Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco - Mexico is the preferred destination for U.S. citizens looking to buy second homes in the Americas, according to a study by real estate website Point2Homes.

To compile this data, they ranked US users' Google searches from January 2017 to January 2018 using keywords regarding homes for sale abroad in countries located in the Americas. The countries were then ranked based on average monthly search volume.

U.S. citizens carry out nearly 64,000 monthly searches on Google looking for homes in Mexico. Canada is the second most popular country for Americans followed by Puerto Rico, Costa Rica and Belize.

Puerto Vallarta is the most sought-after destination in Mexico with 10,230 monthly searches for this resort town alone. The city is located on the Pacific coast, in Jalisco state, and is known for its beautiful beaches, world-class restaurants and vibrant nightlife. The city attracted over a million foreign visitors last year and almost 50% of them were from the United States.

The second most popular Mexican city among U.S. citizens is San Miguel de Allende in the State of Guanajuato with an average of 6,990 monthly real estate searches. The city is known for its arts scene and cultural festivals, and was ranked "the world's best city" by readers of Travel + Leisure magazine in 2017.

San Miguel de Allende is followed by Playa del Carmen in Quintana Roo, with 6,500 monthly searches; Cabo San Lucas in Baja California Sur, with 6,000 monthly searches; and Cancún, with 5,380 monthly searches. Searches for property in Mexico City are only at 2,660 per month.

According to Business Insider, approximately 14% of realtors respondents in the National Association of Realtors' Profile of International Activity in US Residential Real Estate said they had a US client seeking to buy a property abroad, and 87 percent of those clients sought to use that property as a vacation home.