Over the past few years, as home prices have reached new heights, down payments have increased in the tightest markets, a combination of demands from sellers and strategies from buyers to beat the competition.

In terms of single-family home sales, the average down payment jumped to a high of more than 14% of the purchase price this year. This is slightly higher than the 11% in 2019.

In the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, the average down payment for primary residences nationwide hovered around 11%. Since then, it has jumped to nearly 15 percent.

So, where do you need the most cash to buy a home? As you might expect, they are mostly places where prices are above the median or where buyer demand is above average.

Take Santa Barbara (No. 3), for example. The central California coastal city has long been one of the most popular destinations for affluent homebuyers.

Even with a median sales price of $800,000 in September, homebuyers are augmenting their offers with higher down payments, which are a very high 26.4% of the purchase price.

But some of these real estate markets may be more surprising. Bend, Oregon (#8) is a small city that straddles the Deschutes River, about three hours southeast of Portland.

It offers residents an abundance of outdoor activities and natural beauty, but it's hardly the destination to aspire to, as Florida's retirement paradise villa area (No. 1) or Hawaii's tropical paradise of Maui (No. 6) are for many buyers.

Every expert agrees that high demand is the biggest market force responsible for large down payments.

Bianca Griffith, a real estate agent with Re/Max in Boulder, Colorado, says that large down payments [have become] very common during the dramatic rise in home prices over the past few years, especially when competition is fierce.

In Colorado cities (No. 7), new construction is limited, so buyers are competing for a very small selection of properties.

The largest down payments are also the norm in areas that have become vacation destinations, second home havens and retirement destinations.

Down payments for second homes have historically been much higher than for primary residences - well over 20 percent for many years. But even those down payments are growing, averaging more than 26 percent since June of this year.

Increasingly popular beach areas such as Barnstable, Massachusetts' Atlantic Habitat - better known as the Cape Cod metro area - and Hilton Head, South Carolina's golf mecca, are requiring home buyers to pay increasingly high entrance fees.

Doug Payson, a real estate agent with Kinlin Grover/Compass Real Estate in Barnstable, said the entire Cape Cod region was once a vacation destination for a variety of people living in the Northeast.

"We had people from all different income levels," says Payson, who has lived and worked in Barnstable for decades." Now, buyers are getting more affluent."

Other places on the list are scattered throughout the western mountains, attracting skiers, hikers and fishermen. These include Boulder, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho (No. 2) and Santa Fe, New Mexico (No. 9).

They are some of the most desirable and limited real estate locations. What is another thing these places have in common? Many of them are also places where people go to spend their retirement.

Geralyn Vilar, a Realtor with Future Home Realty in the Villages, says she's seen more retirees buying homes for all cash in recent years.

"They're selling homes that they've owned for years up north. They're coming here with all this equity and they can buy outright," Vilar added.

Not all of the places with the highest down payment ratios require such high cash outlays.

In the mid-2010s, the down payment for a home in Hilton Head, S.C., looked more like the average, at about 11 or 12 percent.

But in recent years, the average down payment size has ballooned to more than 20 percent. Coeur d'Alene and Bend are other cities where the size of down payments has grown, showing signs of growing demand in both cities.

Even in the Villages, down payments used to be lower, at about 14%, before soaring to over 26% in the last few years.