The Most Popular Places on Zillow to Fantasize About a Home You Can’t Afford

Many of us have spent a portion of our free time over the last two years looking at home listings online—first with aspirations of getting outside of our current four walls, and then out of desperation over the out-of-control real estate market.

Just because we were looking doesn’t mean we were buying (though clearly somebody was), but property listing sites like Zillow and Redfin took note of where people were searching to come up with lists of the most “desired” destinations to move to.

Of course, read these lists with a grain of salt, as they’re based on page views for home listings in certain zip codes, as well year-over-year growth in home values, sale price above listing, and other data points. They are not necessarily an indicator of where people are actually moving to or a complete look at the local real estate market.

The most popular places you probably can’t afford, according to Zillow

The top three towns on Zillow’s popularity ranking are all in unaffordable California: South Lake Tahoe, Calabasas, and Malibu. Properties in South Lake Tahoe average $692,79,2 according to Zillow’s home value index, while the “typical” house in Calabasas goes for $1.5 million.

Zillow also lists popular places by category:

• Beach towns: Newport, Ore. ($428,534); Naples, Fla.; Lincoln City, Ore.
• Retirement towns: Lavallette, N. J. ($874,325); Dunedin, Fla.; St. Pete Beach, Fla.
• Vacation towns: Big Bear Lake, Calif.; Lake Arrowhead, Calif.; Holmes Beach, Fla.
• College towns: Tempe, Ariz.; Claremont, Calif.; Narragansett, R. I.

The hottest neighborhoods in America, according to Redfin

Redfin broke down major metro areas to determine the three “hottest” zip codes in each, though the report used only data from September 2021. Here are the top neighborhoods in the country:

• South Sarasota, Fla.
• East Venice, Fla.
• Englewood, Fla.
• Venice, Fla.
• Nokomis, Fla.
• The Meadows, Fla.
• Chatham, Cape Code, Mass.
• Weston, Fla.
• Lake Lure, N. C.
• Downtown Fort Myers, Fla.

Again, grain of salt, as eight of the 10 areas listed are in Florida. But Redfin’s data gives insight into how long properties are staying on the market and how many are selling above their list price in cities across the country.