Price and rent tell you what a place costs. They don't tell you whether people are moving in, whether there are jobs, what it costs to hold a rental there, or what the weather does to buildings. Market Trends now shows all of that, from free public data, for every state, county and ZIP code on the map.
The new layers
Press More layers above the map and pick one:
People and jobs
- Population change, July 2020 to July 2025, from Census estimates
- People moving in: moves from other US places minus moves out, as a share of the population
- Job growth since 2019, the last year before the pandemic, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics
- Household income, the median, from the Census American Community Survey
Housing
- Rent-to-income: a year of typical rent as a share of local household income
- Rental vacancy: the share of rentals standing empty
- Property tax: the typical yearly tax as a share of home value
- Renters: the share of homes that are rented
- Home age: the median year the homes were built
Risk and outlook
- Hazard loss: FEMA's expected yearly damage from storms, floods, fire and earthquakes, per $100,000 of building value, with the two hazards behind most of it
- Zillow's forecast for home values over the next 12 months
Population, migration, jobs and hazard loss are county figures, so a ZIP code shows its county's. The rest are measured for the ZIP code itself.
Click any area and its panel has a new section, About the place, with all eleven numbers. Tap one to map it.
The differences are large
Across the ZIP codes on the map, property tax runs from about 0.5% of home value in the lowest tenth to 1.8% or more in the highest tenth. On a home that yields 6% before costs, that gap alone is more than a fifth of the rent. The typical rent takes about 27% of local household income, and in one ZIP code in ten it takes 39% or more. FEMA's expected hazard damage is about $124 a year per $100,000 of building value in a typical ZIP code, and $326 or more in the costliest tenth: mostly California, for earthquakes, then the hurricane coasts from Louisiana to the Carolinas.
What feeds the score
The goal score now weighs the layers that change how a rental performs. Lower property tax, lower vacancy, more affordable rent and lower hazard loss help an area's Cash flow score. Population growth, job growth and Zillow's forecast help its Growth score. Balanced takes some of each. The panel lists every measure, the ones that count most first, with where the area stands on each, so a score is never a black box.
Income level, the share of renters and the age of the housing are on the map, but they never change a score. They describe who lives in a place, not how a rental there performs.
There is no crime layer. No free source covers crime by ZIP code, and the major home portals dropped crime maps in 2021 over fair-housing concerns.
Sources
US Census Bureau (American Community Survey 2020–2024 and population estimates 2020–2025), the Bureau of Labor Statistics Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (2019 and 2025), FEMA's National Risk Index (December 2025) and the Zillow Home Value Forecast. The Census and labor figures refresh on their own as new releases come out.