- by New Deal democrat
The two national repeat home sales indexes, from the FHFA and Case-Shiller, were reported this morning and both continued to confirm the gradual abatement in shelter inflation.
The Case-Shiller National index (blue in the graphs below) up 0.2% for the three month period ending in January, while the FHFA index (red) rose 0.1%:
But probably more important is that the YoY comparisons continued to show further disinflation, with the FHFA Index up 1.6% YoY, the lowest YoY% increase since spring of 2012, and the Case Shiller national index only up 0.9% YoY, the lowest since the Great Recession’s housing bust except for March through June 2023:
As per usual, since housing prices lead the CPI’s shelter component by roughly 12-18 months, let’s compare the YoY trends (Note: house prices lead indexes /2.5 for scale):
This is solid evidence that we can expect shelter inflation in the CPI to continue to decelerate throughout this year; if anything, the mortgage rate increases associated with the Iran war are only likely to intensify that, with the shelter component ending this year at close to a 2.0% YoY increase.