Millionaire Renters 2026: The US Cities Where Top Earners Rent

The number of American households earning at least $1 million a year and renting their homes rose 229 percent between the Census Bureau’s 2016-2020 and 2020-2024 survey periods, reaching about 18,400. Millionaire renters grew faster than millionaire homeowners, whose ranks rose 193 percent over the same span. The analysis, built by RentCafe from American Community Survey microdata, finds the steepest growth in Houston, where such households climbed from 18 to 232.

The absolute numbers are small. The direction is not. A growing group of top earners, most of them millennials, is choosing a lease over a deed in the cities where it earns its money. For developers, lenders, wealth managers and city finance officials, that choice changes who the high-end housing customer is and what that customer wants to buy.

Millionaire renters: what the numbers show

RentCafe defines a millionaire renter as a member of a renting household with combined annual income of $1 million or more. That definition matters. Only 4,462 renters earned seven figures individually; the rest reached the threshold through combined income, typically two high earners. The group is income-rich, which is a narrower and more volatile status than being worth a million dollars.

Millennials account for 49 percent of millionaire renters, and their renter households rose 392 percent. Gen X makes up 33 percent, up 147 percent. Gen Z is still marginal at about 2 percent, but its count went from fewer than a dozen households to more than 400. Adina Dragos, a writer and research analyst at RentCafe, put the Gen Z jump in context: “This generation was barely entering the workforce in 2020.”

The occupations are what one would expect: chief executives, software developers, financial managers and other senior professionals. These are people whose income depends on employers that relocate and recruit across state lines.

Houston leads a Sun Belt surge

New York still dominates in absolute terms, with 7,296 millionaire renter households, followed by San Francisco at 1,863 and Los Angeles at 1,532. The growth story sits elsewhere. Houston’s count rose 1,189 percent. Naples, Florida, went from seven to 76; Miami from 51 to 538; Seattle from 50 to 445. Denver, St. Louis and Dallas each more than quintupled.

Houston’s surge looks less dramatic next to its own homeowner base. The metro had 4,374 millionaire homeowner households in 2024, so renters make up about 5 percent of its seven-figure households. Even so, Houston’s millionaire renters grew 13-fold while its millionaire owners grew 3.9-fold, a gap consistent with newcomers testing the market before they buy.

Some smaller metros appeared from nowhere. Lake Havasu City, Arizona, had no measured millionaire renter households in 2020 and 226 in 2024. Charleston, South Carolina, reached 217. A few places moved the other way: Riverside and Santa Cruz in California, and Utica and Syracuse in New York, lost millionaire renters. Doug Ressler, manager of business intelligence at Yardi Matrix, links those declines to migration, wealth creation and lifestyle choices working together.

Tax migration explains only part of the map

The easy explanation is taxes. Texas, Florida, Washington and Nevada levy no state tax on wage income, and Houston, Dallas, Miami, Naples, Seattle and Las Vegas all posted strong gains. RentCafe’s own reading is that remote work during the pandemic pushed wealthy households toward lower-tax metros such as Houston.

The map does not fully cooperate. Los Angeles, in a state with a top income tax rate of 13.3 percent, saw millionaire renters rise 609 percent, the fifth-fastest growth among the metros ranked. Boston rose 381 percent even after Massachusetts introduced a 4 percent millionaire surtax on income above $1 million in 2023. Taxes clearly shape where some high earners settle; they do not override the pull of the highest-paying employers in technology and entertainment.

Mortgage rates offer a second explanation that the tax story leaves out. The average 30-year fixed rate in Freddie Mac’s weekly survey fell below 3 percent in 2021 and reached nearly 8 percent in October 2023. A household earning $1 million can afford a mortgage at either rate. What changed is the economics of buying versus renting a high-end home, and the cost of being wrong about a city one has just moved to.

CEOWORLD Magazine calls this the mobility premium: the value high earners place on being able to leave a city, a job or a tax regime quickly, which a lease preserves and a purchase gives up. For many of these households, renting looks like a deliberate decision to keep capital liquid and location optional.

Reading the numbers with care

Several features of the data argue for restraint. Incomes are nominal. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show consumer prices rose about 21 percent between 2020 and 2024, so some households crossed the $1 million line through inflation and ordinary pay raises. The two survey periods also overlap, since both include 2020.

The local counts are weighted survey estimates, and a metro with seven or 18 such households in the earlier period rests on very few actual respondents. Growth rates of 986 percent or 1,189 percent from that base carry wide margins of error. The national direction is credible; the precise ranking of individual metros is less so. RentCafe excluded metros with very few millionaire households in 2020 from some rankings for exactly this reason.

What it means for developers and wealth managers

For multifamily developers, the customer at the top of the rental market now earns like a homeowner and expects the services of one: larger units, privacy, concierge services and lease terms that suit executives on assignment. Sun Belt metros with fast-growing high-income renter pools are where that demand will be easiest to test, though the small absolute numbers mean luxury rental projects cannot rely on millionaires alone.

Mortgage lenders and private banks face the reverse problem. A household that rents for years may never need a jumbo mortgage, which removes one of the oldest routes into a private-banking relationship. Wealth managers, by contrast, may find more investable assets in clients who have not tied up capital in property. Cities lose less than it might seem: landlords still pay property tax, though high-earning renters may be quicker to leave if local conditions sour.

Executive Takeaways

Seven-figure earners are renting in larger numbers, most of them millennials, and the fastest growth is in Sun Belt metros with lower taxes and high-paying employers.

The shift rewards landlords and wealth managers and weakens one of the main routes by which lenders and private banks have reached affluent clients.

Developers and financial firms should segment high-income renters as a distinct client group, while treating metro-level growth rates as directional given the small samples behind them.

The principal uncertainty is whether high-income renting is a waiting period or a lasting preference. If mortgage rates ease and remote-work policies tighten, many of these households may buy within a few years, as Houston’s ratio of renters to owners suggests. Over the next 12 to 24 months, executives should watch the next release of American Community Survey estimates, luxury lease absorption in Houston, Miami and Dallas, and whether jumbo mortgage originations recover. If the renter count keeps rising after rates fall, the mobility premium will have become a permanent feature of how America’s top earners live.

Key Insights and Takeaways

• Millionaire renters in the United States rose 229 percent between the 2016-2020 and 2020-2024 Census survey periods to about 18,400 households, outpacing 193 percent growth among millionaire homeowners.
• Millennials make up 49 percent of millionaire renters, and their renter households rose 392 percent; Gen Z grew from fewer than a dozen households to more than 400.
• Houston posted the fastest growth, from 18 to 232 households, followed by Naples, Florida, Miami and Seattle, while New York remains the largest market with 7,296 households.
• Only 4,462 renters earned $1 million individually; most millionaire renter households reach the threshold through combined income, usually from two high earners.
• Los Angeles grew 609 percent and Boston 381 percent despite high state income taxes, which suggests employers and mortgage costs matter alongside tax rates in where top earners rent.

Fastest growth in millionaire renter households

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