Rents are becoming higher than they were pre-Covid, which is also causing everything else to become more expensive. Am I the only person who feels there needs to be a law on how high rents are allowed to be raised? It’s scary how they’re allowed to boost your rent by hundreds if they want. That happened to my Aunt. She refused to pay the increase (despite being able to afford it) and put a down payment on a condo instead. She was waiting and saving to be able to afford a larger one but she settled because she refuses to allow herself to pay these crazy rents.
“If rents continue to take off, it could be bad news both for those seeking housing and for the nation’s inflation outlook. Rental costs play an outsize role in the Consumer Price Index, so a meaningful rise in them could help keep that closely watched government price gauge, which has picked up sharply, higher for longer. Rents are only about half as important to the Federal Reserve’s preferred Personal Consumption Expenditures inflation index, but a long bout of high C.P.I. inflation may influence consumers’ expectations for future price gains, which could in turn quicken them.
Consumer prices jumped a rapid 5.4 percent in the year through June, but much of the increase was tied back to the economy’s reopening from the pandemic. Policymakers at the Fed and White House have maintained that today’s strong price pressures should fade as the economy gets back to normal, as one-off problems pushing up used car prices are resolved and as a spike in demand that’s elevating furniture and washing machine costs begins to abate.”