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I assume you are complaining about house prices not being directly included in the CPI? I don't know about the exact methodology, but the concept makes sense t
by Leherenn 5y ago
I assume you are complaining about house prices not being directly included in the CPI?
I don't know about the exact methodology, but the concept makes sense to me. "Everyone" is buying food "everyday", so it's sensible to have, say, the price of bread included directly. On the other hand, "no one" is buying houses "everyday"; what people are buying everyday is housing, i.e. how much do you spend to have a roof over your head. This is correlated to house prices, but not that strongly. If you bought your house 30 years ago and the mortgage is paid, it doesn't matter whether houses next to you are suddenly worth 50% more, you're still going to pay the same for housing (except maybe due to taxes). If you're renting, it is going to track house prices, but not perfectly. Apparently, in the SF area, the average rent has actually slightly decreased since 2019, while the average house price has increased.
All of this means that while the average house price might have increased by x%, the average person (as in, if you aggregate those already owning a house, those renting, those buying houses now, ...) is not spending x% more on housing, so it makes sense to use a metric that follows the latter and not the former. Yes, if you're looking at buying a house, it means CPI is not very accurate for you, but then a single number is never going to perfectly fit everyone.