Model Binding not working

Just to contribute another possible reason: I've spent couple of hours looking for an error in my code and the reason for the binder not working in my case was using a model with public fields rather than public properties:

public int CustomerName;

and it should be:

public int CustomerName { get; set; }

Been working on ASP.NET MVC for 3 years now and I never came across this before. Hope it saves somebody some frustration ;)

Here's the problem:

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Create(LocationViewModel location)

Do you see it? It's the name of your action argument: location.

Look at your view model now, it has a property named Location:

public Location Location { get; set; }

This confuses the model binder. It no longer knows whether you need to bind the LocationViewModel or its property.

So simply rename to avoid the conflict:

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Create(LocationViewModel model)