Denver is the hottest metro area for renters that don’t currently live in the city, according to a new study published Wednesday by Apartment List, an apartment rental search website.

Apartment List’s annual migration pattern study crunches millions of apartment rental searches to decipher where renters are looking to move. The study found Denver to be the most popular destination for outside renters to search, while Detroit was the least popular of the 25 largest metros.

The metros that people are most looking to move to, according to Apartment List.

“With a thriving job market fueled by a years-long tech boom, Denver continues to attract renters from around the country, even as the area’s housing costs continue to increase,” Chris Salviati, the author’s study wrote.

Baltimore is the market with the second-highest share of searches from outside the metro, but the study found that a full two-thirds of those users are based in Washington D.C., so likely looking for a more affordable alternative to the nation’s capital that’s not too far.

The study also analyzed which metros people are looking to move from the most and found that 50 percent of current Orlando, Florida, and Riverside, California, renters are looking at apartments elsewhere. In Detroit, the areas where the fewest people are looking to move, 47 percent of current renters are searching elsewhere.

“Detroit has suffered from a decades-long population loss, and although this loss has slowed in recent years, the area has yet to cement a full revival,” Salviati wrote. “In addition to failing to attract renters from elsewhere, our data also show that many renters currently living in Detroit are looking to get out.”

“However, unlike Detroit, Orlando has a thriving local economy and has been experiencing robust population growth,” Salviati added. “Despite having a high share of users who are searching outside the metro, Orlando also has a relatively high share of inbound searches coming from outside the metro, indicating that the area is experiencing a changing population rather than a declining population.”

Other key findings from the study show that Los Angeles residents are flocking to Phoenix in high numbers, bypassing the more nearby metro of Riverside, California, and Sacramento may become a new hotspot for ex-San Francisco renters driven out by high prices.

The interactive study allows users to search by metro and map migration patterns by specific location.

Email Patrick Kearns

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