What pros wish everyone knew about CPI, mortgages, and iBuyers Here’s the thing that trips people up every single August CPI week: CPI doesn’t set home prices. Rates do. The CPI print nudges rate expectations, rates change monthly payments, and payments decide who can actually bid. That’s the chain. Ask any loan officer fielding panicked texts after a hot CPI, buyers don’t say “inflation rose 0.x%,” they say “did my payment just jump?” Quick sanity check. Shelter is the elephant in the CPI room, about one-third of the headline basket in 2025 (roughly 34% per BLS). But Shelter CPI is…

Old-school CPI thinking vs. today’s rent reality Old-school macro says this: if CPI cools, rents cool, everybody’s grocery-and-gas-weary budget breathes easier. Clean, linear, almost…too tidy. I grew up on that playbook on the Street, and it worked for long stretches. But 2025 housing is not interested in tidy. It’s a three-clock problem: asking rents for new leases, renewal rents for folks staying put, and CPI’s shelter math. They don’t tick together, and they definitely don’t reset just because a headline inflation print eased. Start with the classic view. CPI down, rent pressure down. It made sense when vacancy, supply, and…

The hidden toll: sticky prices meet fragile credit Here’s the cost most folks skip over: when prices keep inching higher faster than your paycheck, your “real” buying power shrinks. It doesn’t shout at you, it just chips away. And it gets worse when lenders quietly tighten the screws. It’s Q4 2025, holiday budgets are real, and markets are hypersensitive to the August CPI print while credit boxes are narrowing at the worst possible time, when you actually want to spend. Inflation that runs hotter than wage growth erodes purchasing power fast. You don’t need a PhD, basic math does it.…