The housing starts data contains some good news.
What is the best news for mortgage rates long-term? It’s getting more supply of apartments! The best way to fight inflation is always by adding more supply; if your goal is to destroy inflation by killing demand, that is only a temporary fix.
Housing inflation post-2020 was one for the record books, not only because home prices accelerated in such a short time, but more importantly for the inflation data, rents took off, something that didn’t happen during the housing bubble years.
The government accounts for housing inflation by looking at rents, not home prices. The chart below is the CPI Shelter Index, and as you can see during the crazy years of the housing bubble, rent inflation was very tame compared to what we see in the data recently.
Since 44.4% of the Consumer Price Index is shelter inflation, it’s a massive deal in economics that rents took off in the last two years. Without rents taking off, the CPI data would look much more tame, like what we saw from the years 2000-2019.
As you can see in the chart below, core CPI wasn’t exploding at all this century until COVID-19 hit us. More supply of apartments coming on line will be good news for mortgage rates going forward. The history of global pandemics has always been inflationary early on, as the production of goods gets hit immediately. Then things tend to cool down over time from their inflationary peak level.
Over the next 12 months, the CPI data will account for the real-time cooling down of shelter inflation. And just like the data lagged early on when shelter inflation took off; the opposite will happen over the next year.
Tuesday’s housing starts data does show some promise on the front of attacking inflation and helping lowering mortgage rates, so let’s look at the report and find out what I am talking about.
First, however, remember that the housing market is still in a recession, which I wrote about on June 16, 2022. Housing permits have been falling as the builders simply have too much supply to be confident in building homes again. The housing market is still in a recession until housing permits rise in duration. Even though the builder’s confidence index has been rising recently, it still hasn’t led to a significant uptick in housing permits.
Keep reading on Housing Wire.
Related Links
If there is a home that you would like more information about, if you are considering selling a property, or if you have questions about the housing market in your neighborhood, please reach out. We’re here to help.
