Mortgage rates will stay near recent lows as cooler-than-expected inflation data allows the Fed to keep cutting.
Core inflation, the key metric that excludes food and energy prices—and is watched by Fed officials—came in at 0.2% monthly and 3.0% annually for September, lower than the August readings and lower than expectations. All of the downside surprise can essentially be attributed to an unexpectedly low reading for owners equivalent rent.
- Overall shelter inflation was 0.2% in September, with the two key subcategories, rent of primary residence at 0.2% and owners equivalent rent at 0.1%. We’ve seen shelter inflation hit similar levels this year, but this is the lowest level for owners equivalent rent since November 2020. Shelter is the largest component of core CPI, making up about 44%, with owners equivalent rent alone comprising 33%.
- Owners equivalent rent is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s (BLS) estimate of home price inflation for homeowners. Since mortgage payments are fixed for most homeowners, and housing acts as both a consumption and investment good, inflation is measured as the value of rent the owner is giving up by living in the home. Tactically, the BLS uses rents for rental homes that are similar to the stock of owner-occupied homes, so this metric really reflects rental prices.
- Because rental leases usually keep rents fixed for at least a year, the rental prices in CPI lag market rents, which measure rent costs for those moving, by one to two years. And since market rents have been flat to down for the past three years, we should expect CPI shelter costs to stay low for the foreseeable future:
- Tariffs are still pushing inflation in goods categories up, but the effects are (1) not overwhelmingly large and (2) being masked in overall inflation by low shelter inflation.
With a cool inflation reading and a lack of labor market data, the Fed is likely to stay on the path expected by markets, which means 25 bps rate cuts at each of the final two meetings of 2025. That means mortgage rates will stay in the low 6s.
- The Fed’s mandate is to strike a balance between low unemployment and low inflation. But the government shutdown has already delayed the release of the October 3 jobs report and the BLS has now missed the data collection window for the November 7 jobs report. Today’s CPI data was only released so the Social Security Administration could calculate cost of living adjustments without delay.
- With this foggy view of the economy, the Fed will need to err on the side of caution, which the available data would point to as shoring up the labor market. There simply isn’t data that would support larger cuts (which would push mortgage rates down) or no cuts (which would push mortgage rates up).
