Data Analysis

Redfin's second-quarter 2026 migration analysis, published September 24, ranks five Florida metro areas among the seven most popular destinations for house hunters searching outside their home market.

North Port ranked second nationally with a net inflow of 5,873 Redfin.com users, followed by Orlando at 5,742, Miami at 5,239, Cape Coral at 4,776 and Tampa at 4,260. Only Las Vegas, at 9,581, drew more relocation interest than any Florida metro.

Redfin published its second-quarter 2026 migration analysis on September 24, and five of the seven most popular destination metro areas in it are in Florida. North Port ranked second nationally with a net inflow of 5,873 Redfin.com users, Orlando third at 5,742, Miami fourth at 5,239, Cape Coral sixth at 4,776 and Tampa seventh at 4,260. Las Vegas led the country at 9,581. Redfin also reported that 18.7 percent of its users looked to move between different parts of the country during the quarter, up from 18.1 percent a year earlier.

Which metro areas are house hunters trying to move to?

Redfin's ranking of the ten metro areas with the largest net inflow in the second quarter of 2026 runs as follows: Las Vegas 9,581, North Port 5,873, Orlando 5,742, Miami 5,239, Sacramento 5,227, Cape Coral 4,776, Tampa 4,260, Myrtle Beach 3,820, Spokane 3,712 and San Antonio 3,685.

Five of those are Florida markets. The gap between Miami in fourth and Sacramento in fifth is 12 users, which is close enough that the ordering of those two positions carries no meaning. The gap between Las Vegas and North Port, by contrast, is 3,708, so the top spot is not in question.

Redfin's own summary describes nine of the ten as Sun Belt metros. That grouping includes Spokane, Washington, which sits nearer the Canadian border than to the Sun Belt by most definitions, so the phrase is Redfin's characterization rather than a geographic fact. The article carries no quotation from a Redfin economist. It is bylined by Dana Anderson, described on the site as a data journalist at Redfin, and no named analyst is quoted anywhere in it.

How much of the relocation demand is aimed at Florida?

Adding the five Florida metros in the top ten produces a combined net inflow of 25,890 Redfin.com users. That is 49.9 percent of the 51,915 net inflow held by the full top ten, and about 2.7 times the figure for Las Vegas on its own. Both calculations are this desk's arithmetic on Redfin's published numbers, not figures Redfin stated.

Redfin did make a state-level claim of its own. The Sunshine State, it reported, attracted more Redfin.com home searchers than Arizona, South Carolina and Tennessee, the next-most popular destinations, combined. The report does not publish the underlying state totals, so the claim can be reported but not checked.

What the five Florida metros have in common is worth noticing. North Port covers the Sarasota and Bradenton area, Cape Coral covers Fort Myers and Lee County, and neither is a primary job center. Orlando and Tampa are. Miami is the state's largest market and, under the geography Redfin uses, also the most misread. More on that below.

Where are the people leaving from?

The other half of the analysis is the outflow side, and it is concentrated in a small number of expensive coastal markets. Los Angeles posted the largest net outflow at 28,652, followed by New York at 27,143, Seattle at 24,728, San Jose at 22,353, Chicago at 18,290 and Washington at 17,787. Boston at 7,611, Denver at 5,816, Minneapolis at 1,893 and Detroit at 1,538 complete Redfin's list of ten.

The six largest outflow figures are each larger than the largest inflow figure. Relocation demand leaves a handful of metros in bulk and arrives spread across many, which is the pattern that has put several mid-sized Florida markets near the top of this list.

Redfin offered a price comparison for the Las Vegas case, reporting that "the typical Las Vegas home sells for $447,000, compared with $922,000 in Los Angeles, the most common origin of people moving into Sin City." It published no equivalent price comparison for any Florida metro, so no cost-of-moving figure for Florida appears in the report and none is invented here.

What does net inflow actually measure?

This matters more than the ranking does. Redfin's stated method, quoted from the report: "Our migration analysis is based on Redfin.com users searching for homes across more than 100 metro areas in the U.S. For this analysis, a metro area is defined at the Combined Statistical Area (CSA) level, which includes multiple Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). The analysis is from January 2021 to June 2026. We identify potential migrants as users who search for homes outside their current metro area. A Redfin.com user must view at least 20 for-sale or for-rent homes in a destination metro during a one-month period to be counted as looking to relocate there."

Three things follow. The measure counts searches on one website, not moves, not contracts and not closings. The population is Redfin.com users, who are not a random sample of American households. And the Combined Statistical Area geography is wider than the market areas most Florida buyers have in mind: the Miami CSA takes in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, so a single figure of 5,239 covers three counties that behave differently from one another. Our own Miami market page and Fort Myers market page track those areas separately for that reason.

What should a Florida buyer or seller take from it?

Search interest runs ahead of transactions, so this is a demand signal rather than a sales figure. It says that out-of-state attention to Florida stayed strong through the second quarter of 2026, and it says nothing about what those searchers paid, whether they closed, or how long listings sat. For the closing side of the market, our Florida housing tracker and the individual market pages carry current median prices, days on market and inventory for each area named here.

For a seller in Sarasota, Fort Myers, Orlando, Tampa or South Florida, the useful reading is that the buyer pool includes a meaningful share of people searching from Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Chicago and Washington, who arrive with different price expectations than local buyers. For a buyer, the same data explains competition for listings that looks stronger than local demand alone would suggest. Neither reading depends on the exact rank order, which is the part of this report most likely to shift next quarter.

Limitations

The figures in this article come from a single publisher's analysis of its own website traffic, and Redfin has no obligation to publish the underlying counts. Net inflow measures home searches, not completed moves, and Redfin's own threshold of 20 home views in a month defines who counts as a potential migrant. The sample window Redfin states, January 2021 to June 2026, describes the data the model draws on rather than the quarter being ranked, and the report does not explain how the two relate.

Metro areas are Combined Statistical Areas, so Miami includes Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach and North Port includes Sarasota and Bradenton. Readers comparing these figures to county or city data will not find them consistent. The 49.9 percent share, the 25,890 combined total and the 2.7 ratio are this desk's own arithmetic on Redfin's published figures. The 12-user gap between Miami and Sacramento is stated to show that the ordering there is not meaningful.

This report was listed on Redfin's main news index on September 24 and 25 with a link that returned an error on both days, and it became readable on September 28. The version read for this article is Redfin's own post at the URL below, read three times, including a final pass that retrieved the page fresh and confirmed every figure headlined here. No figure here is taken from a wire mirror or an aggregator.

Sources

• Redfin, "Las Vegas and Florida Are America's Hottest Destinations For Relocating House Hunters," published September 24, 2026: https://www.redfin.com/news/migration-q2-2026/
• Redfin, Housing Migration News index: https://www.redfin.com/news/migration-news/
• Redfin, U.S. Migration Patterns data center: https://www.redfin.com/news/data-center/migration-patterns/

Disclosure: Jon Brooks is a co-founder of Momentum Realty, a Florida real estate brokerage that owns and funds Florida Housing Intelligence. Momentum has a financial interest in Florida real estate transactions, including in markets named here. See our editorial standards.