Top Markets for Senior Renters with Roommates
- Southern California (SoCal) metros contain some of the highest co-living rates for senior renters.
- Nationally, it follows that where more seniors rent, more seniors share, especially in large apartment buildings.
- Beyond California cities, metros such as Pittsburgh and Nashville are among the fastest-growing markets for co-living senior renters.
SoCal Emerges as Early Hotspot for Seniors with Roommates
Building on our recent research highlighting the emergence of senior renters (65 years and over) living with roommates, we further examine here trends for this demand segment across the 50 largest U.S. metro areas.
While still at a nascent stage, the senior apartment sharing segment is proving to be prevalent in both large and medium-sized metros, according to the latest Census data¹.
There are, however, signs of a regional pattern emerging. SoCal cities show a higher rate of senior co-living across apartment properties, reflecting the state’s ongoing housing affordability woes.
Within small asset multifamily, San Diego tops the nation with a 14.3% share of seniors living with roommates. This is well above the national average of 4.6%. Other large cities like Los Angeles (5.9%) and Riverside-San Bernardino (4.8%) also top the list.
Rounding out the top five metros in this demand segment are the smaller metros of St. Louis and Virginia Beach; Las Vegas; and the nation’s third-largest metro, Chicago.
Within large asset multifamily, Nashville tops the list, with a 10.4% share of co-living senior renters, dwarfing the national average in this asset class of 3.2%.
SoCal’s Riverside-San Bernardino (7.8%) and Los Angeles (6.0%) are among the top five markets for this segment.
For the large asset segment, the top markets for co-living overlap significantly with higher overall rates of senior renting, as discussed in a recent blog, indicating greater acceptance of apartment living in certain pockets of older individuals.
Fastest-Growing Markets for Co-Living Seniors
Examining the growth of seniors with roommates in multifamily properties further reinforces the co-living emergence in SoCal’s metros.
San Diego saw a remarkable 9.5 percentage point increase in co-living among seniors in small asset multifamily. In addition, Riverside-San Bernardino rounded off the top 10 markets.
The latter also experienced a 7.3 percentage point share increase in the large multifamily segment. Los Angeles also grew by 2.5 percentage points.
Nashville and Pittsburgh are also among the fastest-growing markets for co-living seniors in both small and large asset multifamily.
This data can provide useful insights for multifamily property owners and operators who are looking to attract senior renters.
1 All data is sourced from the American Community Survey (ACS), unless otherwise stated. ACS statistics are sample-based estimates of the compositional profile of the total population in the given year of data collection, and include a margin of error.