Just as prospective car buyers test-drive a new vehicle before purchasing, renters are test-driving new cities online before they commit, offering a key indicator of future rental-hub growth.
Zillow’s August 2026 housing report showed that affordability is the major factor in predicting where a tenant will move, coupled with job prospects. Buffalo, Houston, Dallas, and New Orleans posted the largest year-over-year increases in the share of rental searches coming from outside the areas.
Zillow’s commentary on the report says that renting is how people audition a city before committing, so a jump in outside browsing signals a pipeline of arrivals.
Mischa Fisher, chief economist at Zillow, commented:
“For a decade, the migration story was simple: Leave the expensive coasts for the Sunbelt. What has changed is that renters are finding alternative, mid-sized cities that quietly turned into a bargain while everyone was looking south. And because rental demand runs a step ahead of the moving trucks, this could be a preview of where the country is going, not a recap of where it has been.”
Buffalo Draws the Most Online Searches
Buffalo, Zillow’s hottest market in 2024 and 2025, drew the most action from out-of-town online searches in August, up 4.2% from a year earlier. Houston was up 3.4%, and New Orleans was up 3%.
Several established relocation destinations already received more rental page views from outsiders than locals. In this category, Raleigh was a clear winner, according to Zillow, with 59% of rental listing views originating outside the metro, followed by Zillow’s 2026 hottest market, Hartford, Connecticut, at 55.1%.
Other notable cities include:
- New Orleans at 53.7%
- Salt Lake City at 51.9%
- Nashville at 51.7%
- Providence at 51.5%
“When primary cities become unaffordable, demand tends to migrate to what’s nearby,” Justin Donald, author and founder of The Lifestyle Investor, wrote in Forbes. “Many people who want to live in a major city but cannot afford its housing premiums move to towns within a 45-to-60-minute commute.”
Renters Are Prepared to Move Long Distances
Among long-distance searches, the lure of more affordable markets was a concurrent theme. Washington, D.C.-area renters supplied 23.9% of views on Baltimore rentals, Los Angeles renters generated 21.3% of views in Riverside, and Boston renters accounted for 16.1% in Providence. Further still, New York-to-Hartford represented 6% of Hartford rental views, while Los Angeles renters delivered 5.5% of views in Las Vegas.
“The metros where a renter can actually get ahead, with a bigger place, a real city around them, and enough left over to save, are winning this competition,” Fisher said. “That kind of pull lasts in a way a warm forecast never will.“
While interest from out-of-town renters is a useful screening tool for landlords, it’s not the only one. Interest from local renters is also important; in that regard, relatively affordable markets also dominated. Cincinnati recorded the strongest annual increase in local share, up 8.1% year over year, followed by Jacksonville at 4.6% and Columbus at 3.2%.
Investors Need to Consider More Than Clicks
However, for real estate investors looking for markets to buy in, the calculation has to be about more than following the clicks. Affordability on both sides of the equation—for tenants and landlords—is a key metric.
Zillow’s August rental market update put the typical asking rent at $1,948, up 0.2% month over month, requiring a household income of $77,919. According to Zillow, the typical rents in its most searched cities all fall under this number:
- Buffalo: Typical rent of $1,449 in August
- Houston: $1,643
- Dallas: $1,659
- New Orleans: $1,598
Landlords need to match this data with stats for employment, taxes, incomes, insurance purchase prices, inventory availability, and market stability.
According to Realtor.com’s summer housing report, five of the top 20 saw incomes exceeding the affordability threshold of housing costs at or below 30% of household income:
- Peoria, Illinois
- Akron, Ohio
- Youngstown-Warren, Ohio
- Canton-Massillon, Ohio
- Rockford, Illinois
While this may augur well for home sales, it’s also a good bellwether for investors because buying in these markets will likely result in cash flow when tenants seek to rent before buying or prefer the convenience and affordability of renting in a high-interest market.
Why Mom-and-Pop Landlords Hold the Advantage in Smaller Metros in the Midwest and Northeast
Large institutional investors own the highest percentage of single-family homes in 20 markets, primarily in the Southeast and Southwest, according to the Hamilton Project, as cited by Business Insider.
Although these account for only around 3% of single-family homes nationally, in some Southern cities such as Atlanta and Jacksonville, that share can spike to well over 20%. This leaves many Midwest and Northeast potential rentals largely untouched by larger investors, with small multifamilies offering the advantage of house hacking, FHA financing, and cash flow.
However, competition from other small investors is rapidly increasing. “An affordability advantage never stays a secret for long,“ Zillow’s Fisher said. “The metros pulling outsized attention today are the ones where demand, and eventually rents, are about to firm up. For a renter eyeing Buffalo or Chicago, the window to get in ahead of the crowd is narrower than it looks.”
Final Thoughts: Practical Moves an Investor Can Make When Evaluating a City Today
Before buying in a new city, an investor needs to move beyond the headlines and examine whether rental income will cover a property’s total costs.
It’s more than a basic current-day cash flow analysis; it’s a projected one, too. You need to consider rent growth, vacancies, and landlord concessions. High search activity is a good starting point, but balance it with a look at widespread incentives, such as concessions, which may indicate a landlord is struggling to fill units.
Comparing several rentals in the same ZIP code and property class by talking to local property managers and running cash flow analysis using lower rents, longer vacancies, and a major repair without banking on appreciation is a good stress test because investors can be sure of one thing: Things never go as planned.
Other useful resources include the Bureau of Labor Statistics to check local employment and Census building-permit data to examine the construction pipeline. Heavy apartment construction could limit rent growth, but if it coincides with high employment and job demand, this is an area you’ll want to be in, all else being equal.
