As the housing market has seen vast shifts since the pandemic, so has the types of people looking to buy homes. Over recent years, people who are looking to relocate, whether for family, work, retirement or otherwise, have dominated the home-buying market. Heading into 2026, data shows this trend continuing.
A new report from Realtor.com found that people looking to relocate out of their current market accounted for 61.9% of listing views in the 100 largest metros, down slightly from the peak of 64.7% last year, but well up from the 48.6% seen pre-pandemic in 2019. In addition, the report found that activity in 87 of the 100 largest metros is primarily driven by out-of-market interest.
Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com, stated that due to the significant changes and challenges in the housing market, there has been a “fundamental change in where Americans who are shopping for a home are looking to live.”
“As the ‘lock-in effect’ keeps some owners from selling, those who are moving are increasingly untethered to the market they’re currently in,” she continued. “Whether driven by a search for affordability in the Sun Belt or following the wave of AI-driven job opportunities in the Rust Belt and West, home shoppers are looking further afield than ever before.”
In terms of where people are looking to relocate, Realtor.com found that the Sun Belt metros remain at the top of the list, due to “lower home prices relative to major coastal cities and their strong appeal to retirees.”
Florida claims the top two spots with Cape Coral-Fort Myers and Lakeland-Winter Haven seeing 82.5% and 79.8% of traffic from out-of-market shoppers, respectively. North Carolina follows up in third with Durham-Chapel Hill seeing 78.2% of traffic from out-of-market shoppers.
There was also a Hudson Valley, New York, outlier in spot five, Kiryas Joel-Poughkeepsie-Newburgh, which Realtor.com noted has become a strong alternative to those seeking proximity to NYC but not wanting to face the city’s costs.
Additionally, there have been other large shifts, as 39 metros that were once locally shopped have now shifted to more traffic from out-of-market shoppers. The top five include:
- San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, California: from 33.3% to 58.7% traffic from out-of-market shoppers
- Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Delaware-Maryland: from 28% to 53%
- Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: from 30.5% to 55.0%
- Omaha, Nebraska-Iowa: from 36% to 59.7%
- Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, Michigan: from 29.2% to 52.4%
Realtor.com noted that job market changes are a reason for larger shifts, and specifically pointed to AI-driven jobs as a proponent of this.
“San Francisco is seeing renewed outside interest fueled by AI, while Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are benefiting from multi-billion-dollar AI and cloud-focused data center investments across Pennsylvania,” said Jiayi Xu, economist at Realtor.com. “Meanwhile, booming data center and infrastructure projects in Omaha and Detroit are drawing more out-of-market shoppers to these fast-growing, opportunity-rich regions.”
Some markets still maintain their in-market shoppers as a majority of their listing traffic, specifically some well-known large cities that have higher barriers to entry—NYC, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta and Washington, D.C.
