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Report
How do people pay rent?
Using data from the 2014 Boston Fed Bill Payment Experiment and the 2014 Survey of Consumer Payment Choice (SCPC), we investigate how households pay their rent. We find that the dominant methods for paying rent are cash (22 percent), check (42 percent), and money order (16 percent). Electronic methods are still rarely used, at 8 percent for bank account number payment and 7 percent for online banking bill payment, and less than 2 percent for debit and credit cards. Compared with other large bill payments of more than $200, rental payments are much more likely to be made with paper-based ...
Briefing
Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on New England Homeowners and Renters
Job losses and likely layoffs related to the COVID-19 pandemic will put many New England residents at risk of not being able to pay their mortgage or rent and needing financial assistance and state-government safeguards to remain in their homes. Economic interventions from Congress, primarily through the federal CARES Act, include direct payments to households and increased unemployment insurance benefits that are expected to provide vital support to many of these households for the next three to four months. Even with these efforts, 2 to 3 percent of New England homeowners and 9 to 13 ...
Journal Article
Do rising rents complicate inflation assessment?
In the face of falling house prices, decreasing rates of homeownership, and a glut of vacant homes, the Consumer Price Index?s measure of the cost of owner-occupied housing?owners? equivalent rent of residence (OER)?has begun to accelerate, rising at an annualized rate of 2.3 percent over the past six months. Given a backdrop of generally subdued underlying inflation elsewhere in the index, a persistent increase in the relative price of OER?the largest component of the consumer market basket by far?may create upward pressure on measured inflation.
Journal Article
Can Monetary Policy Tame Rent Inflation?
Rent inflation has surged since early 2021. Because the cost of housing is an important component of total U.S. consumer spending, high rent inflation has contributed to elevated levels of overall inflation. Evidence suggests that, as monetary policy tightening cools housing markets, it can also reduce rent inflation, although this tends to adjust relatively slowly. A policy tightening equivalent to a 1 percentage point increase in the federal funds rate could reduce rent inflation as much as 3.2 percentage points over 2½ years.
Journal Article
State of New York City's housing and neighborhoods: an overview of recent trends
This paper was presented at the conference "Policies to Promote Affordable Housing," cosponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and New York University's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, February 7, 2002. It was part of Session 1: State of New York City's Housing and Neighborhoods.
Journal Article
Commentary
This paper was presented at the conference "Policies to Promote Affordable Housing," cosponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and New York University's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, February 7, 2002. It was part of Session 2: Affordable Housing and the Housing Market, and is a commentary on "Government regulation and changes in the affordable housing stock" by C. Tsuriel Somerville and Christopher J. Mayer.
Housing Distress in the Time of COVID-19
As of late July, 12.5% of Americans were experiencing housing distress. Which groups are experiencing the most housing distress?
Journal Article
Will Rising Rents Push Up Future Inflation?
Rising rents account for a significant portion of recent inflation. Estimates of how rent inflation typically responds to two leading indicators—current asking rents and current house prices—can help forecast the path of overall inflation for the next two years. This method predicts that higher rent inflation could add about 0.5 percentage point to personal consumption expenditures price inflation for both 2022 and 2023. These potential additions are important in light of the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation target.
Discussion Paper
Elevated Rent Expectations Continue to Pressure Low-Income Households
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s 2023 SCE Housing Survey, released in April, reported some novel data about expectations for home prices, interest rates, and mortgage refinancing. While the data showed a sharp drop in home price expectations, some of the most notable findings concern renters. In this post, we take a deeper dive into how renters’ expectations and financial situations have evolved over the past year. We find that both owners and renters expect rents to rise rapidly over the next year, albeit at a slower pace than last year. Furthermore, we also show that eviction ...
Journal Article
Gimme shelter! rents have risen, not fallen, since World War II
Two recent studies have concluded that for roughly four decades the measure of inflation for rents in the U.S. consumer price index was substantially underestimated. Why should this mismeasurement be of concern? In ?Gimme Shelter! Rents Have Risen, Not Fallen, Since World War II,? Len Nakamura explains that rents are important in measuring the price of housing services for homeowners as well as renters. They are also the main standard against which market participants and others weigh the reasonableness of house prices. In addition, such mismeasurement affected the estimated rate of overall ...