It appears that when people visit Vegas, they want to move to Vegas…or so it seems.
Case in point: out-of-town home shoppers seem to be gravitating to Las Vegas.
According to a new report from Zillow, Las Vegas gets the largest share of Zillow traffic from outside of its metro area of any of the 50 largest U.S. metro areas.
Per Zillow’s report, nearly 61% of page views of Las Vegas homes come from non-local searchers, with many of those coming from the Los Angeles area.
As Zillow notes, 17.9% of the Las Vegas searches are coming from Los Angeles/Orange County, which is the highest share from a non-neighboring metro anywhere in the country.
According to Zillow, residents in more expensive parts of the country – like Los Angeles, the Bay Area and New York – are seeking homes in less-expensive areas.
“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 other large metros with a majority of searches coming from outside are Jacksonville, San Antonio, Riverside, Raleigh and New Orleans.
Meanwhile, Nashville, Tennessee has the lowest share of local searches. With just 30.1% of its residents’ searches being done on local homes, homeowners may be looking for a way out of the fast-growing city, Zillow said.
Other metros with the lowest shares of local searches are Salt Lake City (31.1%); San Jose, California (35.3%); Orlando, Florida (37.2%) and Charlotte, North Carolina (39%).
The metros with the largest share of locals goes to Minneapolis-St. Paul, with 24.1% of searches coming from outside the area, which means most current residents likely plan on staying around, Zillow said.
Texans also prefer staying within their home state, with outside searches coming from Houston, San Antonio and Austin. However, Dallas-Fort Worth residents seek out Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Los Angeles residents also searched for homes in Phoenix (2.6%) and San Diego (2.5%). New Yorkers seem to go across the country, from 2.3% searching in Philadelphia and 2% in Miami.
“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,” Tucker added. “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.”
