The proportion of house buyers using cash to buy properties has increased  and id on the up. a third of all purchases were bought by cash, research has found.

Increasing numbers of mortgage-free purchases mean that between January and June, over140,000 sales were to cash buyers out of a total 400,000 transactions, according to a local estate agent.

The South West is the number one hotspot for cash buyers and London saw the least mortgage-free sales.

The number of buyers using cash has grown at a much faster rate than people buying that need a mortgage in 2013 and is at its highest total number since 2008.

 In the first six months of the year, 35 per cent of all properties that were sold have been mortgage-free. This is an increase of over 10 per cent from the same period in 2012, translating into over 13,000 extra sales across England and Wales.