You’re not the only one obsessively browsing real estate listings. Zillow, one of the most popular listing sites, drew 10.5 billion visits in 2022 — nearly doubling the 6.3 billion visits it got in 2017. Much of that was sparked by the pandemic, which upended the housing market and caused a wave of wishful scrolling. (It even inspired a 2021 “Saturday Night Live” skit where surfing home listings became a substitute for sex.)
But where does everyone actually want to go? A new study by HouseFresh examined average daily search traffic for more than 108,000 active Zillow listings in the 100 largest U.S. metros as of Oct. 25, 2022. The company, which specializes in air purifiers, humidifiers and dehumidifiers, initially pulled the data for a proposed study comparing air quality and real estate preferences, but it was inconclusive. What remained was a list of neighborhoods ranked from most to least popular based on average daily visits to local listings. This week’s chart shows the 20 most popular on the list. (Neighborhoods with fewer than 10 average daily visits were excluded from the results.)
Several popular neighborhoods had similar numbers of visits but very different home values, suggesting a mix of daydreams and practical searches. Listings in Northeast Dallas, the most searched neighborhood of all, averaged more than 36,000 daily visits. Zillow puts the current median home value there at $425,393 now, about $100,000 over the national median, suggesting more realistic searches. But Los Angeles’s Hollywood Hills neighborhood was a close second, with more than 32,000 average daily visits. The median home value there, now nearly $2 million, indicates more of a fantasy scroll for most.
California and Texas had four neighborhoods in the top 20, and Arizona had three (all in Phoenix). The Upper East Side and the Upper West Side of Manhattan were the only New York neighborhoods to crack the top 20.
Neighborhoods at the bottom of the list were less telling, their rankings likely driven down not just by local conditions, but because they covered a smaller area or had few available listings. Take the up-and-coming Warehouse District in Durham, N.C., the least searched neighborhood among the top 100 metros. Its listings averaged just 12 daily visits, and geographically it covers only about a tenth of a square mile.
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