Millions of people visit Zillow each month, and their viewing trends can give a window into where Americans are dreaming of a move. A new dashboard from Zillow Research shows where home shoppers from around the country are searching for homes. 

Among the 50 largest U.S. metro areas, New York is the most insular — 81% of February page views on Zillow for homes in the New York City metro area came from locals. Chicago is next at 71%, followed by Los Angeles (70%), St. Louis (68%) and Minneapolis (66%). 

In 10 markets, less than half of Zillow page views from home shoppers were on local homes in February. Hartford home shoppers had the strongest “the grass might be greener” curiosity — only 41% of Zillow page views for homes in Hartford were from locals. New Orleans (43% of page views on local homes), Riverside (45%), Jacksonville (46%) and Orlando (46%) were not far behind. 

The most common out-of-town searches are from neighbors. For example, 30% of all Zillow page views on homes in Riverside came from Los Angeles, and 22% of the views on Baltimore homes came from Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, 19% of views on San Jose homes were from San Franciscans thinking about heading south, while plenty of folks in San Jose were thinking about moving the other direction, making up 13% of views on homes in San Francisco. And in Providence — one of the hottest markets in the country — 16% of Zillow page views in February were from home shoppers in Boston, perhaps looking for a more-affordable alternative nearby. 

Among states that don’t share a border, the most-searched move in February was New Yorkers investigating homes in Miami. Eight percent of all Zillow page views on homes in the Miami metro area came from New York home shoppers. New Yorkers also accounted for 5% of all page views on homes in Orlando, and 4% on homes in Raleigh, Tampa and Charlotte. 

Other notable far-flung home searches included home shoppers in Houston making up 3% of all Zillow page views in Charlotte, Los Angeles home shoppers accounting for 3% of views in Nashville and home shoppers in drizzly Seattle making up 2% of views on homes in sunny Phoenix.

Methodology

All page view events on Zillow for-sale listings (via both the Zillow desktop and mobile offerings) are tallied and aggregated by the ZIP code location of the user and the location of the listing. Both locations of users and listings were then aggregated to the MSA level if the ZIP code falls within the boundaries of a major MSA. Otherwise, it is tallied as coming from outside of an MSA.