Why Seattle Homebuyers Are Expanding Their Search Radius Beyond Puget Sound

The Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metro registered 83.8% of its views leaving the market, placing it among the strongest nationally. For Puget Sound buyers and sellers, the data confirms what local absorption metrics have signaled for months: the search radius has widened materially.

The National Pattern

Out-of-market views rose from 59.1% a year earlier, with the West leading at roughly two-thirds of all online traffic escaping the local metro. The South posted 59.8%, the Northeast 58.3%, and the Midwest 56.1%. Before 2020, the West was the only region above the 50% threshold; today, every region has crossed it.

• 14 of the 100 metros retained more than half of their traffic locally. St. Louis led at 59.8%, followed by Cleveland, Memphis, Pittsburgh, Tampa, and Louisville. In each case, median listing prices sat below the national average.
• San Jose sent more than 9 in 10 of its locally originated views to other metros. The metro's $1,393,833 median listing sat 225.5% above the national average.
• Los Angeles and Seattle showed the same compression pattern: elevated prices combined with unemployment rates above the national level.

Jiayi Xu, senior economist at Realtor.com, framed the spread as a function of price-versus-payroll math. In lower-cost markets, affordability anchors residents, while higher-cost metros see shoppers routing toward either a cheaper adjacent market or a stronger job center.

What It Means for Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue

At 83.8%, the metro's out-of-market share trails only the most extreme cases nationally. The pattern carries two operational signals for the Puget Sound.

Sellers are now competing for attention against listings drawn from the broader Western corridor and adjacent job centers. A 1,800-square-foot home in King County is being benchmarked against comparable inventory in Spokane, Bellingham, Boise, and Sacramento, markets that did not appear in the same competitive set as recently as four quarters ago.

Buyers have effectively expanded their absorption radius. Median compression in the metro is no longer a local story; it is a regional arbitrage calculation driven by payment-to-income ratios. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue also remains a top traffic source for San Francisco, where median listings sit 133% above the national average, indicating that employment strength is partially offsetting the housing-cost premium in both directions.

What to Track

• Inventory absorption in King, Snohomish, and Pierce counties relative to the 90-day moving average.
• Mortgage rate movement, measured in basis points. A 25 bps shift resets payment-to-income calculations across every competing metro.
• Unemployment differentials between Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue and the metros drawing its outbound search traffic.
• The Realtor.com Cross Market Demand series. Q3 2026 data is the next inflection point.

Expect the out-of-market share to either hold above 80% or compress into the mid-70s by year-end. A reading near 78% would signal equilibrium between affordability pressure and local absorption. Anything above 80% confirms sustained outward migration of demand through the close of 2026.