What One Rate Hike Does to Your Rent

Episode 02 · 11:54 · published 1 December 2026 · watch

The figures used

What	Value
Target range at the zero floor, to 16 Mar 2022	0 – 0.25 %
Target range at the peak, 27 Jul 2023	5.25 – 5.50 %
Increases in that run	11
Target range, 5 Nov 2026	3.75 – 4.00 %
Effective federal funds rate, 5 Nov 2026	3.88 %
30-year mortgage, low, 7 Jan 2021	2.65 %
30-year mortgage, peak, 26 Oct 2023	7.79 %
30-year mortgage, 5 Nov 2026	7.18 %
Median of all 2,902 weeks since Apr 1971	7.22 %
All-time high, 9 Oct 1981	18.63 %
Rent inflation peak, Mar 2023	8.81 %
Rent inflation, Sep 2026	2.78 %
Rent, cumulative since Jan 2016	+54.4 %
All items, cumulative since Jan 2016	+41.5 %

The monthly payments in the video — $1,612, $2,877 and $2,710 — are computed with the standard annuity formula on a chosen $400,000 loan over thirty years. They are arithmetic, not a measured average, and the chart says so on screen.

Sources

Federal Reserve Bank of New York — effective federal funds rate Target range and daily EFFR, January 2019 to November 2026. markets.newyorkfed.org. Retrieved 8 November 2026.
Freddie Mac — Primary Mortgage Market Survey 30-year fixed rate, weekly since 2 April 1971 — 2,902 observations. PMMS_history.csv. Retrieved 8 November 2026.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Consumer Price Index Rent of primary residence (CUSR0000SEHA) and all items (CUSR0000SA0), January 2016 to September 2026, seasonally adjusted. Retrieved 8 November 2026 through the public API.
BLS Handbook of Methods — CPI, Design and Calculation The six-panel housing sample, pricing twice a year, about 8,000 rent quotations a month, and the monthly index as the sixth root of the six-month change. bls.gov/opub/hom/cpi. Last modified 30 January 2025.

Data files

As used in the episode — the charts are generated from exactly these.

pmms-30y-weekly.csv Freddie Mac, 1971–2026 fed-funds-rate.json NY Fed, 2019–2026 cpi-rent-2017-2025.json BLS cpi-rent-2026.json BLS, current year

What this does not show

Correlation, with a plausible mechanism — not a measured cause. Rent inflation peaked twelve months after the first hike. That is a sequence, not a proof. The same years held a pandemic recovery, a migration wave between cities, and a construction pipeline that had stalled. All of those move rents, and these series cannot separate them.
A national average. Rent is the least national number in economics. A given city may have run two points above this line, or three below.
The measurement lag cuts both ways. Because the monthly figure is derived from a six-month change, part of what the line shows is still describing decisions made a year ago. That the index therefore trails the market is our reading of the published method; the Bureau does not use the word.

Corrections

None yet. Errors reported in the comments are corrected here and noted with the date.

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