Young adults stay in the nest

About 1 in 5 Houston-area millennials (24- to 36-year-olds) live at home with their parents. A report released this week points to rents that have outpaced incomes.

About 1 in 5 Houston-area millennials live at home with their folks, up from 1 in 8 of young adults in 2005, a report shows.

This cohort of 24- to 36-yearolds are choosing to return home (though some never left), likely because of rising rents, incomes that haven’t kept up and a sluggish job market for young adults, according to data released this week from Seattlebased real estate listing and data firm Zillow.

In the Houston area, 22.3 percent of millennials live with a parent, up from 13 percent of young adults in 2005. Among them, 12 percent are unemployed.

The median apartment rent in Houston is $1,558 per month — compared with $1,447 nationally — and renters here typically spend 29 percent of their monthly income on rental housing.

“As rents outpaced incomes over the past decade, young people turned to their families in large numbers to ease the housing cost crunch,” Zillow senior economist Aaron Terrazas said.

“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,” Terrazas added.