prices have not tracked the rate the way the national commentary says they should. Your equity is answering to a different market than the one on television.