Portland & Seattle Top List of Cities with Growing Populations of High-Income Renters

Portland ranked third on RentCafe.com’s list of top cities with the biggest increases in high-income renter households.

The city saw a 148% increase in high-income renter households from 2015 to 2020, according to the website’s analysis of census and survey data via IPUMS, a part of the Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation at the University of Minnesota. Nationwide, the same data shows that the number of renters with annual incomes of over $150,000 grew by 82% between 2015 and 2020. The overall number of renters in the U.S. increased by 3.2% over the same period. 

Seattle topped the list, with a 169% increase, making it the nation’s fastest-growing region for high-income renters. 

“Technology titans, such as Amazon and Microsoft, are fueling the employment needs of Seattleites, along with a booming biotech industry. Despite this, not even well-off Seattleites could keep pace with the growth of home prices in the last 5 years: 58%.”

Read more at RentCafe.com.