Fed Officials Are Watching for Housing Inflation to Cool. It May Finally Be Happening

Key Takeaways

• Shelter inflation has been a stumbling block for the Federal Reserve in its fight against inflation.
• The Consumer Price Index showed housing inflation rose more slowly in September for both renters and homeowners.
• Prices for newly signed leases have been growing below pre-pandemic levels, but they may just now be beginning to show up in inflation data.

Housing inflation has remained stubbornly high. But that could be changing.

Shelter inflation has been a stumbling block for the Federal Reserve’s fight against inflation, remaining sticky despite overall price pressures alleviating.

Many economists and central bankers have expected government measures of housing costs to fall for months. Inflation measures notoriously lag behind private company data, which shows rent increases have dramatically slowed. The Bureau of Labor Statistics on Thursday released data showing shelter costs rose 4.9% over the year, the slowest increase since March 2022 and a reversal from August’s sharp uptick.

For some Fed officials, this could be the data they had been waiting to see. At an event before the inflation data was released, Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari said officials were happy with overall pricing trends but were still waiting for housing inflation to cool.

“We think we have a lot of confidence that housing inflation should continue to trend down because we can look at new rents,” Kashkari said. “New rental inflation is way down. That takes 12 to 24 months to roll over into housing inflation.”

At a bankers’ conference earlier this week, Boston Fed President Susan Collins described shelter as the “stickiest” component to inflation and noted that it was still above its pre-pandemic averages.

“There are good reasons to think that this stickiness in current shelter inflation reflects existing rents still catching up to new market rents,” Collins said. “Rent growth for newly signed leases has been at or below its pre-pandemic range for many months.”

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