Gen Z renter data: Consumer research from RentCafe.com

If you want to reach Gen Z renters, it helps to understand how they think. That’s the best part of Sam Skrobot’s job. As our renter advocate at RentCafe.com, she spends her time on consumer research, getting to know the people we serve in this industry. We recently sat down with her to dig into the latest Gen Z renter data and what it means for the way you market your properties.

Gen Z is our fastest-growing group of renters, and the one we’ve been most curious about. Their behaviors and expectations don’t always match what worked for millennials or the generations before them, and the difference shows up in everything from the photos they trust to the way they want to search for a home.

Below, Sam walks through what Gen Z expects from your marketing, how they behave on social and when they trust AI (and when they don’t). You can watch the recording of our conversation with her at the end of this post.

Key takeaways

• The latest Gen Z renter data shows a generation that runs on trust: 87% use AI tools daily, yet 48% feel negatively about it. But Gen Z rejects unaccountable AI, not AI itself. They want tools that are transparent, reliable and human in tone.
• Authentic, phone-shot content beats polished production.
• Happy renter stories on social media drive 9x more engagement than complaints, and naming a specific property lifts engagement another 73%.
• A conversational search experience outperforms filters. Renters who use Ren on RentCafe.com submit 50% more leads.
• Across social, search and content, the throughline is humanity: real faces, honest information and a human voice.

What do Gen Z renters expect from marketing?

Renters want authenticity

The modern renter journey begins with trust. Gen Z spends far more time listening to peers, influencers and people who look and feel like them than they spend listening to brands, and they expect the content they see to feel authentic. This lines up with the data we saw in our renter media preferences survey data, where 88% of respondents said they’d rather see a tour of the actual unit than a model.

For years, renters expected polish: high production quality in photos, videos and ads. This generation responds to something different. They engage most with content that feels real, approachable and accessible, even when it was clearly recorded on someone’s phone.

Authenticity in marketing isn’t a style or an aesthetic. It’s something to capture.  — Sam Skrobot

Renters want transparency

Gen Z also wants total transparency. All the details we used to save for the bottom of the sales cycle, they want up at the top. Show your fees and the real cost of a lease right away, not after they’ve already fallen for the place.

Renters want real people

They have a strong desire to interact with humans, too. That doesn’t mean they avoid AI (because they use it constantly). It just means they want to feel like there’s a real face and a real person accountable for your brand.

That tension shows up clearly in the data: 87% of Gen Z renters use AI tools in daily life, yet 48% feel negatively about AI. It’s an important number to sit with, because it’s easy to remember only the complaints and assume renters have written AI off. They haven’t. In fact, they use it every day. They just hold it to a high standard, and we’ll come back to what that standard looks like.

How to connect with Gen Z renters on social media

Here’s a mantra worth keeping in mind: Specificity creates relevance, and authenticity creates reach.

There’s a perception that renters only show up on TikTok to complain. Those videos do go viral, but they don’t come close to the engagement happy stories earn. A renter sharing a move-in, a move-out or a new-roommate story drives nine times more engagement than negative content. Talking about a specific property lifts engagement another 73%.

The reach is real, too. In just a few months, one of our local profiles, RentCafe Austin, reached more than half a million renters on TikTok. So yes, there’s plenty of room to grow an audience in this space.

Listening vs. engaging

Marketing isn’t a one-way street anymore. It’s a conversation between you and your customers, as well as among your customers and a wider community. That gives you a rare window into candid, public discussion about your brand, your community and your industry. This is where you can see what renters like, what frustrates them and what your real selling points are.

The important thing is to listen everywhere but choose your moments to speak carefully. Not every conversation needs a promotional message about your brand. Your time to contribute is when you can add genuine value.

For example, if two renters are debating the Lakeview versus River North neighborhoods in Chicago and weighing the trade-offs on transit or restaurants, that’s a conversation you can help with. Find the threads that matter, offer honest answers and create the kind of experience people want to recommend.

To earn trust, you have to be contributing value, not promoting an opinion.  — Esther Bonardi

How Gen Z really feels about AI

Why Gen Z doesn’t trust AI (even though they use it)

This is a generation that values its time and won’t waste it. Gen Z renters reach for AI tools that speed up anything heavy, whether that’s budgeting, building a grocery list or searching for an apartment. They’ll test a few to find the one that gives them the most confidence and moves them along fastest.

The negative feelings come from somewhere else. Part of it is bigger-picture concern about the social, political and environmental cost of AI. Part of it is experience: When a tool doesn’t deliver what it promised, that failure breeds distrust. What renters reject isn’t AI itself, it’s unaccountable AI.

You can see the difference in apartment search. Ask a general AI tool with no connection to a listing site to find you a home, and it’s limited to whatever it can pull from the open web. Feed every listing ever published into one AI, and you get an experience that can meet a renter’s expectations. That’s what we built with Ren on the RentCafe ILS.

When Gen Z will use AI to find apartments

When we asked focus groups how they wanted to engage with our AI, they described something refreshingly old school. They wanted a locator, a broker, an agent … that professional expert who feels human. A nationwide locator isn’t practical, but a conversational experience is, so we built Ren and gave it a human name based on what renters told us.

Ren lets renters self-qualify the way they would with a real estate agent. They lead with their story, then layer in the lifestyle details that matter most. Ren prioritizes them in ways a filter can’t:

• “I want to be close to the light rail.”
• “A quiet street matters to me.”
• “Dog-friendly is the most important thing, above everything else.”

Those conversations produce tailored results that fit far better than a filtered search, and the behavior follows the experience. So far, we’re seeing that renters who use Ren submit 50% more leads.

Paradigm shifts for Gen Z renters

A lot of what this data points to runs against habits the industry has held for years. Here are a few of the mindset shifts worth making.

• “I can’t have my on-site team capture photos.” You can, and you should. Renters want to see something real.
• “I should promote my business everywhere online.” Listen first. Renters don’t want a brand that talks just to talk.
• “I should use AI to sharpen my content.” Be careful. Gen Z rejects unaccountable AI, and synthetic imagery is a fast way to lose their trust.
• “Fees can wait.” They can’t. We’ve gone from “call for fees” to “show the fees,” and now renters expect the total leasing cost, with breakdowns, up front.

The future of apartment search

Pull all this together and a clear theme emerges. For all the new technology, Gen Z keeps asking for the same thing: a little more humanity. That’s what they want to see across your marketing.

• Human voices in your promotion
• Human honesty in your content
• Human style in your search conversations

Watch the full conversation

More about RentCafe.com

Have you visited our ILS lately? If you haven’t, you should. The website got a major update, and there’s a new Apartment Search by RentCafe app. RentCafe.com is trusted by more than 35 million renters to help them find their happy place.

If you’re hoping for more renter insights, stay tuned because we’ll be hearing a lot more from our friends at the ILS soon.