Check out this report the kind folks over at RentCafe just sent me:

“With all the talk about renters being squeezed out of the housing market and new high-end construction pushing up rents, we’ve decided to take a close-up look at Census data and see who’s actually driving today’s rental marketplace. We’ve put all our findings in this report here, in case you might be interested in checking them out and perhaps sharing the story with your readers.

While affordability remains a major concern for many low-income renters, there’s a growing number of people that know nothing of – nor care about – the “30% of income on rent” rule of thumb. In fact, there’s a market for wealthy renters and it’s not lacking in demand!

The number of renter households that earn more than $150,000/year increased by 217% in 2015 compared to 2005, with a whopping 1.2 million affluent households joining the ever-growing rental pool in the last decade. Meanwhile, the number of homeowner households within the same income bracket has increased by a much lower 82%.

When broken down by city, things are even more surprising:
– Fort Worth leads the charts with a spectacular 77% increase in the number of high-income renters from 2014 to 2015.
– San Francisco may be the second-most expensive rental market in the US – with a startling $3,472 in average monthly rent – but it’s also home to the second-largest number of renters that earn more than 150,000/year: 57K (who also outnumber wealthy homeowners in the city by 4%). That means that nearly 25% of all renter households in San Francisco are in the upper income bracket – the largest share of rich renters/city in the nation.
– Los Angeles has the third-highest number of wealthy renters in the country, approx. 51K, an 8% increase between 2014 and 2015. Still, the majority of LA renters (59.7%) earn less than 50,000/year.
– NYC is the mecca of people with big paychecks – not much of a surprise there. But did you know the Big Apple is home to approx. 212,000 renters that earn more than 150,000/year (approx. 10% of the total renter population)? That’s nearly four times more than the number of high-earning renters that call San Francisco home and 12 times the number of Boston’s affluent renters.”

The report – which you can find here: http://www.rentcafe.com/blog/rental-market/luxury-apartments/1-2-million-more-wealthy-renters-in-10-years/ – contains many more interesting facts and findings (plus some really cool visuals), that will certainly help you gauge local and national real estate economies.

Thanks for sending my way…makes you wonder why so many of those high income earners choose to rent as opposed to buy.