Apart from the rest
Baby boomers move up the ranks of apartment renters in San Antonio
Move aside, millennials. Baby boomers are leading an apartment-rental boom in San Antonio.
Among the country’s 30 largest cities, San Antonio saw the eighth biggest spike in the share of renters age 60 and older, soaring 59 percent between 2007 and 2017, according a new report published by RentCafé.
Despite those enormous increases, seniors accounted for just 16 percent of renters in San Antonio (more than 37,000 households) in 2017, the report shows.
RentCafé says Austin witnessed the biggest gain in 60-and-over renters from 2007 to 2017, with the city’s share rising 113 percent. However, senior renters made up only 12 percent of all renters in Austin in 2017, or nearly 25,000 households.
Fort Worth saw the third biggest spike in the share of renters age 60 and older, increasing 95 percent (to almost 21,000) between 2007 and 2017, and in Dallas, the share of 60-and-over renters grew 62 percent (to almost 44,000), putting it at No. 6 for growth among the largest cities. In Houston, the share of older renters jumped 61 percent (to more than 73,000).
In a separate report, rental platform SpareRoom says the number of people 50 and over living with roommates is growing at nearly twice the rate of any other age group. About 90 percent of renters 50 and over say they live with roommates to save money.
“People think of apartment sharing as a young person’s game, but that’s no longer the case,” Tom MacThomas, SpareRoom’s U.S. general manager, says in a release. "The over-50s might not be the biggest group of roommates, but they’re definitely the fastest-growing.”
“There are two main reasons for this, but both have their roots in affordability,” MacThomas adds. “Rents have risen far more over the past decade than salaries. That means some people are lifelong renters, while another group are coming back to sharing, or even sharing for the first time, in their 50s. It’s a trend we see continuing well into the next decade, if not further ahead.”
