Here are 10 cities where American renters want to move

One measure of a hot rental market is how many people search its apartment listings from out of town.

And by that metric, Hartford, Connecticut, is one of the hottest rental markets in America. So are New Orleans, Salt Lake City, Utah, and Raleigh, North Carolina.

A new report from Zillow lists the large metropolitan areas with the most rental interest coming from out-of-towners, as measured by Zillow searches.

Rental search trends "are an early signal of migration trends," Zillow says in the report. When lots of out-of-towners are searching rental listings in Providence, Rhode Island, or Richmond, Virginia, Zillow says, "it often points to a developing pipeline of incoming renters."

Eight metropolitan areas draw half or more of rental interest from out of town, as of July 2026, according to Zillow's analysis. Some, like Raleigh and Nashville, are well-established boomtowns. Others, like New Orleans and Salt Lake City, are not considered highly competitive housing markets. The analysis covers the nation's 50 largest metro areas by population.

"I think something they almost all have in common is that they have a value proposition in terms of affordability," with relatively modest rents for apartments and homes, said Mischa Fisher , chief economist at Zillow.

The new ranking "is giving us a good indication of where future housing demand will be, both in future rentals and on the for-sale side," he said.

These 10 cities are hot rental markets for out-of-towners

Here are the 10 metro areas with the largest share of rental interest coming from out-of-towners, as judged by Zillow pageviews.

Raleigh, North Carolina. Raleigh has drawn attention as a 2020s boomtown , with a robust workforce and strong earnings growth. According to Zillow, 59% of rental interest comes from out-of-towners, the highest share in the country. The strongest interest comes from neighboring Charlotte, a boomtown in its own right.

Hartford, Connecticut. Some people jokingly term Hartford "America's filing cabinet," because of its insurance firms, but the city has also grown into one of the nation's hottest housing markets . Zillow says 55% of rental interest comes from out-of-towners, the second-highest share in the nation. Much of the interest comes from nearby New York.

New Orleans. By comparison with other cities on this list, New Orleans has had a struggling housing market . But 54% of rental interest comes from out-of-town searchers, the third-highest rate in the nation. And the share of out-of-town interest rose by 3.2 percentage points over the past year, which means New Orleans could be on a hot streak.