Atlanta’s Generation Z could pay about $216K in rent before death

People between the ages of eight and 23 can look forward to paying about $226,000 in rent over their lifetimes, according to a new study by HotPads that compares the nation’s largest metros.

Atlanta renters of Generation Z—also called “post-millennials” or the “iGeneration,” apparently—likely won’t have it quite as bad as the national norm.

They can brace themselves for having to write just $216,200 worth of rent checks before they die.

That is, however, a bit of a jump compared to the $190,700 that millennials (people born between the early 1980s and mid ’90s are projected to pay.

And it’s a far cry from the $165,400 (adjusted for inflation) that Gen Y and Z’s parents, the Baby Boomers, paid back in the day.

But the iGeneration is also expected to break into homeownership faster than millennials tend to—they’ll spend 11 years renting, as opposed to Gen Y’s 12, per the findings.

“While rising rents and home values mean that it won’t be as easy for Generation Z to become homeowners as it was for Baby Boomers, they should get there sooner than millennials did,” said Joshua Clark, economist at HotPads, according to a press release.

“Millennials entered the workforce during the Great Recession—a period of scarce job prospects and strong demand in rental markets across the country—making it harder for them to keep up with rising rents and still put money aside for a down payment,” Clark said.

Millennials, now the most active homebuying demographic in the country, also tend to wait longer than past generations to make “major life decisions” that typically precede home-buying, such as getting married or having children, adding to the total number of renting years, he said.

Generation Z’s median monthly rent is expected to run them $1,640, while millennials enjoy a cool $1,330.

At least Atlanta’s young folks can look smugly at the numbers predicted for San Francisco’s Gen Z renters, who could pay more than $570,000 in rent over the course of their lives.

• How Much Rent Can Generation Z Expect to Pay in America’s Biggest Metros [HotPads]
• https://atlanta.curbed.com/2018/4/11/17222542/millennials-home-buyers-nationwide