Of the top 10 metros where demand among online house hunters is strongest, seven are located in the Sunshine state. Even with a backlog of homes unable to complete the foreclosure process, big price declines mean more people are looking to move to Florida than leave. In fact, one-third of all the home searches in Miami on Trulia.com originate from people living more than 500 miles away. As for who is looking at Florida, there are clear geographic preferences between house hunters in New York and Chicago. New York is the top source of long distance (100 miles or more) home searches for properties along the Atlantic coast and Central Florida (e.g., Lakeland-Winter Haven, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach). Meanwhile, more searches for Gulf Coast homes (e.g., North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota and Cape Coral) come from Chicago than from anywhere else.

 

Where Demand Among Online House Hunters Is Strongest
#	U.S. Metropolitan Area	# of Inbound Searches Per Outbound Search
1	Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, FL	8.80
2	Lakeland-Winter Haven, FL	7.60
3	North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota, FL	6.62
4	Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL	2.59
5	Tulsa, OK	2.48
6	West Palm Beach-Boca Raton-Boynton Beach, FL	2.46
7	Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach-Deerfield Beach, FL	2.44
8	Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA	2.43
9	Charleston-North Charleston-Summerville, SC	2.40
10	Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL	2.30

NOTE: The inbound-to-outbound ratio for a metro area divides the number of incoming property searches by out-of-towners by the number of outgoing property searches by locals looking to leave. A ratio of 2 means that there are twice as many home searches by people looking to move in than leave.

It's really not that big of a surprise that most of these areas are the mild climate, warm and sunny type areas. When you're living in areas that are cold and snowy, it's not hard to imagine living somewhere else. I gues the surprising one on the list is Tulsa Oklahoma. Not sure why people would be especially looking at Tulsa real estate right now?