We’ve lost some millionaires in South Florida.

The tri-county region had about 9,000 fewer millionaire households in 2014 compared with two years earlier — even as the population grew by 87,181 households, estimates Phoenix Affluent Market, a marketing research company that tracks affluent and high-net-worth Americans.

Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties had 102,593 households with at least $1 million in investable assets in 2014, not including equity in homes, Phoenix reported. That was down from 111,679 in 2012, while the total numbers of households grew from 2.1 million to 2.2 million.

David M. Thompson, Phoenix’s managing director, said he’s not sure why. His company’s estimates are based on data from the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Census and Nielsen-Claritas, a demographic research company.

Thompson suggested the data may not include the number of millionaires arriving from outside the U.S. and buying homes here.

University of Central Florida economist Sean Snaith agreed that may be a factor. But he also said some affluent South Floridians have moved to The Villages, a booming retirement community in Central Florida. The Villages was the nation’s fastest-growing metropolitan area for the second year in a row, the Census Bureau announced last month. Between July 1, 2013, and July 1, 2014, The Villages’ population grew from 108,483 to 114,350, the census found.

South Florida’s affluent retirees began moving to the quiet retirement community after the recession ended and their home values began rising, Snaith said.

“South Florida is hectic. South Florida is everything that The Villages isn’t,” Snaith said.

The Villages had the state’s highest per capita rate of millionaire households at 6.3 percent in 2014, Phoenix found.

Meanwhile, South Florida’s per capita rate of millionaire households dropped to 4.7 percent in 2014, down from 5.3 percent two years earlier, Phoenix data showed.

West Coast communities such as Naples and Sarasota have a higher rate of millionaires than South Florida and also have attracted some of the affluent from South Florida, Snaith said.

South Florida still has the state’s highest number of households with $1 million or more of investable assets, Phoenix said.

That has encouraged some wealth management companies to establish offices here just in the last year.

Atlantic Trust Private Wealth Management, which oversees more than $26 billion in assets, for example, recently set up an office in West Palm Beach that will serve the entire state.

“You have a migration of the wealthy, especially from the Northeast, after the bad weather,” said Atlantic Trust Managing Director Brent Fykes, who heads the office.

or Twitter @donnagehrke