Jeremy S. sent me a fun statistic this morning. I love fun statistics. Yes, call me a geek. I’m good with that.

According to Pew, huge numbers of people are paying cash for houses, rather than taking out a mortgage. 59 percent of homes purchased in the state of New York were purchased with stacks of green. 56 percent of the homes in Alabama were purchased with cash. That New York number is even scarier than the Alabama number, when you consider that the average house price in New York is $513,000. Alabama’s average house price is $127,000.

Do you have $513,000 in liquid cash in the bank? I don’t.

This trend of paying cash for home is a nation-wide phenomenon. “Nationwide, nearly 43 percent of all home sales in the first quarter of 2014 were all-cash purchases, up from nearly 38 percent in the fourth quarter of 2013 and 19 percent in the first quarter of 2013. The figure for the first quarter of 2014 is the highest since RealtyTrac began tracking all-cash sales in 2011.”

Who’s doing all this buying? According to Pew, it’s investors or people purchasing second homes.