If you picture a first-time homebuyer in the Seattle area, you probably wouldn’t think of 24-year-old Edwin Nino Delgado with his hip-hop posters taped to the wall of his $770,000 Lake City triplex.
He’s nowhere near the age of the typical first-time homebuyer, which is now a record high of 40 nationwide, according to the National Realtors Association. He is also part of a shrinking age group of Seattle-area homeowners.
Saddled by student debt and high rents, many young people are locked out of the Seattle area’s pricey housing market, where median prices hover close to $1 million. Just under 4% of homeowner households in King County were headed by someone under 30 in 2023, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau data — a marked difference from nearly 11% in the 1980s…