CoreLogic released their Rental Report for the month of April, showing that rents were up 3% year over year, down from 3.4% in the previous monthly report. St. Louis led the country for year over year rent growth at 6.3%. New York won second place with a year over year increase of 5.6%. While Miami and Austin both showed year over year losses between 1-2%. Truflation, who collects economic data from various sources such as; Amazon, Walmart, Hilton, Zillow and more was showing national year over year rents increasing at 2.75%.
Meanwhile in the Consumer Price Index Inflation Report (CPI), rents were up 5.3% year over year. This is certainly being overstated since the way they calculate the data is imputed and lagging and this is keeping the major inflation indexes artificially higher, especially because shelter costs make up almost 45% of the Core Consumer Price Index. But if you were to use the real market rent figures, Core CPI would be closer to 2.4% instead of the 3.4% which was recently reported. Lower inflation points to lower mortgage rates because bond pricing goes up as yields drop as longer fixed return investments become more in demand from investors.
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