Young people are moving back to the big cities, defying the predictions that prevailed in the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic that urban areas would no longer be in demand. Recent data from RentCafe, a sister company of real estate data firm Yardi Matrix, shows that Gen Z, or Zoomer, renters—those under the age of 25—have largely been filling out apartment leasing applications in the traditional gateway cities, including New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Boston.
Overall, the number of rental applications from the Gen Z generation rose by 21 percent between 2020 and 2021, compared to an increase of just 10 percent for renters of all generations during the same period. In the following gallery, we look at RentCafe data for which cities saw the greatest increases in the number of apartment rental applications from Gen Z members last year.
