Buyers pay cash in a third of Seattle home sales

This story originally appeared on King5.com

The number of home-buyers paying cash rose to more than 31 percent of transactions, according to RealtyTrac, which released data for November 2015 in Seattle.

Also in December, the median sale price rose to $508,000 — that's 15 percent higher than a year earlier.

"It's a downer," said Tony Aguilar, who was touring open houses in Ballard on Saturday with his girlfriend. "We've come into a few places, thinking about putting in an offer. We found others are already putting in a cash offer. That makes it way more competitive for us."

"I think it's really frustrating for normal people who want to get financing," said Kim O. Dales, a real estate agent showing a $1.8 million home in Laurelhurst. Dales and other agents say buyers are paying cash across the price spectrum.

Cash buyers are sometimes builders or corporate buyers, but they're also wealthy individuals from the Bay Area, investors from China or younger people borrowing money from their parents to compete in a red-hot market, says Dales.