By Jann Swanson | Mortgage News Daily
Like their baby-boomer parents before them the millennial generation appears to be starting to drive parts of the housing market. While their delay in forming households and buying homes has been the subject of much comment and research, RealtyTrac says they now appear to be impacting rentals.
The California company recently released an analysis of fair market rents and median home prices in over 500 U.S. counties. The study found that, while buying is still more affordable than renting in many parts of the country, in those markets where the millennial population has increased the most rentals are a bigger bargain.
While the definition of millennial is at rather squishy at best, RealtyTrac used a different one than most studies which peg the birthdates of that generation as occurring between the early 1980s and the first few years of this century. RealtyTrac used the years 1977 to 1992.