To quote the BLS [0] on why home prices are the wrong metric: > the CPI views housing units as capital (or investment) goods and not as consumption items. Spe

To quote the BLS [0] on why home prices are the wrong metric: > the CPI views housing units as capital (or investment) goods and not as consumption items. Spending to purchase and improve houses and other housing units is investment and not consumption. Shelter, the service the housing units provide, is the relevant consumption item for the CPI. The cost of shelter for renter-occupied housing is rent. For an owner-occupied unit, the cost of shelter is the implicit rent that owner occupants would have to pay if they were renting their homes. If I'm reading that fact sheet correctly, they actually don't ask homeowners at all. Rather they just ask a bunch of renters whet their monthly rent is (which the vast majority of them should be able to answer accurately) and then use fancy math to extrapolate what the nearby home ownership units would rent for. I'd suggest reading/skimming that whole fact sheet if you want more details, though the summary seems to be that they've actually put a bunch of thought into this stuff. [0]: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/owners-equivalent-rent-and-rent.pdf https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/owners-equivalent-rent-an...