Out-of-Market Buyers Drive Home Purchases in US Top 100 Metros: Report

Cars travel on the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge in San Francisco, Calif. Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesOut-of-market buyers dominated residential home purchases—especially in areas where data-center campuses and artificial intelligence (AI) jobs are flourishing—in the nation’s largest metropolitan markets in the final quarter of 2025, a new report from online real estate listing service Realtor.com said.According to the cross-market demand report released on Feb. 26, out-of-market buyers accounted for the majority of home purchases in 87 percent of the country’s 100 biggest metropolitan markets. Just under two-thirds of all online traffic viewing home listings came from out-of-market shoppers, up sharply from 48 percent in the same quarter in 2019, an indicator that the residential housing market is experiencing a fundamental shift in buyer demand, Realtor.com economist Jiayi Xu said.