Renters used to search. Now they scroll.

Here is how apartment hunting used to work.

You opened a listing site.
You typed in a neighborhood and a budget.
You scrolled through photos until something looked right.

That still happens. But it is not where a young renter’s day starts anymore.

Their day starts on a video app. And that is where your next renter first sees an apartment.

Where do young adults actually spend their time?

The numbers here come from a large national survey of U.S. adults, run in 2025.

Among adults ages 18 to 29:

1. YouTube. 95% use it.
2. Instagram. 80% use it.
3. TikTok. 63% use it.

Now compare that to all U.S. adults. 84% use YouTube. 50% use Instagram. 37% use TikTok.

The gap on Instagram is 30 points. On TikTok it is 26 points.

And it is not just whether they have the app. It is how often they open it.

Roughly half of 18 to 29 year olds say they go on TikTok at least once a day. Across all adults, it is 24%.

Why does this matter for renting?

Because people find things where they already are.

A young renter in New York is not sitting down on a Sunday to “start the search.” They are on their phone between classes, on the train, in line for coffee. A building shows up in their feed. They stop. They watch the whole thing. They send it to a friend.

That is the search now.

It does not look like a search.
It looks like scrolling.

I want to be careful here. The survey measures app use, not how people found their apartment. Nobody has clean public data on that for NYC yet. But if 8 in 10 young adults are on Instagram, a landlord who is not there is invisible to most of them.

What we built for this

This is why Nessoo has a media engine.

We make organic short-form videos that showcase buildings and lease them up. Across Nessoo’s social media, we reach 40M+ people a month.

That reach is the point. A listing photo waits for someone to search for it. A video finds the renter first.

What should landlords do about it?

Here is what I would tell any owner or leasing team right now.

1. Show the building, not just the unit. The lobby, the roof, the block, the train. Young renters are choosing a life, not a floor plan.
2. Go where the time is spent. If your renters are under 30, most of them are on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. Be there.
3. Make it feel real. A phone video walking through the space beats a perfect wide-angle photo that hides the size.
4. Answer the price question fast. If they have to dig for the rent, they keep scrolling.
5. Be consistent. One video does not build an audience. Showing up every week does.

Here is how I see it

The listing site is not going away tomorrow.

But it is no longer the front door. The feed is.

Renters used to search.
Now they scroll.
If your building is not in the scroll, it is not in the search.

“Your next renter isn't searching for your unit. They're scrolling past it.”

About Gabe Einhorn

Co-founder of Nessoo, the verify-first rental marketplace in New York. He writes every Nessoo Report. nessoo.com