10/07/2026
Are Festival Resale Buyers Still Using Mortgages?
That’s a question I hear pretty regularly from Sun City Festival sellers. With so many people moving here after selling another home, there’s often an assumption that most Festival buyers are paying cash.
I’ve usually guessed that maybe 30% to 40% of our resale buyers were cash buyers. But I’d never actually sat down and run the numbers. So I did.
I went back through 51 Sun City Festival resale homes that closed during the past 90 days, and the results surprised me. Twenty-four buyers used mortgage financing, or 47%. Twenty-six were recorded as cash sales, or 51%. One sale involved seller financing.
In other words, it was almost an even split. Nearly half of our recent resale buyers are still using mortgages.
Why? The sales records don’t tell us that, and I doubt there’s one answer. Mortgage rates may enter into the decision for some buyers. Others may prefer to keep more of their money invested. On the other hand, many Festival buyers arrive with substantial equity from the sale of another home and simply don’t want a mortgage in retirement. If you’re living primarily on a fixed income, having one less monthly payment can be pretty attractive.
Or maybe it’s simply, “I’ve sent enough money to mortgage companies. I’m done.”
For sellers, I think there’s a useful takeaway here. A buyer using a mortgage certainly isn’t unusual in Festival. In these 51 recent resale transactions, almost one out of every two buyers financed the purchase. And when you’re comparing offers, cash versus financing is only part of the picture. Price, contingencies, appraisal considerations, closing date and the buyer’s overall qualifications all matter.
So the next time someone asks me, “Are buyers out here still using mortgages?” I finally have something better than a guess. Yes. Nearly half of them are.
Looking at these numbers also raised another question for me: Are Festival’s cash buyers concentrated in certain price ranges, or are they spread throughout the market? I’m going back through the same 51 sales to find out. I’ll share that next.
Gene Rusco
HomeSmart | Sun City Festival
