Over the course of their 20s, New York-based Gen Zers will certainly spend a small fortune on rent.
A new report from apartment search website RentCafe has looked into just how much Zoomers will have paid their landlords by their 30th birthdays — and the sum is enough to buy a house in more affordable towns.
“A Gen Zer in the New York metro area will spend $226,230 on rent by age 30,” the study says. “That’s 13% more than what Millennials paid.”
In addition to the burden of higher rent, Gen Z also has to contend with the fact that home prices — as well as homeownership costs including fees, taxes and mortgages — are also prohibitively expensive, and only becoming more so.
Excluding downpayment, the report found that Gen Z homeowners in New York City will pay $299,110 in associated costs by the time they’re 30, $72,880 more than they would have paid if they had stuck to renting.
Thus, “Renting is a no-brainer for New York Zoomers since the financial leap from renting to owning in their 20s stands at … more than three times the national average,” the report says.
The same is true for young people in other US cities with high owning costs, including San Jose, San Diego, Seattle, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
It’s not all worse than it was for Millennials, though: Gen Z does have the advantage of making significantly more money than their older peers.
Over the course of their first decade of adulthood, RentCafe found that, nationwide, most Gen Zers rake in close to $550,000, a number that balloons to $1 million in certain coastal metros. Meanwhile, Millennials earned about $480,000 in the same timespan, or $70,000 less.