Millennials Rent Fewer NYC Homes Than Their Parents: Report

NEW YORK — It may feel like millennials have taken over New York City, but their parents' generation is actually a bigger force in the real estate market, a recent report shows.

More than 572,000 — or about 27 percent — of the city's renter households were aged 60 or older in 2017, giving the Big Apple the largest share of older renters among the nation's 30 biggest cities, according to the RentCafe report published Monday.

By contrast, just 26.5 percent of the city's renters that year were 34 years old or younger, making New York the only big city where the oldest age group outnumbers the youngest, the apartment search website found.

"However, this might not come as an absolute surprise if we think about the city’s infamously high rents, generally unaffordable to those under 34," the report says.

New York was among just 24 of the 300 U.S. cities RentCafe analyzed where the oldest group of renters was larger than the youngest. The analysis used data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

The city's population of older renters grew 20 percent from 2007 to 2017, tying with Oklahoma City for the smallest increase among large cities, according to the report. That's less than half the nationwide rate of 43 percent, which far outpaced the measly 7 percent increase in the under-35 renter population, the report found.

The Bronx's population of 60-plus renters grew 34 percent from 2010 to 2017, the biggest increase among the five boroughs, according to figures provided by RentCafe. Brooklyn saw the fastest growth in the youngest renters with a 24 percent increase in that time, the figures show.

Renters aged 34 to 59 made up 46.6 percent of the city's renters in 2017, which aligns with the city's median age of 36.6 years, according to RentCafe. The number of renters in the middle age group increased 17 percent nationwide from 2007 to 2017, the report shows.

Read RentCafe's full report here.