If you experience slow host resolving for *.local domains you can set an IPv6 entry in your /etc/hosts.
Initial page load is really slow, when using *.local domains if only an entry for IPv4 is set.
I usually use automatic vhosts resolving with *.local.benedikt.gr resolving to directories in my ~/www/*, but I ran into problems when using subdomain based Worpress Multisite installations, so I created explicit hosts entries like *.local and de.*.local.
But initial page load was really slow, being stuck at resolving the host. Setting IPv6 entries (::1) solved this issue.
All credits go to Peter Bengtsson who figured this out. Not much explanation is given in his article, but MacOS bonjour service could be the reason, since Macs use the *.local for connecting machines in you local network.