Fed’s Waller Says Inflation Measures Risk Understating Housing Costs

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said longer-run structural issues will continue to put upward pressure on home prices and rents even as the central bank begins a campaign to raise borrowing costs.

“With housing costs gaining an ever-larger weight in the inflation Americans experience, I will be looking even more closely at real estate to judge the appropriate stance of monetary policy,” Waller said on Thursday in the text of a speech prepared for delivery at a conference on housing. He also suggested that rent costs have been understated by the consumer price index.