Shelter costs continued to rise in October—but home builder stocks climbed anyway.
Declines in the 10-year Treasury yield, with which mortgage rates often move, mean more to investors than a lagging government gauge of rental costs.
Shelter costs continued to drive inflation in October, according to government data published Tuesday. The index measuring shelter gained 0.3% in October, and was 6.7% higher than one year prior. Though the October gain was a slower pace from September, the index was the greatest contributor to the 0.2% monthly increase in core inflation, a measure that strips out food and energy costs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said.
Investors in home builder stocks saw big gains. Two exchange-traded funds tracking the home builders and related companies gained in morning trading.
The shelter category, which is largely made of rent and rent-equivalents, is known to lag private measures of asking rents. While such costs have continued to rise in the government gauge, private data has shown costs pull back in recent months.
Year-over-year rent changes measured by ApartmentList gained for over two years, from March 2021 through May 2023, and reached as high as 18.2% before flattening out in June. The measure has dropped below year-ago levels in the four months that followed.
Asking rents may be an indicator of what’s to come, but home prices also bear watching. While for-sale price increases aren’t directly factored into CPI, gains in the cost of buying a house can put upward pressure on comparable single-family rental costs, Barron’s has reported. The median existing home in September sold for $394,300, up 2.8% from the year prior, according to the National Association of Realtors.
There’s a bright side to October’s shelter gains, Gerard MacDonell, senior managing director at 22V Research, wrote in a Tuesday note. “The strong rent figures probably actually make the CPI more, not less, friendly, because we virtually know that rent inflation is fated to slow from here.”
Home buyers also stand to benefit from the inflation gauge. The 10-year Treasury yield fell in morning trading to 4.449% in its largest decline since March 2023, according to Dow Jones Market Data. It was the lowest yield since Sept. 22.
The decline suggests that mortgage rates could have further to fall. Mortgage rates measured by
Freddie Mac
fell by the greatest magnitude in a year last week as a strong 10-year auction and cooler-than-expected economic data drove yields down.
Two exchange-traded funds tracking the home builders and related industries, the
SPDR S&P Homebuilders
ETF (ticker: XHB) and the
iShares U.S. Home Construction
ETF (ITB), were up 5.4 % and 6%, respectively. The gains brought the ETFs within about 6% and 4% of their record closing highs.
Home builder shares weren’t the only beneficiaries in the real estate space. The S&P Real Estate sector was up 4.3% on Tuesday, according to Dow Jones Market Data—on pace for its best day since November 2022. The
Vanguard Real Estate
ETF (VNQ), which includes a variety of real estate investment trusts and real estate-related companies, was up about 4.9%.
Write to Shaina Mishkin at shaina.mishkin@dowjones.com
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