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gruez

>My rent alone went up something like 20%.

Your example is certainly atypical. BLS says rent is up 1.9% YOY.

> Look at gas

Mostly correct, up 42% YOY.

> Or wood

Can't find the BLS stats for this, probably because the amount of lumber the median household buys is approximately zero.

> Or food

BLS says it's up 2.6% YOY. Are you sure something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic isn't messing with your perception?

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Housing in my area of the US is booming. Understandably, that means in others, it's doing the opposite, so it probably washes out.

As for wood, I agree not everyone is out buying lumber. But that affects lots of things. Have you priced out a shed, fixing a deck, or new run of fence? It also apparently affects furniture and such to some degree. New home builders near me were putting huge 'lumber' addendums on their previous pricing.

Food is a little trickier. Grocery just 'feels' more expensive, but admittedly, I don't have any data to back that up. I can certainly cede that point.

Lumber was up a lot last year, but now here (PNW) it’s cheaper than pre-pandemic prices. 2x4x8 were $3.70 at Home Depot last week, which is rather cheap.

It was $2.5 for 2x4 pre-pandemic, so still has a room to go down :-)

Lumber as a commodity is almost back to pre-pandemic levels.

https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/commodities/lbs

We are planning on moving and have done decent bit of research. In Fremont, rents have fallen, while smaller areas the rents are going up. In our apartment complex there are numerous empty apartments and a 2BR is 2100$. That's from 2400$ approx one year ago. We are looking at Reno and folks there say a similar 2BR house has gone up from 1200 to 1500. Now we are wondering if the savings is worth the lack of opportunity!!!

So rents in large metros are going down and rents in small areas are going up.

Yeah, my rent went up 0% this year for the first time ever.

Bls rent probably is buffered out by areas of low economic growth and mobility so you don’t see big city rents represented well

Let's try the top 3 metropolitan areas in the US then.

New York-Newark-Jersey City: down 0.2% YOY

Los Angeles area: up 0.8% YOY

Chicago-Naperville-Elgin: up 2.9% YOY

all figures from https://www.bls.gov/regions/subjects/consumer-price-indexes....

I think it's more like rents for wealthy people went up, because wealthy people took no income hit during covid. So not only did rents continue to rise as usual for them, but they lost competition at the low end from the less wealthy spending beyond their means. I'd expect to see rents bifurcate. Without the huge stimulus, I'd have expected asset prices to have raced up, too, as the stock market failed.

By wealthy, I mean top 10-15% of salaries, not any of the definitions that people in the top 10-15% of salaries cook up to make themselves seem working class.

I think person you're replying to has it backwards. The big metros are where people are leaving. Look at rent and housing prices in any mid size city. Take Knoxville, or Orlando, or Louisville, or KC.

Every rental agreement I've had says "rent goes up 5% at renewal" which was yearly.

> Mostly correct, up 42% YOY.

How is that only "mostly" correct?

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