[zo1]

Well if house prices have indeed doubled in 10 years then that means inflation during that period was about 7.2%, not 2% as they claim. Saying inflation is 2% instead of 7% can be seen as "insisting there's no inflation".

I.e. the statement was a bit of hyperbole to indicate that the ECB is hiding or misrepresenting the real rate of inflation.

And without more detailed info, hiding/excluding inflation increases in one of the biggest expenses that people have to account for in their daily life seems like confusion of the highest order.

[IkmoIkmo]

Residential real estate for owner-occupiers is rarely a cash-based sector. The vast majority of owner-occupier buyers will get a mortgage.

That means that in this industry it makes more sense to look at the cost of the mortgage, than the cost of the home.

Particularly because a home is an asset, like a stock in a company. The fact it goes up in price isn't 'inflation' in the sense of the consumer price index (i.e. prices for consumption).

What is more relevant to measure as part of inflation in the sense of consumption, are the monthly costs around housing, regardless of the price of the underlying asset. For example, if interest rates went to 30%, and housing prices dropped sharply because of reduced financing capacity, we would not say that housing got cheaper or more affordable. We'd rightly look at monthly housing costs and saw that due to 30% interest rates, it got a lot more expensive.

So it makes little sense to say 'prices doubled, so inflation is 7.2%'. You'd have to look at monthly housing costs, which have not risen that much, due to interest rates dropping over time. For example, a 300k home in the US (interest rate 3.5%) costs as much (read: same monthly payments) over 30 years as a 485k home (60% more expensive) at 0% interest rates like in Denmark. So it makes sense that in a world where interest rates are dropping, you can see home prices go up much faster than housing costs / monthly payments / interest rates.

If you look at it from purely a cost-perspective (excluding principal paydown, as it's only a negative a cashflow, but not an expense), the difference in monthly costs between e.g. 0% and 3% becomes even bigger, allowing for even larger price differences that don't translate into monthly cost differences.

[frafra]

"ECB is hiding or misrepresenting the real rate of inflation." ECB has no role on that, which as I said was in favour of including house prices in the HICP. It is the European Commission deciding on that: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/hicp/faq

Please note that "H" stands for "harmonized", and that is one of the issues. If you change how the HICP is defined, then all the countries should produce the new indexes that should be included, with the same methodology. That is a challenge and a national political issue too in some cases.

[karatinversion]

> Well if house prices have indeed doubled in 10 years then that means inflation during that period was about 7.2%, not 2% as they claim.

A rise in the price of one thing does not mean that rate is the rate of inflation - relative price shifts happen.