Renters in New York are looking to come to Philly and vice versa, according to an analysis of rental search trends in 50 metropolitan areas by Zillow.
The Philadelphia metro area’s top out-of-town market for rental searches was the New York area, as of July. And the New York area’s top out-of-town market for rental searches was the Philadelphia region.
Slightly more than 7% of views on rental listings in the Philadelphia area came from people in the New York metro. In the New York area, which was the market most driven by local searches, 1.6% of views came from residents of the Philadelphia region.
The Philadelphia area has long been a destination for New Yorkers looking for relatively more affordable homes.
Overall, two in five views for a rental in the Philadelphia area came from outside the region. Most searches — the other roughly 61% — came from locals.
In the Philadelphia area, the percentage of rental listing views from out of town grew slightly — by 0.6 percentage points — from last year.
Shares of out-of-town rental searches grew the most — a few percentage points — in the Buffalo, Chicago, and Houston metro areas.
“Renting is often how people try out a new community before committing,” Mischa Fisher, chief economist at Zillow, said in a statement. “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.”
In hot spots such as Raleigh, N.C.; Hartford, Conn.; and New Orleans; out-of-town rental hunters outnumber locals searching on Zillow. These places have been destinations for people living in coastal metros with higher costs.
In the New York metro, more than three in four views on rental listings came from locals. Rental markets in the Los Angeles and Chicago areas also are mostly driven by locals. These three markets are the biggest in the country, so their population sizes fuel higher local search traffic.