Las Vegas is hot and it’s not because of its casinos and vibrant nightlife.

Sin City is the hottest housing market of 2018 based on home price growth. It has become a place where people want to live, not just play. Vegas has benefited from the high cost of homes and generally high cost of living in southern California and other neighboring cities. While Vegas’s home prices have skyrocketed this past year, the southern Nevada city is still among one of the cheaper metropolitan areas to live in the U.S.

“People are coming to Las Vegas. We have been seeing major job creation and diversification in industries,” said Chris Bishop, president of the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors. “All those things together led to a perfect storm.”

Since June, Vegas has led the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-City Composite, dethroning Seattle as the city with the fastest home price growth. Vegas posted a 13.5% year-over-year increase in September. It, along with Phoenix and Tampa, had the biggest gains and largest losses 10 years ago, according to S&P.

“Vegas has been a boom and bust market,” said David M. Blitzer, managing director and chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones. “It was consistently one of the four fastest rising prices cities around and when the crunch came it was one of the cities that went down the most. It seems to be repeating its big swing practice now.”

Home prices are still 20% below its peak, according to Lawrence Yun, chief economist at National Realtors Association. Home prices plunged 62% to its bottom in 2012 from their peak in 2006, according to ATTOM Data Solutions, a real estate tracking firm.

Although prices have been heading upward, buying a home in Vegas is still far cheaper than most parts of southern California. In the third quarter, median home price in Vegas was $294,600, compared with $628,900 in Los Angeles, $830,000 in Orange County-Anaheim and $650,000 in San Diego, according to Yun. Earlier this year, Trulia noted that people living in coastal California markets tend to migrate to Sun Belt areas, namely Vegas. Similarly, Redfin examined searches from more than a million of its users in 90 metro areas and found the top destination for people leaving Los Angeles is Las Vegas.

“There are many people from Southern California who make a day trip and weekend trip,” said Cheryl Young, senior economist at Trulia. “Some may have realized that things are much more affordable in Vegas and consider a permanent move.”

Population and employment growth have fueled home price growth. The metropolitan Vegas area boasts a population of about 2 million — the city is among the fastest-growing U.S. cities. For the past few years, jobs in Las Vegas have increased at about 3% year-over-year, above the national job growth rate.