Nov. 15, 2023 By Ethan Marshall
The kids are not leaving the nest.
Approximately 28% of the 1.2 million millennials and 79% of the 2 million Gen Z adults in New York City have yet to leave their multigenerational homes to find their own place to live, according to a report recently released by real estate firm RentCafe. More than 40% of these young adults said they don’t see themselves moving out within the next two years.
RentCafe cited multiple contributing factors for the high percentage of millennials, born between 1981 and 1996, and Gen Z adults in New York City still living with their families. These include generational adaptation, financial pragmatism and evolving familial structures reshaping the nation.
According to the report, there are 14 million millennials and 23 million adult Gen-Z-ers (born between 1997 and 2005) in the country who share a household with a family member, accounting for the largest generational shares across all age groups. Financial and/or health-related circumstances are cited as the most common reasons for these young adults not going out on their own.
Among U.S. metro cities with the largest share of millennials in multigenerational households, New York City ranks third in terms of percentage, trailing only Riverside and Los Angeles in California, which each have 35%. When it comes to adult Gen-Z-ers, New York City ranks eighth, with 79% still living at home.
The study also indicates that young adults are not leaving the nest until much later in life. The report hones in on 34-year-olds and shows that more are staying at their family homes than in previous generations.
For instance, approximately 20% of 34-year-olds today, are living in multigenerational homes. This represents a higher rate than boomers (18%) and Gen-X-ers (17%) when they were the same age.
The same trend applies to 22-year-olds. The percentage of 22-year-olds living at their family home has steadily increased with each passing generation, from 61% with boomers, 65% with Gen-X-ers, 66% with millennials, and 68% with Gen-Z-ers.
One contributing factor to this generational change is that younger people want to stay at home longer in order to save money for a down payment. Other factors include staying at home in order to care for family members.
For this study, RentCafe looked at the number of individuals living in multigenerational households across 260 metro areas across the nation available from Integrated Public Use Microdata Series estimates from 2022 and 2018. The Integrated Public Use Microdata Series provides census and survey data from around the world.