U.S. CPI Housing Components

A brief introduction to the housing components of the U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI).

CPI is an abbreviation for Consumer Price Index, an index intended to represent consumer price inflation in the U.S. over time. The next two charts show seasonally adjusted (repeating seasonal variations smoothed out) and non-seasonally adjusted monthly data for CPI, the top-level housing component of CPI, and the sub-components of housing. The data is scaled so that the current data points map to 100. The owners equivalent rent sub-component represents the the rent that homeowners could receive if they rented out their homes. This owners equivalent rent is a more recent series that is a sub-component of the longer lived shelter component.

The next two charts show the CPI housing components from the previous two charts adjusted for overall consumer price inflation. These charts show the size of the price increases/decreases of individual components relative to overall consumer price inflation.