As renting remains more affordable than buying in many markets around the country, renters are shifting and moving with the tides of housing and their lives, just like homebuyers do.
A new Zillow analysis of rental listing page views found that interest from out of town is accelerating in Buffalo, Chicago and Houston. Buffalo’s out-of-town rental share shot up 4.2 percentage points, with Chicago (up 3.7 percentage points), Houston (+3.4), New Orleans (+3.2) and Dallas (+3) all trailing close behind.
“Renting is often how people try out a new community before committing. When we see a market with a growing share of rental searches coming from outside the metro, that tips us off to a developing pipeline,” said Mischa Fisher, chief economist at Zillow. “A year-over-year surge in out-of-town browsing in places like Buffalo and Chicago tells us a wave of newcomers may not be far behind.”
Other markets drawing increased out-of-town rental interest were concentrated mostly in the Sun Belt and Mid-Atlantic, Zillow noted. Raleigh clocked in the top spot with 59% of page views coming from outside the area, followed by Hartford (55.1%), New Orleans (53.7%), Salt Lake City (51.9%) and Nashville (51.7%).
In addition, Zillow noted that its hottest market of 2026 Providence saw 51.5% of rental page views coming from out-of-town.
The local markets
On the other end of the spectrum, Zillow found that the amount of locals renting within their own markets peaked in Cincinnati, up 8.1 percentage points year over year, followed by Jacksonville (+4.6) and Columbus (+3.2).
As for local page views, New York (76.3% of page views on rental listings coming from locals), Los Angeles (72.9%) and Chicago (69.1%) topped the list.
The cross-metro trends
Neighboring metro areas saw the most cross-shopping among renters on Zillow, as the report stated.
Renters in Washington D.C. looking to move accounted for 23.9% of all page views on Baltimore listings. Similarly, Los Angeles renters browsed Riverside (21.3%), San Francisco renters browsed San Jose (17.6%) and Boston renters browsed Providence (16.1%).
While less common, there were some trends of long distance (at least 100 miles apart) cross-metro shopping. The most common was from New York City to Hartford (6% of page views). Other trends were from Los Angeles to Las Vegas (5.5%), Houston to Oklahoma City (5.2%) and Boston to Buffalo (5%).
New York City renters also had wandering eyes for several other long distance cities, particularly in the South. These included Raleigh(2.8%), Miami (4.8%), Orlando (2.7%) and Tampa (2.4%).
