TC Bulletin: Practice & Forms

Foreign buyers spent $45.3bn on American homes, and 48% of them skipped the lender

TC Bulletin Staff — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

NAR's 2026 survey counts 67,100 purchases concentrated in Florida, California and Texas. The all-cash share is the figure that rewrites a coordinator's checklist, and the seller side carries a withholding rule most files never meet.

Key points

Foreign buyers purchased 67,100 US homes worth $45.3 billion in the survey year running April 2025 to March 2026.
48% paid all cash, against a median purchase price of $465,000.
Florida took 20% of purchases, California 19% and Texas 12%.
Canada led buyer origin at 16%, followed by Mexico at 14% and China at 11%.
Where the seller is a foreign person, FIRPTA generally requires the buyer to withhold 15% of the amount realised, with a residence exception at $300,000 or less.

The headline number in the National Association of REALTORS annual international survey is a market statistic, and on its own it does not change anybody's Tuesday. The composition underneath it does.

The 2026 edition, covering April 2025 to March 2026, counts 67,100 US homes bought by foreign buyers, worth $45.3 billion, at a median purchase price of $465,000. Canada led origin at 16%, then Mexico at 14% and China at 11%. Florida took 20% of purchases, California 19% and Texas 12%.

The 2026 survey

Purchase volume: $45.3bn (April 2025 to March 2026)
Homes purchased: 67,100
Paid all cash: 48%
Median purchase price: $465,000
Top destination: Florida, 20% (California 19%, Texas 12%)
Top origin: Canada, 16% (Mexico 14%, China 11%)

Half of these files have no lender in them

Forty-eight per cent all cash is the number a coordinator should read first, because a file without a lender is not a normal file with one step removed. It is a different critical path.

No loan contingency and no lender-ordered appraisal means the timeline compresses, and the deadlines that remain carry more weight because there is nothing slow left to hide behind.
Proof of funds replaces the pre-approval as the document that has to be chased, verified and dated.
Nobody is underwriting the buyer on your behalf. The lender's incidental checks on identity and source of funds simply are not happening.
Closing-week wire exposure rises rather than falls, because the whole purchase price moves in one instruction, frequently across a border and a time zone.

That last point connects this survey to the fraud beat. An all-cash international purchase is the transaction profile a wire fraud attempt is built for: a large single transfer, parties who have never met, and a buyer unfamiliar with what normal American closing correspondence looks like.

The rule on the other side of the deal

The survey counts buyers. The obligation that most often catches a desk out runs the other way, when the seller is a foreign person.

Under the Foreign Investment in Real Property Tax Act, the buyer is in most cases the withholding agent, and the standard withholding is 15% of the amount realised. The IRS provides a residence exception: where the amount realised is $300,000 or less and the buyer acquires the property as a personal residence, no withholding is required, provided the buyer intends to reside there for at least half the days in each of the first two twelve-month periods after the transfer. A reduced rate is available in a middle band above that threshold, and a foreign seller can apply for a withholding certificate on Form 8288-B to seek reduced or no withholding.

FIRPTA, as the IRS states it

Withholding agent: The buyer (In most cases the transferee)
Standard rate: 15% (Of the amount realised)
Residence exception: $300,000 or less (Buyer must intend to reside there at least 50% of days in each of the first two 12-month periods)
Forms: 8288, 8288-A, 8288-B (Return, statement to the transferor, and application for a withholding certificate)

Read the middle band at source. The IRS describes a reduced rate for residences between the $300,000 threshold and $1,000,000 but the figure is not stated on the withholding overview page. TC Bulletin is not publishing a percentage it has not read in the source. Take it from the IRS page or from the closing agent, not from a summary.

Why this reaches the coordinator

FIRPTA is a tax matter, settled between the parties, the closing agent and the IRS. A transaction coordinator does not determine withholding and should not be asked to. What the coordinator does do is notice, early, that the question exists, and make sure it reaches the people whose job it is before the file is a week from closing.

The signals are ordinary and easy to miss when you are moving fast: a seller with a foreign mailing address, a power of attorney executed abroad, a request to wire proceeds out of the country, a seller who cannot produce a Social Security number. None of these establishes anything on its own. All of them are worth a question.

Where the concentration matters

Half of all foreign purchases landed in three states, and they are the same three states whose unlicensed-assistant rules TC Bulletin has covered separately. A coordinator working Florida, California or Texas files is more likely to meet this than the national average suggests, and is working in the states where scope-of-practice guidance is least uniform.

How to read the survey

NAR's figures come from a survey of its members, so they capture transactions REALTORS reported and are subject to the recall and response bias any practitioner survey carries. They are the best regular series available on this activity, and they are not a transaction count drawn from public records. Treat the shares as more durable than any single dollar figure.

Primary sources for this story

NAR, International Transactions in U.S. Residential Real Estate 2026 edition, survey period April 2025 to March 2026
IRS, FIRPTA withholding

Sources cited

Two years after the practice changes, the settlement still sets the coordinator's paperwork

TC Bulletin Staff — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Written buyer agreements became mandatory on 17 August 2024. The forms work that created is now routine, and there is nothing in the record to suggest it is going back.

Key points

NAR agreed a $418 million settlement on 15 March 2024 in the Sitzer/Burnett litigation.
The practice changes took effect on 17 August 2024.
The settlement received final court approval on 26 November 2024.
The $418 million is payable over four years, per HousingWire's reporting.
The operational effect for coordinators is a written buyer agreement on the front of every buy-side file.

For coordinators, the settlement was never really about the money. It was about a document appearing at the front of every buy-side file, and about compensation moving out of the places it used to live and into places that have to be papered.

The sequence is worth keeping straight, because it is frequently reported out of order. The National Association of REALTORS agreed the settlement on 15 March 2024 in the Sitzer/Burnett litigation, at $418 million payable over four years according to HousingWire's reporting. The practice changes took effect on 17 August 2024. Final court approval followed on 26 November 2024, after the changes were already in force.

How it landed

15 March 2024: NAR agrees a $418 million settlement in the Sitzer/Burnett litigation, payable over four years.
17 August 2024: Practice changes take effect, including the requirement for a written buyer agreement before touring.
26 November 2024: The settlement receives final court approval.

What actually changed at the desk

The checklist gained a gate. A buy-side file now opens with an executed buyer representation agreement, and the coordinator is generally the person who notices it is missing. Compensation terms that were previously carried in an MLS field are now carried in documents, which means they have to be collected, matched against the contract and retained.

The second-order effect is version control. Associations reissued forms, brokerages layered their own addenda, and coordinators working across multiple brokerages ended up maintaining several parallel form sets. Two years on, that is still the quiet cost.

What to watch next

The live questions have moved from the settlement itself to MLS rulemaking around cooperation and marketing, where NAR's newsroom and facts.realtor remain the primary record, and to how individual state associations version their forms. Inman and HousingWire carry the reporting; the association sites carry the documents.

Primary sources for this story

NAR newsroom
NAR settlement facts Practice change reference material
HousingWire Reporting on the four-year payment schedule

Sources cited

The Certified Transaction Coordinator is still the only formal credential for the job

TC Bulletin Staff — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

C.A.R.'s programme runs to 17 hours or more, is open to licensed and unlicensed coordinators, and renews every two years. No national equivalent exists.

Key points

The California Association of REALTORS Certified Transaction Coordinator programme requires 17 or more hours.
It is open to both licensed and unlicensed coordinators.
The credential renews every two years.
C.A.R. also hosts an official transaction coordinator directory.
The California Association of Transaction Coordinators is the only verified TC association; there is no national association of transaction coordinators.

A profession that handles the paperwork on a large share of American residential closings has exactly one formal credential, and it belongs to a state association.

The California Association of REALTORS runs the Certified Transaction Coordinator programme. It requires 17 hours or more of coursework, is open to licensed and unlicensed coordinators alike, and renews on a two-year cycle. C.A.R. also maintains a public transaction coordinator directory, which makes the credential visible to the agents doing the hiring.

The credential

Awarding body: California Association of REALTORS
Coursework: 17+ hours
Eligibility: Licensed and unlicensed
Renewal: Every 2 years

What sits around it

Everything else in coordinator education is private training rather than credentialing: Transaction Coordinator Academy, True North Transaction Services and its TC Exchange podcast, One Stop TC, and a set of general real estate education providers including The CE Shop and OnlineEd. These are useful and in several cases excellent. They are not credentials, and coordinators should be clear with clients about the difference.

On the association side, the California Association of Transaction Coordinators is a 501(c)(6) non-profit and the only verified association dedicated to the profession. There is no legitimate national association of transaction coordinators, despite the name surfacing in search results and in marketing copy.

Correction standing. If a second state association or a second formal credential launches, TC Bulletin will elevate it to standing coverage. Write to the desk.