More rich millennials are abandoning New York than any other state - and they're not the only ones fleeing the high cost of living
- Rich millennials are abandoning New York.
- It's the top state they're moving away from, according to a new SmartAsset study.
- They're not the only ones - wealthy bankers in New York City are also fleeing the city's high cost of living in search of more affordable housing.
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Rich millennials are over New York.
According to a new SmartAsset study, New York is the number one state rich millennials are moving away from. The report used data from the IRS 2015 to 2016 tax year to take a look at the states wealthy millennials are moving to.
It defined rich millennials as those individuals younger than 35 who have an adjusted gross income of $100,000 or more. SmartAsset ranked each state by net migration, which it determined by subtracting the number of millennials moving out of the state from the number of millennials moving into the state.
It found that 4,867 rich millennials left New York during the one-year period - 10,048 moved into the state, while 14,915 moved out.
That's more than twice the number of rich millennials who, in the same time period, left Illinois, the state that saw the second-largest amount of rich millennials moving out (2,248). About 35% more rich millennials left New York than moved to California, which ranks as the state attracting the most rich millennials, AJ Smith, SmartAsset's VP of Financial Education, told Business Insider.
Even their less affluent generational peers aren't drawn to New York - or at least not to its namesake city. A previous SmartAsset report tracked the top cities millennials were settling in, and New York City didn't even make the top 25.
Rich millennials aren't the only wealthy demographic abandoning the state. New York City's high cost of living is causing multimillionaires - particularly wealthy bankers - to flee to more affordable states, John Aidan Byrne of the New York Post reported. In 2016, New York lost $8.4 billion because of residents moving to other states, according to Byrne.
According to Zillow, the city's median rent of $3,400 is twice the national median rent. The city's real-estate market has gotten so expensive that residents are living in vans or houseboats instead of traditional homes. And those who can buy are forgoing apartments in the sky for basements, where they can get more space for their money, reported Stefanos Chen for The New York Times.