Philadelphia among top 10 cities for rental application approvals

Perhaps not surprisingly, there is at least one benefit to having one of the nation's most happening (and expensive) rental markets: more application approvals. It turns out the same millennials whose outsized debt load precludes them from saving for a sufficient down payment may be the ones moving into all the new apartments being built around town.

A new report from Rent Café lists Philadelphia's 89.2 percent approval rate as the ninth highest in the nation. It also announced that the average income of accepted applicants in the region is nearly $80,000 — about $45,000 more than the city's average income.

Nationally speaking, millennials – the most indebted generation in the country – have a tough time getting approved. But in Philadelphia, they make up nearly 65 percent of the renters. The generation behind them (the report calls them centennials, but we are hoping society settles on something better and more descriptive than that) may have an easier time getting approved because their credit history is more of a clean slate. Today they make up almost 7 percent of the city's renters. Tomorrow there will be time enough for their credit to be besmirched by late payments or negative rental history.