Chart Notes

National and 10-City Case-Shiller home prices hit new record highs in August.

OER, CPI, and Rent are indexes measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

OER stands for Owners' Equivalent Rent. It's the price one would pay to rent one's own house unfurnished and without utilities.

Case-Shiller measures repeat sales of the same home over time and the indexes attempt to weed out major home improvements.

Case-Shiller is a far better measure of home prices than median or average prices which do not factor in the number of rooms, location, lot size, or amenities.

Case-Shiller Home Price Index National and Top 10

Not every city is at record highs although the national and 10-city indexes are. However, the price in all 10 cities increased in August.

Four Measures of Inflation Percent Change From Year Ago

Real Interest Rates

I created the above chart by substituting year-over year increases in the Case-Shiller index for OER, the largest component in the CPI.

With the Fed Funds rate ay 5.33 percent, real interest rates are positive by all measures. For example 5.33 minus 3.68 yields a real interest rate of 1.65 percent.