In a masterpiece of understatement, Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, recently said: “I would say if you’re a homebuyer, or a young person looking to buy a home, you need a bit of a reset.”
This is a bit like saying a hurricane is an “adjustment” in the weather. You can get an idea of the cost wall homebuyers are running into by considering two numbers:
•According to the National Association of Realtors, the year-over-year change in U.S. home prices at the end of May was 14.8%.
•A year ago, it was possible to get a 30-year home mortgage at about 2.75% interest. Today, the rate is 5.78%. This means the monthly payment on each thousand dollars borrowed has risen from $4.08 to $5.85. That’s an increase of 43.4%.
Now combine the two increases by multiplying the higher cost of the home by the higher cost of the money borrowed to buy the home. The cost of shelter for those who borrow has risen 64.5%.
In 12 months.
And, lest I forget, your down payment went up, too, so you’ll need another $10,508 at the close to buy that median-priced house if you’re putting 20% down.
This is only a “reset” if you think running a car into a brick wall is a great way to shorten the car.
Meanwhile, the nationwide market for rentals has become scary. A retiree in Maine needs to move but hasn’t been able to find a place anywhere near his current rent. A traveling maternity nurse in California had to cancel an assignment because no short-term shelter was available. A new college graduate can’t find a place to live in the Boston area because rentals are gone the moment they are listed.
These are anecdotes from people I know or have encountered in recent weeks. But if you read a newspaper almost anywhere in the country, you’ve read about huge rent increases.
One response — call it “the next big thing” — is a boom in RV parks. In the Hill Country area where I live — Dripping Springs and Johnson City — people are giving up on ever owning a conventional house.
RV parks are booming.
The Fitz, just opened, boasts Hill Country views, high-speed Internet and a remote location. Cavallo Terrace, several miles down the road, says it is “a premiere fulltime luxury RV community.” The reality is that one person’s escape from Michigan winters is another person’s primary residence.
We’re talking about a huge change here.
So what does the consumer price index tell us about housing inflation?
Absolutely nothing real or useful.
The inflation rate for shelter in the 12-month period ending May 31 came whirling in at, what? Say that again! Yes, 5.5%.
How could that be?
The first thing you should know is that this weird, meaningless figure is not the product of a devious Deep State or the Bilderbergers. Nor is it the result of a plot funded by George Soros.
No, it is the result of formula building by very capable, entirely ordinary economists trying to build an indicator of changes in the cost of shelter. As some would say, it is a “construct.” They have been trying to do this for a long time. Decades in fact. But they have had little success with this particular measure.
The problem here is that the cost of shelter isn’t like the price of bananas, shoelaces, champagne or ground chuck. It’s much more complicated. And it depends entirely on your particular house — whether you bought it this year, what it cost to finance, etc. It’s a bit easier for renters, but it still depends on whether you have moved.
What we can know for certain is that shelter, for our society, is a dangerous wild card. It makes some lives better while making other lives hellish.
If you are young, mobile and hungering to buy your first home, well, you’re looking at a tsunami of inflation. And if you’re renting until you find the right place, yeah, you’re out of luck there, too.
But if you are old enough to have your real estate tax bill limited, you’re in the sweet spot when it comes to inflation. For you, the largest single thing in the consumer price index is pretty stable. Since shelter, at 32.4%, is the largest single component of the index, you have a big buffer against price increases elsewhere.
That’s a big divide between the young and the old. Start watching.
If you’re on the calm side of this, which likely means you’re old enough to remember some great rock and roll, you can get a visceral, ominous sense of what’s coming by listening to a single song. It’s the lyrics of the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in their 1969 hit “Gimme Shelter.”
Oh, a storm is threat’ning
My very life today
If I don’t get some shelter
Oh yeah, I’m gonna fade away.
