Tampa’s richest residents are becoming the city’s biggest renters, according to Redfin.

The Seattle-based real estate technology firm has just released a report that found that out of the 50 most populated metropolitan markets in the country, 35 have seen wealthy renters taking up a bigger share of rental properties in recent years.

That includes Orlando, where 10.8% of renters are wealthy, up from 8.5% in 2019. In metro Tampa, meanwhile, 9.4% of renters are considered wealthy or affluent, according to the report. That’s up from 7.9% in 2019.

(In the report Redfin considers a renter wealthy or affluent if their household income is within the top 20% of their metro area’s overall income distribution.)

Elijah de la Campa, a senior economist at Redfin, says the wealthy are choosing to rent because the cost of buying is much higher than renting in recent years. “With mortgage rates near 7%, renting frees up cash for other investments that may be more lucrative than real estate.”

Redfin says the median home sale price in the Tampa market is up 67.4% from 2019. That means the income needed to afford a typical home in the market is up 63.1%

Both are the biggest gains among the metro areas the company looked at in the report.

During that same period, rents have gone up 51.6% in metro Tampa. That too is the biggest increase in the report — but still cheaper than ownership.

Meanwhile, nationally the income needed to afford a median-priced home is up 36.9% from 2019, while rents are up 28.1% according to the report.

There is one caveat in the Redfin’s findings: “Renting in general became less common.”

“In nearly every major metro, the rentership rate declined,” the report says.

“That’s primarily because mortgage rates hit a record low during this period, prompting scores of people to buy homes. The fact that wealthy renters became more common at the same time that renting became less common suggests that many people who switched from renting to owning during the pandemic were not in the top income bracket.”