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More than 25% of Providence Millennials Still Living with Mom, Study Says

5/10/2018

More millennials age 24-36 live with their moms than at any time in the past decade, according to the latest Zillow analysis. Nearly a quarter of U.S. millennials are living at home with their mom, which translates to about 12 million young adults nationwide. In Providence, 26.2% of millennials still live at home, up nearly 9% from 2005.

Despite a strong economic recovery, the share of millennials living with their moms has been increasing since 2005, when just 13.5 percent lived with their moms. The combination of rapidly rising rents and slow income growth over the past half-decade drove many young adults to either move back in or never move out of their parents' home, but the trend has been persistent even as the U.S. labor market has improved.
Among the millennials living with their moms, almost 12 percent are unemployed and, according to a new Zillow analysis released earlier this week, 28 percent of recent college grads live with their parents, up from 19 percent in 2005.

Results Among Northeast Cities

"As rents outpaced incomes over the past decade, young people turned to their families in large numbers to ease the housing cost crunch," said Zillow senior economist Aaron Terrazas. "But even as the labor market has improved, the family safety net has yet to unwind. Living with parents may allow young adults to pursue work or a passion that may not be especially lucrative, or save enough money for first and last month's rent or a down payment on a home of their own. In booming Western markets, relatively few young adults live with parents, not because rents are cheap but because family is far away. There is also a small slice of this young adult population that has mom living with them instead. Perhaps mom needs extra care as she ages, or has moved in with an adult child to help raise her grandchildren."

More millennials live with their moms in areas where housing costs consume a larger share of income. For example, in Miami, New York, Riverside, Calif. and Los Angeles, more than 30 percent of millennials live at home with their mom. These are also among the country's pricier rental markets where rents typically consume upwards of 35 percent of the median income.

Austin, Texas has the smallest share of millennials living at home with their mom, at 14 percent. Renters in Austin can expect to put less than 30 percent of their income toward a rental payment. Other markets with a small percentage of millennials living with Mom include Seattle, Denver and Oklahoma City.

The median rent in the U.S. is $1,447 per month, up almost 3 percent over the past year. Zillow forecasts rents to increase about 2 percent over the next 12 months to a Zillow Rent Index of $1,475.