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Comment by dpkirchner | Hacker News Reader

Does that account for increased housing prices? It probably doesn't, because housing prices (cash price, per the fed) more than doubled since 2005: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYSTHPI

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>It probably doesn't,

If you did a 30 second search, you'd see it's factored into the CPI, with "Shelter" (which further breaks down into rent and owners' equivalent rent) making up 36% of the CPI basket.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.t02.htm

Unfortunately, your source is offline, so I couldn't see where it got its data.

It's very much up for me. In any case here's an archived version:

https://web.archive.org/web/20241009171432/https://www.bls.g...

I meant the original source, the inflation calculator site. Anyway, thanks for the figures. House prices more than doubled but I guess other things must have become cheaper to compensate.

House prices aren't part of the CPI, but housing (ie. rent and owners' equivalent rent) is. The former is an investment but the latter is the thing you actually consume.

One possible issue is that the largest component (27% out of 26%) is `OER`, which can be detached from reality.

Unless owners are completely in the loop in terms of the rental market (which they likely are not, they don't rent), they may not come up with good estimates for what an equivalent rent would be.

Yes, it's in there. But also, IMO, oer is a dreadful metric. It's very laggy, and more opinionated that it ought to be. Rent is rent, but oer seems neither fish nor fowl. It's a wild survey guess that's off by 6 months.

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