America's Hidden Inflation

The Census Bureau released its quarterly update on residential vacancies and home ownership for Q1 which is closely watched for its update of how many Americans own versus rent. It shows that following a modest pickup in the home ownership rate in the prior two quarters, US homeowners once again posted a substantial decline, sliding from 63.8% to 63.5%, and just 0.1% higher than the 50 year low reported in Q2 2015.

And perhaps logically, while home ownership continues to stagnate, the number of renters has continued to soar. In fact, in the first quarter, the number of renter occupied houses rose by precisely double the amount, or 360,000, as the number of owner occupied houses, which was a modest increase of 180,000. This brings the total number of renter houses to 42.85 million while the number of homeowners is virtually unchanged at 74.66 million.

There is a  stark representation of the divergence between renters and owners. It shows that over the past decade, virtually all the housing growth has come thanks to renters while the number of homeowners hasn't budged even a fraction and has in fact declined in absolute numbers. What is obvious is that around the time the housing bubble burst, many Americans appear to have lost faith in home ownership and decided to become renters instead.

Which brings me to the point of showing where the "missing" runaway inflation in the US is hiding: if one shows the annual increase in asking rents, what one gets is the following stunning data  showing that while rent inflation had been roughly in the 1-2% corridor for two decades, starting in 2013 something snapped, and rent inflation for some 43 million Americans has exploded and is currently printing at a blended four quarter average rate of just over 8%, the highest on record, and 4 times higher than Yellen's inflationary target.

So the next time Janet Yellen laments the collapse of inflation, feel free to explain to her the data which even she can easily recreate using the government's own data (the sad reality is that rents are rising even faster than what the government reports).

If this is not enough for renters to start looking at buying. I think they are missing the point. Why are they throwing away money. Time to start educating the renters.