Prospective Home Shoppers All In on Las Vegas

Zillow states that Las Vegas is the most sought-after destination for non-local home shoppers, gathering more than 60% of all page views in home searches. 

Sin City saw 61% of all page views, with 17.9% originating from Los Angeles/Orange County—the highest share from a non-neighboring metro in the nation. Riverside, California, accounted for 2.8% of page views for people seeking homes in Las Vegas. 

Trailing Las Vegas was Jacksonville, Florida (56.2%); San Antonio (55.2%); Riverside (54.7); and Raleigh, North Carolina (54.1%). 

"Americans tend to be mobile, regularly seeking out new homes in an effort to balance career opportunities, family needs, and the kinds of lifestyles available in our diverse country," said Zillow Economist Jeff Tucker. "The homes people view on Zillow paint a real-time picture of Americans' changing aspirations and preferences, sometimes years before they show up in public survey data. Search trends from 2019 reveal the ongoing movement of people out of the Northeast, as New Yorkers especially drift southward into the Sun Belt, and a few Midwestern cities where households are likely to stay put—St. Louis, Detroit and Cleveland. And in another way, they demonstrate our curious nature. Whether they're considering a job they don't end up taking, checking out a place a friend just moved into or simply daydreaming about what life might be like in another part of the country, vastly more people view listings in another city than actually move out of town in any given year."

Chicago reportedly has the lowest share of page views of people outside the metro at 16.1%. New York was close behind at 17.4%. 

A pair of midwest metro led the nation in the share of local searches. St. Louis, Missouri, led the nation of searches within the metro at 73.8%. Detroit had a local search rate of 69.1%. 

Gaining popularity is the Washington D.C., metro, as a Redfin report revealed that the Willowsford neighborhood in Ashburn, Virginia, was the No. 1 area to watch in 2020. 

"The affordability crisis has caused people seeking single-family homes to search in areas they may not have considered before," said Redfin Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather. "Homebuyers continue to be priced out of Washington, D.C. and New York, so you're seeing a lot of northerners moving to the southeast, but even people from as far away as California are migrating there. The overall U.S. economy is doing better, so people feel more comfortable leaving the biggest job centers for small job centers. Plus, the southeast is becoming more metropolitan, with new restaurants and amenities that cater to younger people."

Other areas on this list include Bal Harbour in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Wildwood in Charlotte, North Carolina; West Arvada in Denver; and Waverly Hills in Arlington Virginia.