Most-Loved Neighborhoods Showcase the Nation's Lust for Luxury, Leisure and Possibility

• The Oaks, a luxury community in the LA metro area, was the nation's most-loved neighborhood in 2018.
• The most-favorited neighborhoods in the United States' 35 largest metros include luxury gated communities and up-and-coming urban locales.

U.S. home shoppers shared plenty of love in 2018, and where was it spread shows the nation's affinity for luxury, leisure and opportunity. With Valentine's Day around the corner, Zillow identified the neighborhoods in the nation's largest markets that received the most "love"[1] in the last calendar year.

The list of most-loved neighborhoods ranges from upscale enclaves, to popular vacation/retirement communities and previously tired neighborhoods undergoing revitalization.

No neighborhood in the country received more love per home in 2018 than The Oaks, a luxury gated community in Calabasas, a city in the Los Angeles metro area. The affluent community – where many celebrities including Britney Spears, Ozzy Osbourne and Jennifer Lopez have lived over the years – features a median home value of $3 million.

Upscale neighborhoods on the other side of the country received plenty of love, too. Lake Nona Estates, a neighborhood in Southeast Orlando with a median home value of $1.49 million, is the most loved neighborhood in the area. The Atlanta neighborhood of Kingswood – median home value $1.59 million –  also proved to be a strong object of desire for home shoppers and/or voyeuristic home dreamers.

But it's not just the swanky neighborhoods that get all the love: U.S. home shoppers are also enamored with vacation spots and locales that facilitate popular leisure activities. Ellisville, a small community located south of Boston near Cape Cod, received more love per home in 2018 than any other neighborhood in the Boston metro. Another coastal locale, South Beach in Carlsbad, Calif., is the most loved neighborhood in the San Diego metro area.

Some gated communities on both coasts were recipients of plenty of love as well. Pineapple Park – Ibis, in West Palm Beach, Miami, Fla., and Escena in Palm Springs, Calif. – both neighborhoods situated on golf courses and popular with vacationers and retirees — received more love per home than any other district in their respective metros.

It's also apparent that many home shoppers love the prospect of investment opportunities. In several of the nation's largest markets, the most-loved neighborhood is one situated near a city center, with a median home value that is swiftly increasing but still low relative to the metro. Added attention to neighborhoods meeting these criteria could suggest that people expect the country's urbanization to continue – and that many may hope to profit as the relative value of these urban properties to increase.

For example, the Manayunk neighborhood in Philadelphia, a historically working-class community that has been redefined as trendy and popular with upper middle-class professionals and families over the past few years, was the most-saved neighborhood in the Philly metro area. In 2000, the median Manayunk home was worth just $73,300, or 61.8 percent of the value of a typical Philadelphia metro area home. Today, a home in Manayunk is worth $225,200, or 97.2 percent of the metro's median value ($231,800 as of December 2018).

Similar trends have taken place in neighborhoods like Minneapolis's Mckinley neighborhood and Old North Sacramento, Calif. (both the most-loved neighborhoods in their respective metros). However, despite this rapid growth, both relative and absolute, over the past two decades, recent slowdowns may now be tempering investors' expectations: The median home value in the Manayunk neighborhood decreased in 2018 by 1.7 percent.

Slowing home growth nationwide may have put some dreams of immediate value gains heading into 2019 on hold. But, in all likelihood, our collective fascination with the luxurious, the leisurely and the longer-term possibility of riches will not waver as the year rolls on.

 

[1] Zillow defined a region's "most-loved" neighborhood as the one having the highest rate of net user saves (saves minus Un-saves) per household – indicated as a clickable heart icon on a given home's details page on Zillow.

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