From the article, 50% of homes sold in Seattle and its suburbs are foreign investments. That's absolutely insane - totally disincentivising people from actually living there from trying to buy a home. Guess it's time to find another city.
The article does say that, but as a Seattle resident, that really does not sound right to me. As a counterpoint, this article[1] in the Seattle Times says:
Chinese money now accounts for about 55 percent of all homes purchased by foreigners in Washington, the Realtors association says.
and
“It’s definitely helped in driving prices up,” Riley said. In some parts of the Eastside, in particular, she said “we’ve had a large influx of international buyers coming in. They’re the buyer about 50 percent of the time right now.”
That's 50 or 55% in some parts of the market, not the Seattle metro market as a whole. That's a lot more believable.
[1] http://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle-bec...
I suspect this is supposed to read "sold in some of Seattle's suburbs" and probably refers to Bellevue (and possibly Medina) which already has a strong Chinese community and is heavily favored by Chinese investors.
At this time, the article just says "About half of the homes sold in Seattle’s suburbs are going to Chinese buyers," — excluding Seattle proper.
I've spent a fair amount of time pulling together King County Recorder's office data, and I don't believe that number unless they're all doing business as... strings that look an awful lot like names.