US inflation drill down
We've all seen the funky charts and graphs on shipping rates continuing to plummet, which is a decent indicator that global supply chain issues are righting themselves.
But a huge part of the inflation story in the US was rental price inflation, as the population dashed outwards creating a huge wave of demand for rental housing away from the higher-density city locations.
The most timely measures suggest that rents are now in outright decline, however, as the key pandemic drivers of excess rental demand have eased.
If you were to use rents on new leases in the US inflation data, core inflation is arguably already back below 3 per cent and falling fast.
This might go some of the way to explaining why - although markets are expecting and pricing further rate hikes ahead - stock markets are holding the line.
The US S&P 500 i9ndex may be significantly down from its highs, but it's hardly in catastrophic territory given the returns over the past decade.
Looking further ahead, US inflation appears likely to normalise back down towards the target as sky-high rents fall back down to earth.
The same might well also prove to be true in Australia, though rents are only a comparatively smaller component of our inflation basket, and we might also prove to be a few months behind the US in this regard.
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The Queensland Government $40 million Help to Home scheme, designed to ease supply issues in the state, has reportedly delivered only one additional home to the market over the past four months, according to the Courier Mail.
