Federal Reserve Economic Data

St. Louis is the home of FRED and the FRED Blog and part of the Federal Reserve’s Eighth District. In the past few years, the housing markets in the seven states of our District have cooled and are slowly returning to their previous trend.

The FRED graph above plots the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s house price index for these states over the past five years: House price appreciation has moderated since its peak in 2022 and is now back to pre-pandemic levels, with prices increasing between 4% and 5% annually.

The second graph above shows the number of active house listings for each state relative to the number of listings in May 2017. Despite the normalization of price growth, the number of houses in most of these markets remains well below pre-pandemic levels. House inventories range from only 33% in Illinois to 99% in Tennessee, compared with the number in 2017.

It’s worth noting the positive relationship between the speed of house price appreciation and the increase in the supply of housing, seen most clearly here in Tennessee: Compared with the other states in our District, Tennessee had the fastest pace of price growth and also the fastest increase in the supply of housing.

How these graphs were created: First graph: Search FRED for “All Transactions House Price Index for Arkansas” and click on the first link. Click “Edit Graph” in the top right corner and change the units to “Percent Change from a Year Ago.” To quickly add the other states’ data, use this pattern of series IDs in the “Add Line” tab: “ARSTHPI” where the “AR” is for Arkansas, “ILSTHPI” where the “IL” is for Illinois, etc. Change the first date of the time frame to May 2017. Second graph: Search for “Housing Inventory: Active Listing Count in Arkansas” and click on the first link. Click “Edit Graph” to change the units to “Index (Scale Value to 100 for a chosen date),” choosing 2017-05-01. Add the series IDs in the same way as above, except the two letters that identify the state are at the end of the series IDs: “ACTLISCOUAR,” ACTLISCOUIL,” etc.

Suggested by John Fuller and Violeta Gutkowski.

When it comes to data delivery, FRED wholeheartedly embraces the motto of the Olympics: “Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together!”

Although the FRED Blog team won’t be able to travel to Paris, France, to attend the 33rd Summer Olympic Games, we can talk about the Olympians and Parisiens right here at home.

And, of course, we’re talking about the residents of Olympia, Washington, and Paris (in both Texas and Tennessee).

The FRED map above shows the median number of days a real estate listing spent on the market from the time it was listed for sale until the sale was reported as pending or closed or the property was no longer for sale.*

First, hover over Olympia-Tumwater, Washington, in the map. You can see that, as of June 2024, the median time it took for a real estate property there to exchange hands was 30 days: That is, half did so in 30 or fewer days and the other half did so in 30 or more days. By contrast, the median time a real estate property stayed on the market in Paris, Texas, was 58 days. In Paris, Tennessee, it was 60 days. So, in the parlance of the Games, we have our gold, silver, and bronze medals—at least for this race.

How this map was created: Search FRED for “Housing Inventory: Median Days on Market Year-Over-Year in Olympia-Tumwater, WA (CBSA)” and click the “View Map” option.

*The data are reported by Realtor.com. You can learn more about data geographies in FRED here.

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.

Paying for the place where you live—categorized as “shelter” in the consumer price index—amounts to 36% of the overall cost of goods and services purchased by an average urban household during a month. However, putting a roof over your head also involves paying for creature comforts such as heating and cooling, utilities, furniture, appliances, and operations. Together, those expenses amount to an additional 9% of the overall consumer price index. Today we look at recent housing inflation for both shelter and making that shelter habitable.

The FRED graph above shows consumer price index (CPI) data on housing expenses organized in four categories:

• Shelter (dashed blue line) includes rent, owner’s equivalent rent of residences, lodging away from home, and home insurance.
• Services (red line) includes water, sewer, and trash collection.
• Furnishings and operations (green line) includes furniture, appliances, housekeeping supplies, and a variety of items and services.
• Energy (purple line) includes fuel oil, gas, and electricity.

We customized all the data to have a value of 100 in April 2020, the end of the COVID-19-induced recession, to facilitate the analysis of housing costs over time. The data plot shows that, over the past four years, shelter became 23% more expensive and the cost of furnishing and operations and paying for non-energy utilities kept roughly that same pace.

Energy inflation has been a different story: As of the latest available observation, heating, cooling, cooking, and running electric appliances is, on average, 33% more expensive than four years ago, although those costs have come down from their peak in January 2023.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for “Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Shelter in U.S. City Average.” Next, click the “Edit Graph” button and use the “Add Line” tab to add the other three CPI series: “Water and Sewer and Trash Collection Services,” “Household Furnishings and Operations,” and “Energy.” Next, use the “Edit Lines” tab to change the units to “Index (Scale value to 100 for chosen date)” and under “Select a date that will equal 100 for your custom index:” enter “2020-04-01.” Last, click on “Copy to all” to apply that unit customization to all series in the graph.

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.