High housing costs push renters to seek out cheaper markets and rental options

Prices in the for-sale housing market are showing no signs of cooling off, causing more renters to stay on the buying sidelines. And as rents start to heat back up, too, more tenants are relocating to cheaper markets.

Buffalo, New York; Chicago and Houston are seeing the biggest growth in out-of-town searches on Zillow, followed by New Orleans and Dallas, according to the real estate listing site. Among markets that have already seen significant in-migration, like Salt Lake City; Raleigh, North Carolina; Hartford, Connecticut; and Nashville, Tennessee; out-of-town searches now outnumber local searches, Zillow found.

Rental demand is typically a leading indicator of home sales.

"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," said Mischa Fisher, chief economist at Zillow, 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 markets seeing the biggest renter interest also have lower home prices. The national median price of an existing home sold in July was $434,100, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Buffalo, Chicago and Houston all have lower median prices, according to Realtor.com.

Rents had been easing over the past few years due to increased supply in most markets, but they are now back on the rise. August rents turned positive month-to-month for the first time in four years, according to Apartment List, but they were still slightly lower than August 2025.

While most out-of-town rental searches on Zillow come from neighboring states, the one exception is New York City. Renters there continue to look for listings in the Sunbelt, making up large shares of views in Raleigh and in the Florida cities of Miami, Orlando and Tampa, according to Zillow.

"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."

Despite huge migration to the South during and after the pandemic, these markets remain more affordable than the East and West coasts, so the flow continues. Both lifestyle and affordability are playing into the decision.

In fact, 37 of the top 50 cities listed in RentCafe's "Best Cities for Renters" are in the South. The top three cities are McKinney, Texas; Huntsville, Alabama; and Austin, Texas. This ranking factors in cost of living, renter income growth and employment growth, among other things.