NEW YORK — After a yearlong search for a second home, Amazon is now reportedly looking to build offices in two cities instead of one, a surprise move that could still have a major impact on the communities it ultimately selects.

New York’s Long Island City as well as Crystal City in northern Virginia have emerged as the front-runners, according to sources familiar with the talks with Amazon.

Selecting those areas would bring more jobs to places that already have plenty. Jed Kolko, the chief economist at job site Indeed, said that choosing New York and the D.C. area would “be a much less radical move than many imagined” and another example of “rich places getting richer.”

The company had originally promised to bring 50,000 new high-paying jobs to one location, which founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said would be “a full equal” to its Seattle home base. Amazon may now split those jobs equally between two locations, The Wall Street Journal reported, with each getting 25,000.

That would beg the question of whether the new locations would be headquarters at all. Kolko said a headquarters is “where the decision makers are,” but it’s unclear where Amazon’s executives — such as Bezos — would spend much of their time. If Amazon decides to split the 50,000 workers in two places, each of those offices would be smaller than Seattle’s, which has more than 40,000 employees.

Virginia officials and some state lawmakers were recently briefed by the head of the state’s economic development office that Amazon was considering splitting up its second headquarters, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Officials in Virginia believe there’s a strong likelihood Amazon will pick Crystal City as one of its sites, but the company has not said anything definitive, according to the person, who was not authorized to speak on the record.

“They’re a real secretive company,” the person said.

One of the other areas the online retail giant is considering is Long Island City, according to a source familiar with the talks. Across the East River from midtown Manhattan, Long Island City is a longtime industrial and transportation hub that has become a fast-growing neighborhood of riverfront high-rises and redeveloped warehouses, with an enduring industrial foothold and burgeoning arts and tech scenes.

Amazon has been tight-lipped about the process and declined to comment on the latest news. There’s been intense competition to win over the company, with some throwing around billions of dollars in tax incentives. Amazon kicked off its hunt for a second headquarters in September 2017, initially receiving 238 proposals before narrowing the list to 20 in January.