Real estate investors have long used population growth to identify future spikes in housing demand. But in an increasingly mobile economy, airport traffic may reveal whether a market is plugged in for bigger, more sustained growth.
A new analysis from Zonda chief economist Ali Wolf compares metro population with airport passenger boardings to identify places where air traffic punches above its weight.
“I was thinking about the wave of migration during the pandemic and wanted to better understand which markets are likely to see sustained growth,” Wolf tells Realtor.com®. “I started by looking at job growth and affordability, two key factors that help keep a market attractive over time. But I also wanted to consider connectivity."
Her premise is deceptively simple: Connectivity is a direct proxy for how easily people, employers, clients, and capital can move through a market. And where capital can move easily, housing demand will follow.
By comparing population with passenger boardings, Wolf identified places where the airport is busier than the local population alone would suggest—pointing to growth potential that traditional housing data can miss.
Why flight patterns matter for the housing market—and the top markets to watch
If you’re skeptical that flight patterns have anything to do with housing demand, think about the difference between living in a place with easy, frequent flights and one where every trip requires a layover, a long drive, or an expensive connection.
For frequent travelers like retirees visiting grandchildren, remote workers traveling to quarterly on-sites, or business owners with clients across the country, that proximity can shape whether a market is a realistic place to settle down or not.
In Wolf's words: “Someone might move to a place they truly enjoy, but if they cannot easily visit their grandkids or stay connected to longtime friends, that location quickly becomes less appealing."
Wolf is careful not to frame airport access as a magic formula for finding the next boomtown. Instead, she says, it is one more signal investors and homebuyers can use to understand whether a market is plugged into broader economic and migration networks.
“Comparing airport scale with population rank does not replace traditional housing demand metrics, but it adds an important layer of insight,” she explains. “Airport enplanements reveal which metros are deeply embedded in national and global networks, and which remain more locally oriented.”
But the mismatch itself is only the starting point—the more important question is what is driving it.
Tourism magnets drive second home and STR demand
Honolulu, Las Vegas, and Orlando's mismatch is driven by tourism and business travel, says Wolf.
“For these markets, housing demand is often tied to service sector employment, second homes, and investor activity rather than traditional household formation,” she says.
That makes them particularly attractive areas for those types of investments. Indeed, Realtor.com investor data suggests that dynamic is already visible in some of these markets.
Las Vegas, for example, had one of the highest investor buyer shares among the 50 largest metros in the second quarter of 2025, with investors accounting for 16.8% of home purchases—up 3.9 percentage points from a year earlier.
Nevada also ranked among the top states for investor activity, with investors buying 15.4% of homes statewide.
But that doesn’t mean airport traffic alone is driving the trend. In the investor report, Realtor.com senior economist Hannah Jones notes that investors are also responding to falling demand, rising inventory, and softer prices in Las Vegas—suggesting that connectivity may be one part of a broader investment thesis, and not the whole story.
Regional hubs support sustained growth
Denver and Salt Lake City tell a different story, according to Wolf.
“While Denver and Salt Lake City also benefit from tourism, the scale of their airports is more closely tied to geography,” she says. “Both serve as central connecting points for large regions of the country, allowing airlines to consolidate traffic and offer broad connectivity from a single location.”
That kind of connectivity can give a market a longer-term advantage, because it makes the region easier for employers, workers, business travelers, and relocating households to access.
Denver is a useful example. After the pandemic, local officials laid out an ambitious recovery plan aimed at restoring economic activity to large success—it was one of the top beneficiaries of pandemic-era migration patterns of people and companies.
Recently, though, home values there have been falling faster than in many other major metro areas, as those migration patterns slowed and inventory grew. Today, the city ranks as one of the nation’s weaker large housing markets.
But Wolf’s analysis offers a strong counterpoint, suggesting that a short-term housing reset doesn’t erase the Mile High City's structural advantage. It may be oversupplied or temporarily out of favor, but it still has the kind of infrastructure that supports long-term demand.
Airport headquarters support high-income job growth and buyer demand
Cities with large hub airports also stand out in Wolf's analysis. These airports are economic engines in their own right—employing tens of thousands of people and supporting business travel, logistics, corporate operations, and regional growth.
It's exactly the kind of activity that can create housing demand that doesn't show up clearly in the population rank of a city alone.
North Carolina's Charlotte Douglas International Airport is a strong example. It ranks as one of the busiest airports (ranking 11th) in the country, even though the Charlotte metro sits much lower on the population list (ranking 21 out of the top 30).
Much of that traffic comes from connections (i.e., people who never enter Charlotte's housing market), since American Airlines uses Charlotte as a major hub. But those passengers still reflect the scale of the airport’s role in the region.
Despite its modest population rank, Charlotte has the kind of national connectivity that can make it more attractive to employers and relocating households over time—earning it the title of hidden gem.
Investors may already be responding to some of those signals. The Institutional Investor Report from Realtor.com found that Charlotte had one of the highest institutional-investor shares among major metros from 2015 to 2025, at 4.2% of single-family purchases.
Dallas shows a different version of the same pattern.
Its outperformance is tied to a powerful two-airport system. Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport is already one of the largest in the country, while Dallas Love Field adds another major layer of air service. Together, the two airports handled roughly 51 million passengers in 2025, reinforcing the region’s role as one of the country’s most connected business and logistics hubs.
That economic footprint also shows up in the housing market. Dallas-Fort Worth ranked No. 1 nationally for institutional investor purchase volume from 2015 to 2025, with more than 65,000 institutional purchases, according to data from Realtor.com. In the second quarter of 2025, investors accounted for 16.1% of home purchases in the metro, above the national investor buyer share of 10.8%.
The overlap offers further proof of why the airport signal is worth watching. In some of the country’s most connected growth markets, infrastructure, population growth, rental demand, and investor interest are all pointing in the same direction.
Allaire Conte is a senior advice writer covering real estate and personal finance trends. She previously served as deputy editor of home services at CNN Underscored Money and was a lead writer at Orchard, where she simplified complex real estate topics for everyday readers. She holds an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from Columbia University and a BFA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College. When she’s not writing about homeownership hurdles and housing market shifts, she’s biking around Brooklyn or baking cakes for her friends.
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