According to new research from Zillow, the rental searches people are making online can tell us where people are planning to move next. The company looked at which rental listings get viewed by people living outside a particular market, and found that certain cities are seeing a real surge in interest from folks considering a move in from elsewhere. This out-of-town search activity is valuable because it typically shows up before actual migration happens, giving us an early look at where relocation demand is building.
Buffalo, Chicago, and Houston are the markets seeing the fastest growth in out-of-town rental searches over the past year. Buffalo topped the list with a significant jump in outside interest, while Chicago and Houston followed close behind. These three cities, along with New Orleans and Dallas, are leading the way in attracting attention from renters who don't currently live there. Meanwhile, some cities like Cincinnati, Jacksonville, and Columbus are seeing strong rental search growth too, but that's primarily driven by local residents searching within their own communities rather than outsiders looking to move in.
The markets pulling in the most outside attention tend to cluster in the Sun Belt and Mid-Atlantic regions, which makes sense given that these areas have been steadily absorbing people relocating from expensive coastal cities over many years. Raleigh leads the country with nearly sixty percent of its rental page views coming from people outside the metro area, followed by Hartford, New Orleans, Salt Lake City, and Nashville. In contrast, the three largest U.S. metros like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago see the majority of their rental searches coming from locals, which is partly just a numbers game since these huge markets have so many resident renters already.
When Zillow looked at where renters actually search across different cities, most of the cross-market activity happens between nearby metros. For example, people in San Francisco frequently browse rental listings in San Jose, and D.C. residents often look at Baltimore properties. When it comes to longer distance moves across state lines, New Yorkers stand out for their willingness to look far south, showing up significantly in searches for Hartford, Miami, Orlando, and Tampa rentals. Other long-distance patterns show Los Angeles residents checking out Las Vegas and Houston renters browsing Oklahoma City.
What I am seeing locally here in the Bay Area and East Bay lines up with what Zillow is tracking nationally. We continue to see San Francisco renters branching out to the South Bay, and I'm getting questions from people thinking about moves to lower-cost regions. The data suggests that while our local markets still have plenty of homegrown demand, we're also watching renters make those decisions to relocate before they actually list their homes for sale, which means we should be prepared for both incoming and outgoing migration trends in the months ahead.
