Rent inflation: the shelter index, nationally and by city

Rent, owners' equivalent rent, shelter

The CPI treats housing as a service. For renters, the cost of that service is the rent. For owners, the BLS uses the implicit rent they would have to pay if they rented their own home, unfurnished and without utilities: owners' equivalent rent, or OER. Owned homes themselves are not priced, because the CPI views them as capital goods, so the purchase price, mortgage interest, property taxes and improvements are all outside the index (BLS factsheet).

OER is not measured by asking owners what their homes would rent for. That question, asked in the Consumer Expenditure Survey, sets only the weight of OER. The price change comes from actual rents in the BLS Housing Survey, applied to the owner side of each neighborhood. That is why rents and OER usually move together, and why a boom in house prices reaches the CPI only through rents.

The calculator on this page uses the shelter index, the only housing series the BLS publishes for every area on this site. For a lease, shelter is close to what rents did but includes OER and hotels; the rent of primary residence alone is published nationally and for many areas on bls.gov.

Why the index lags the market

The BLS divides each area's rent sample into six panels. Panel 1 is priced in January and July, panel 2 in February and August, and so on, so each unit is visited every six months. Many rents are locked for a lease term, and most observations are continuing rents that have not changed. The index therefore follows what tenants actually pay, old leases included, rather than asking rents for new listings. When market rents jump, the CPI follows over many months; when they cool, the CPI keeps rising for a while. Since 1999, the fastest annual rise of the national shelter index was 7.5 % in 2023; it came after the fastest rises of the all items index, not with them, which is the lag at work. In 2022 shelter rose 5.9 % and in 2023 7.5 %, while all items had already slowed from 8.0 % to 4.1 %.

The sample is chosen so that housing units count in proportion to their share of shelter spending in each area. Small geographic segments, usually built from Census block groups, are drawn in each pricing area, and collectors visit a small number of rental units, usually five, to represent each segment. Rents are put on a monthly basis and adjusted for changes in the unit, such as an added bedroom or a change in the utilities included, and for the aging of the unit between visits.

Shelter by metro

The spread between metros is wider for shelter than for most groups, because rents are set locally while many goods have national prices. It is also noisier: each metro's Housing Survey sample is a fraction of the national one, and the BLS warns that local indexes carry substantially more sampling error.

What October 2025 did to rents

No rents were collected in October 2025. The October panel was carried forward from its last visit, in April 2025, so the rent and OER indexes were unchanged for October. November indexes were computed from November rents with the usual method, the sixth root of a six-month change. The effect resolved in April 2026, when the October panel was visited again: the one-month rent change for April 2026 was atypical, based in effect on a 12-month change instead of a 6-month one (BLS questions and answers). The national shelter index went from 418.598 in September 2025 to 418.593 in November 2025, and from 424.45 in March 2026 to 427.049 in April. The October 2025 page covers the rest.

Using the shelter index for a lease

A lease that raises the rent by the CPI usually names the all items index, not shelter, and that is often the safer choice: all items is less volatile, and the BLS recommends national or regional indexes for escalation. A landlord who uses shelter, or a metro index, takes a more local but noisier measure. Whatever the choice, the clause should name the series, the area, the months and the rounding. The cost-of-living adjustment page applies a 12-month change to any amount.