With for-sale home prices still running hot, more would-be buyers are sticking to renting. And as rents start to climb again, renters are widening their nets to cheaper metros. Zillow's data shows the biggest jump in nonlocal rental browsing in Buffalo, New York, plus Chicago and Houston, followed by New Orleans and Dallas. In metros that have already drawn a lot of new residents - Salt Lake City; Raleigh, North Carolina; Hartford, Connecticut; and Nashville, Tennessee - searches from outside the area now beat searches from locals. Zillow notes that rental demand often foreshadows where home sales pick up next.
"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," noted Mischa Fisher, Zillow's chief economist, in a release. "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."
The places drawing the most renter interest tend to be easier on the wallet. The National Association of Realtors put July's national median price for an existing home at $434,100, while Realtor.com shows Buffalo, Chicago and Houston all come in below that mark. On the rental side, several years of relief from new supply are giving way to an uptick. According to Apartment List, August rents climbed relative to July, something that hasn't occurred in four years, though they remained slightly under August 2025 levels.
Most out-of-area rental searches on Zillow come from nearby states. One standout is New York City, where renters are scoping out the Sunbelt, driving sizable shares of traffic to listings in Raleigh and the Florida markets of Miami, Orlando and Tampa. "When we see strong out-of-town interest flowing into a smaller market, it's often an affordability story. So renters in pricier places are choosing or discovering that they can get a lot more for their money somewhere new," said Fisher. "When the flow goes the other direction, into a major metro, it's frequently regional pull, people drawn to a big city's job market or opportunities from nearby."
Even after the big pandemic-era shift south, many Southern cities still stack up as better bargains than the pricier coasts, and lifestyle is part of the draw too. RentCafe's latest "Best Cities for Renters" list includes 37 Southern cities in the top 50, with McKinney, Texas in the lead, followed by Huntsville, Alabama and Austin, Texas. The ranking weighs cost of living, how fast renter incomes are growing, and employment growth, among other metrics.
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