Are cash buyers squeezing the Whatcom home sales market? What the numbers say
Worried more home buyers from out of the area are pricing out Whatcom County homes from locals by making cash purchases?
Cash purchases are certainly part of the overall local sales market. But the number of homes bought with 100% cash in Whatcom County actually dropped slightly in 2022 compared to the previous year.
Cash buyers purchased 765 homes in Whatcom County in 2022, compared to 773 cash sales made in 2021, according to data from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.
The average sale price of a home in the city of Bellingham was $575,000 last month, while the average sale price of a home in Whatcom County as a whole was $560,000 last month, according to data from Redfin, a national real estate brokerage.
The total number of home sales in Whatcom County dropped more than 10% from the previous year, down to 2,928 in 2022, the fewest sales in the county since 2014. So the percentage of cash home buyers increased from 23% to 27%.
As interest rates increased, fewer home buyers were able or willing to qualify for loans, according to Peter Ahn, the co-owner of Bellingham-based The Muljat Group.
“Cash buyers are unaffected by interest rate fluctuations,” Ahn said in a news release. “In many cases, they’ve either sold a similar property in a market with higher home prices or they’ve built up equity in a local home suitable for their family and now can buy a smaller home without a loan.”
Though the city of Bellingham is still a popular market for out-of-area buyers.
Across the nation, 0.37% of homebuyers searched moving to Bellingham from outside metropolitan areas from December 2022 to February 2023, according to data from Redfin.
Most of those searches came from Louisville, Kentucky; San Francisco; Portland; Los Angeles and San Diego.
