Residential Real Estate News
Most U.S. Homebuyers Looking Outside Their Current Metro to Move in Q1
Based on new data from Realtor.com, in Q1 of 2023, an average of 59.6% of all Realtor.com listing page views from the top 100 metros went to homes located outside the metropolitan areas where shoppers live, indicating Americans are on the move. This was an increase of 4.1 percentage points from the fourth quarter of 2022 and an increase of 3.3 percentage points year-over-year.
At 66.2% of out-of-metro views, home shoppers from the West outperformed their peers and became the group that are most likely to search for out-of-metro homes. Because the West has consistently had the largest share of home shoppers looking elsewhere, it saw the lowest year-over-year change in out-of-market home searching.
On the other hand, Northeastern shoppers saw the highest growth in the first quarter, when the share of out-of-market shopping was 4.6 percentage points higher than the prior year. Greater growth in cross-market activity in the Northeast has elevated the out-of-market shopping share from roughly on par with the Midwest and South in 2020 to a clear second place in 2023.
In all four regions, more than half of online shopping traffic went to homes outside of their metro areas. By comparison, only the Western region had this level of outside shopping interest three years ago.
