Out-of-town home shoppers are driving the new-construction market, drawn by increasingly commonplace price incentives and larger properties—and budget-friendly Sun Belt hot spots are seeing the strongest pull.
House hunters routinely look beyond the confines of their local market online, but that wandering eye is especially pronounced for buyers who have their heart set on a new build, according to the latest quarterly New Construction Insights report from Realtor.com®.
Nationally, out-of-metro buyers accounted for more than 67% of page views on newly built homes this spring, compared to roughly 65% for existing homes.
Simply put, new-home demand is more likely to come from outside buyers than existing-home demand, and this is true across urban and suburban markets.
In several metros, most of them located in the well-supplied South, out-of-towners overwhelmingly dominate the local new-construction scene.
Lakeland, FL, tops that list, with out-of-metro shoppers accounting for more than 83% of new-construction views in the second quarter. It was followed by Cape Coral, FL (82.4%), Port St. Lucie, FL (80.9%), North Port, FL (80.5%), and Durham, NC (80.2%).
Other destinations popular with outside buyers seeking new inventory include Deltona, FL, Charleston, SC, Stockton, CA, Augusta, GA, and Greenville, SC.
Why buy new construction?
“The new builds are competitively priced in these metros, so out-of-metro buyers who maybe did not necessarily have new construction in mind find lots of new builds that fall into their price filters,” says Realtor.com senior economist Joel Berner.
Brian Stephens, a real estate agent and team leader with eXp Realty in Lakeland, notes an influx of out-of-market buyers flocking to new builds, drawn by location and generous builder concessions.
“They have slightly more inventory, and they offer to pay for the buyers’ closing costs and even buy the interest rate down,” Stephens tells Realtor.com. “Why purchase a resale when you can purchase a new home and get a warranty and everything is brand-new?”
According to Berner, two key factors fuel cross-market migration into new builds: affordability and the appealing Sun Belt lifestyle.
Most top-performing destinations attracting outsized out-of-town demand boast new-construction prices near or below the national median asking price of $450,256, down 0.1% year over year, representing the first annual decrease since the start of 2025.
Crucially, top feeder markets for these outsider-dominated metros are major, significantly more expensive urban hubs.
For example, a large share of online interest in Lakeland’s new builds comes from Miami, Orlando, and Tampa, FL. In Cape Coral, cross-market searches heavily come from Miami, New York City, and Chicago.
In Lakeland, the median listing price for a new build in the second quarter was $315,821, more than six times lower than Miami’s median of $1.94 million.
Ready for something new?
South Florida’s turnkey appeal
Ana Bozovic, a Miami-based real estate agent and founder of Analytics Miami and Miami Deal Sheet, stresses that in South Florida, new construction is disproportionately attractive to buyers coming from outside the region. Turnkey status is a primary draw.
“Buyers can avoid the time, complexity, and unpredictability of a major renovation and move directly into a finished home,” Bozovic tells Realtor.com. “Incoming buyers may also place a higher premium on turnkey product than local buyers. They are often unfamiliar with local contractors and the renovation process, and many simply don’t want to arrive in South Florida and immediately take on a construction project. When someone is already relocating a family, a business, or a significant portion of their life, the ability to move directly into a finished product has real value.”
Bozovic points out that there are also logistical advantages to newer construction in Florida.
“Newer homes and buildings are constructed to current building codes and typically offer impact glass, newer mechanical systems, greater resiliency, and efficiencies that can increasingly matter from an insurance perspective,” she says.
At the highest end of the market, Bozovic says that developers are designing new builds specifically for incoming buyers, incorporating the high-end finishes, amenities, services, and overall quality those clients expect.
Then there is an important relative-value component.
“Buyers coming from major domestic feeder markets such as New York and California are accustomed to significantly higher price points,” notes Bozovic. “Even at the new levels of pricing we are seeing in South Florida, many of these buyers are still experiencing value relative to the markets they are coming from.”
In larger, pricier markets, out-of-metro interest in new builds is far more subdued, and even locals are feeling priced out of the new-construction segment.
For example, in Los Angeles, out-of-metro shoppers generated 55.7% of new-construction page views as the median price reached $1.41 million, far above the resale median of $996,016.
“Those of us who have lived here for a long time, or their entire lives like me, didn’t grow up with new development,” Victor Currie, a real estate agent at Douglas Elliman Real Estate in Los Angeles, tells Realtor.com.
“I’m at the tail end of the baby boomers, and it was our generation’s parents and grandparents who watched the citrus fields turn into housing tracts in the ’50s and ’60s,” says Currie. “Locals are more inclined to think in terms of existing homes.”
Currie points out that relocating to L.A. from other parts of the U.S. is an expensive proposition for many, and much of the newer construction is being built farther out where land is less expensive to develop, which can come with the challenge of painfully long commutes.
“In the primary metro areas, the newer builds are likely to be condos, and that can be a more affordable purchase,” says the agent. “It’s very expensive to build single-family homes in Los Angeles because of the high cost of existing land and expensive permitting fees. So newer construction for individual properties in established neighborhoods is logically going to trend toward the higher end simply because the developers need to be able to make a profit on their work.”
Asking price vs. final sale
Nationally, the median price for existing homes in the U.S. shed 2% annually to $408,317 in the second quarter. In other words, the typical new build cost roughly $48,000 more than its pre-owned counterpart, representing a premium of over 10%.
However, builders are increasingly turning to dynamic price reductions and incentives to close deals, even as resellers pull back from that strategy.
In the second quarter, 20% of new homes came with price reductions, compared to 18.6% of existing homes.
“While home resellers are adjusting to the realities of the market and pricing more realistically off the bat, builders are instead choosing to list high and dynamically adjust prices to meet the market as needed,” says Berner.
This divergence between listing strategy and final execution is clearly reflected in closed transactions.
In July, the median sales price of a new home dropped to $393,800, marking the lowest level in five years, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
That final sale figure sits well below the median existing-home sale price of $434,100.
This dynamic suggests that while initial asking prices of new builds often appear higher at first glance, competitive builder price cuts, rate buy-downs, and closing-cost contributions are making final sale prices of new-construction homes more affordable than resale inventory.
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