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Friday, March 03, 2023

Inflation Adjusted House Prices 3.9% Below Peak

by Calculated Risk on 3/03/2023 11:57:00 AM

Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: Inflation Adjusted House Prices 3.9% Below Peak; Price-to-rent index is 7.1% below recent peak

Excerpt:

It has been 17 years since the bubble peak. In the December Case-Shiller house price index released on Tuesday, the seasonally adjusted National Index (SA), was reported as being 61% above the bubble peak in 2006. However, in real terms, the National index (SA) is about 11% above the bubble peak (and historically there has been an upward slope to real house prices).  The composite 20, in real terms, is about 1% above the bubble peak.

These inflation adjusted indexes have been declining for seven months in real terms. ...

Real House PricesIn October 2004, Fed economist John Krainer and researcher Chishen Wei wrote a Fed letter on price to rent ratios: House Prices and Fundamental Value. Kainer and Wei presented a price-to-rent ratio using the OFHEO house price index and the Owners' Equivalent Rent (OER) from the BLS.

Note that OER is lagging behind other measures of rent.

Here is a similar graph using the Case-Shiller National and Composite 20 House Price Indexes. This graph shows the price to rent ratio (January 2000 = 1.0). The price-to-rent ratio had been moving more sideways but picked up significantly following the onset of the pandemic.

On a price-to-rent basis, the Case-Shiller National and Composite 20 indexes declined again in December for the seventh consecutive month. The price-to-rent index for the National index is off 7.1% from the recent peak, and the Composite 20 based index is off 8.7%.
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