Q2 2022 Cross-Market Demand Report: Interstate Home Shopping Reaches New Heights as Prospective Homebuyers Seek Out Affordability

Highlights

  • In the second quarter of 2022, over 53% of inbound listing views came from shoppers in other metropolitan areas, a marked increase from previous years.
  • Viewers from the Northeast and West regions are the most likely to be searching for homes in different metropolitan areas than where they reside, and are more likely to be searching in less expensive markets.
  • Searches for homes in other states have grown as well, with Virginia leading the way in terms of year-over-year outbound views to other states and New Jersey demonstrating the most growth in terms of inbound views from other states.

 

With listing prices growing across the country and remote or hybrid work becoming a more permanent option for many in the workforce, American home shoppers are more likely to be searching for their new home in a different city or state than where they currently live. In this latest installment of Realtor.com’s quarterly cross-market demand report, we highlight trends in out-of-market house hunting and show the importance of affordability. To find out specifically where demand for homes in your metropolitan area or county are coming from, or to see where shoppers from your market are searching elsewhere, check out our interactive cross-market demand dashboards.

 

Out-of-Market Demand Trends

Since the peak of pandemic lockdowns in the first half of 2020, the share of views of for-sale home listings coming from metropolitan areas outside where the listing is located has increased in every quarter. People are eager to move to new areas, pursuing more affordable living expenses in the face of high inflation, more opportunities for outdoor recreation, jobs in different cities, or to take advantage of work arrangements that allow them to live far from their old office. This trend reached a new high-water mark in the second quarter of 2022, when over 53% of inbound listing views came from shoppers in other metros.

This trend is growing fastest among home shoppers from the Northeast. At 66% of out-of-metro views, Western shoppers continue to be the most likely to be searching for homes out of market, but Northeasterners have gone from 53% in the second quarter of 2021 to 63% this quarter, nearly closing the gap.  

Not only are house hunters from the West and Northeast more likely to be searching for listings in other metro areas, they are more likely to be searching for metros less expensive than their own. In the chart below, we identify the price difference between a viewer’s metro and the metro where the listing they view is located. Over 70% of the out-of-market views by Westerners and Northeasterners are into markets where the median listing price is at least 10% lower than in their own metro, with 63.6% of Northeastern outbound views and 58.1% of Western views going to markets priced at least 25% below the market the viewer is from. Midwestern home shoppers are most likely to be searching for homes in more expensive metros, with 10.1% of outbound views going to metros priced 10-25% higher than their home market and 27.4% going to metros priced 25% higher or more. New York city tops the list of more-expensive metros viewed by Midwest buyers, but following it are a series of sunny southern metros like Cape Coral and North Port, FL, Dallas, Miami, Phoenix, and Tampa.

Another interesting pattern emerges when considering the listing prices in the zip codes where a shopper lives. We grouped each zip code into a price category based on where its median listing price falls in relation to other zip codes in the same metro, classifying them by quartile. Though house hunters from the most expensive zip codes have had the highest share of their views to listings in other markets over the years, the trend really crystallized this quarter. Shoppers from the most expensive quartile of zip codes in their metro searched for homes in other metros 64% of the time, compared to 58% for the third quartile, 53% for the second quartile, and 50% for the least expensive quartile of zip codes. As listing prices continue to grow, shoppers in pricey areas are becoming more and more likely to look for homes in other markets. Shoppers from the least expensive zip codes in their metro are not only more likely to be searching for homes in their own market, but more likely to be searching for similarly priced zip codes than shoppers from the most expensive zip codes, reflecting the tendency for those with less equity built up in their homes to have a smaller choice set when considering a move.

With one glaring exception, the markets that have seen the fastest growth in their share of out-of-market viewership from last year are relatively inexpensive. Excluding San Francisco, which is experiencing a rapid rebound back toward equilibrium from its status as one of the least-viewed markets from other metros, nine of the markets below are priced near or under the national median of $440,650. This table shows the ten markets where out-of-market viewership increased the most from the second quarter of last year along with the three metros that make up the highest shares of their external viewership.

 

Viewed Metro (Median Listing Price) Pct of Views from Out of Market (YY) Viewer Metro Out-of-Market View Share
Burlington-South Burlington, VT 63.5% New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA 16.0%
($451,917) (12.8%) Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH 15.2%
Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV 6.7%
El Paso, TX 62.1% Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ 14.9%
($281,642) (12.2%) Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX 7.6%
Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise, NV 7.1%
Warner Robins, GA 82.2% Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA 30.5%
($282,673) (12.0%) Macon, GA 8.8%
New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA 5.8%
Utica-Rome, NY 60.6% New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA 30.3%
($188,950) (11.9%) Syracuse, NY 20.6%
Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY 9.2%
Birmingham-Hoover, AL 54.5% Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA 19.4%
($284,458) (11.4%) Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI 9.5%
Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin, TN 5.3%
San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA 43.1% San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA 25.0%
($1,125,500) (11.3%) Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA 14.5%
Sacramento–Roseville–Arden-Arcade, CA 6.6%
Midland, TX 65.2% Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX 18.3%
($342,152) (11.2%) Odessa, TX 10.9%
Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV 9.2%
Omaha-Council Bluffs, NE-IA 49.0% Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI 12.7%
($376,983) (10.9%) Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV 11.6%
Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO 6.8%
Alexandria, LA 69.1% Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX 13.7%
($221,950) (10.6%) Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA 12.4%
Baton Rouge, LA 8.1%
Yakima, WA 63.6% Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA 29.8%
($430,000) (10.5%) Kennewick-Richland, WA 13.3%
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA 7.6%

 

Viewers from larger, more expensive markets are heating up demand in these featured metros that offer better affordability. Many come from the same states or regions, but in some cases (such as DC shoppers targeting Burlington, Midland, and Omaha), prospective buyers are looking to move great distances to find homes at the right price.

 

Out-of-State Demand Trends

Broadening our focus to a state level, the increase in the share of home shoppers searching for listings in other states has grown in an even more pronounced way than just searching out-of-metro. From 2018 through 2020, this figure hovered around 29% of inbound views during the second quarters. Last year, it jumped to 32%, and this year it reached 37%. As hybrid and remote work become more common, the barriers to moving to another state have become less obstructive. Now, well over a third of the people viewing the average listing on Realtor.com are doing so from a different state.

The tables below show the states leading the way in driving this out-of-state demand growth. On the left are the ten states in which the outbound share of views to listings in other states has grown by the most year-over-year, and on the right are the states in which the inbound share of views from shoppers in other states has grown the most year-over-year. Interestingly, Virginia is on both lists, as more and more Virginia residents have decided to look for homes in other states (primarily in suburban parts of Florida, North Carolina, and Texas) and more and more non-Virginians are interested in homes in the Commonwealth. This can be explained by separating the portion of the state that is part of the DC metropolitan area (where outbound out-of-state viewership has grown by 23.6%) from the rest of the state (where outbound out-of-state viewership has grown by just 0.4%). However both portions of Virginia have seen strong growth in inbound out-of-state viewership, making Old Dominion a prime example of the interstate demand trends seen across the country. New Jersey, the leader in growth in views from other states, is primarily fueled by viewers from urban areas of neighboring New York and Pennsylvania searching for suburban areas of the Garden State.

 

State Share of Outbound Views to Other States YY State Share of Inbound Views from Other States YY
Virginia 68.9% 22.1% New Jersey 43.8% 12.7%
New York 61.7% 15.6% Nebraska 44.9% 11.5%
North Dakota 60.3% 15.4% Maryland 49.7% 11.3%
Georgia 59.4% 14.5% Virginia 46.0% 10.6%
Illinois 56.3% 11.4% Alabama 58.0% 10.3%
Arizona 48.6% 10.2% Kentucky 56.6% 9.8%
Nevada 60.4% 10.1% Iowa 50.0% 9.6%
Massachusetts 48.7% 6.0% Michigan 29.5% 8.5%
South Dakota 44.1% 5.7% Vermont 75.0% 8.4%
Delaware 50.9% 5.3% North Carolina 50.7% 7.8%

 

For a more detailed breakdown of which states are driving demand in others, see the grid below. On the vertical axis (“To State”) are the percentages of out-of-state views coming from states (and DC) on the horizontal axis (“From State”). For example, Georgia makes up 21.4% of the out-of-state views to listings in Alabama. The rows will sum to 100 but the columns will not, as larger states make up larger percentages.

 

 

Methodology

This report analyzes views of for-sale listings on the Realtor.com marketplace, grouping viewers and viewed listings into their zip codes and metropolitan area classifications to identify patterns of demand between geographic regions. Views are analyzed at a quarterly level. A methodology change from the first quarter of 2022 was instituted: summary statistics for out-of-market and out-of-state viewership are now quoted as the percentage of inbound views to listings across the entire United States. Before, they were quoted as shares of outbound views from the 300 largest metro areas. The revised figures produce more conservative estimates based on a broader data set.


Subscribe to our mailing list to receive monthly updates and notifications on the latest data and research.

  

Sign up for updates

Join our mailing list to receive the latest data and research.