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Working Paper
Location, Location, Structure Type: Rent Divergence within Neighborhoods
Housing rents are a large share of household budgets and make a large contribution to overall inflation. Rent inflation rates for different types of housing units sometimes diverge, even in the same neighborhoods. We estimate during 2013 to 2016 apartment rents outpaced rents for detached housing in the United States by 0.76 percentage points annually after controlling for location effects. These rent dynamics imply a segmented housing market. They also suggest rent indexes need to be based on data structurally representative of their measurement objective. In particular, indexes based on ...
Journal Article
Comparing Measures of Housing Inflation
Measuring the price of shelter for homeowners is difficult, even when housing markets are stable. A new measure of shelter price inflation uses mortgage, tax, and insurance payments, rather than the implied rental value of homes used in the consumer price index (CPI). The payments method suggests year-over-year shelter price inflation rose 4.3% nationally in July, compared with the CPI’s 5.8% estimate. Conditions in rental markets likely explain this difference. Comparing the varying results nationally and across regions highlights the challenge of accurately measuring the shelter inflation ...