New data from Chandan suggests that landlords in some cities may need to pay more attention to a key component of their tenant base — schoolchildren. Apartment living is no longer just for childless adults, especially in communities where housing costs are high.
About four million multifamily households include a school-age kid — accounting for about one in five (18.3%) households in the sector, Chandan reported, citing Census data.
The percentage of multifamily households with schoolchildren in the 100 largest metros ranges from 34.6% in Oxnard, CA, to 6.7% in Wichita, KS. Indeed, California is home to four of the markets where the share of residents living in apartments with schoolchildren exceeds 30%, for a total of 109,600 homes in Oxnard, Fresno, Riverside, and Stockton.
Miami ranks fifth with 161,600 households living in apartments with schoolchildren — a 28.9% share of all multifamily households.
Even in metros where the share of apartment-dwelling households with schoolchildren is lower, the number affected can run into the hundreds of thousands. For example, in Los Angeles, the 25.5% share totals 348,000 households, New York’s 24.4% share equates to 600,900 families, Washington, DC’s 19.8% share totals 121.7 families, Dallas-Fort Worth’s 19.3% share includes 136.6, while Boston and Chicago’s 15.5% shares cover 63,500 and 113.1, respectively.
One factor determining where families locate is cost. In addition, markets like Modesto and Riverside in California offer more opportunities to rent garden-style and low-rise multifamily apartments with larger layouts that fuel attraction.
Rents in metros with low shares of school-age children living in apartments tend to be more affordable or below the national average, including Wichita, Scranton, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Kansas City. According to the report, “The persistent affordability of these metros has meant zoning follows a more traditional radial pattern, with multifamily development occurring primarily in dense downtowns.”
For multifamily owners and operators, the data represents an opportunity to measure their tenant mix against local profiles to help improve occupancy, Chandan suggested.
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