At the latest Freddie Mac 30-year rate, 7.4% (weekly survey, October 15, 2026), the typical US home costs $2,028 a month to buy (principal and interest, 20% down, on the September 2026 Zillow home value) against $1,932 to rent (Zillow ZORI, September 2026): buying costs 5% more per month than renting, before property taxes, insurance and upkeep. For September 2026 alone, at that month's average rate of 6.86%, the payment was $1,922, +6.66% from a year earlier on the same rate series.
| Metro | Typical home | P&I/mo | Typical rent |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York, NY | $730,949 | $4,049 | $3,546 |
| Los Angeles, CA | $950,020 | $5,262 | $2,929 |
| Chicago, IL | $355,650 | $1,970 | $2,163 |
| Dallas, TX | $358,242 | $1,984 | $1,659 |
| Houston, TX | $302,832 | $1,677 | $1,638 |
| Washington, DC | $569,857 | $3,156 | $2,407 |
| Philadelphia, PA | $386,048 | $2,138 | $1,903 |
| Miami, FL | $476,815 | $2,641 | $2,654 |
| Atlanta, GA | $375,898 | $2,082 | $1,843 |
| Boston, MA | $725,639 | $4,019 | $2,987 |
| Phoenix, AZ | $441,097 | $2,443 | $1,720 |
| San Francisco, CA | $1,120,379 | $6,206 | $3,445 |
| Riverside, CA | $580,321 | $3,214 | $2,533 |
| Detroit, MI | $264,316 | $1,464 | $1,514 |
| Seattle, WA | $720,147 | $3,989 | $2,250 |
The Cost-of-Living affordability measure is the whole CPI basket with owners' shelter priced as the monthly payment on a typical home (Zillow home value, 20% down, the Freddie Mac weekly 30-year rate) instead of rental equivalence: 6.51% year over year as of October 18, 2026. It is a basket measure for a household buying now, not an inflation rate and not the change in the payment itself. The mortgage payment inside it is up 13.55% from a year earlier: $2,028 a month on the typical home (Zillow, September 2026) at 7.40% (Freddie Mac weekly, October 15, 2026), against $1,786 a year earlier (Zillow, September 2025, at 6.27% on October 16, 2025).
Housing matters twice for inflation: shelter is a third of the CPI (with a year-long survey lag the gauge front-runs), and construction is the economy's most rate-sensitive sector. Sources: Zillow, S&P Case-Shiller, FHFA, Census, NAR, Freddie Mac, the Fed.
The headline is the buy-versus-rent comparison for the typical US home: Buy = principal & interest on the typical US home (Zillow ZHVI) at 80% LTV and the 30-year fixed rate from the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey (each month at the average of its weekly readings; the same series for every month), 360 months. Rent = Zillow Observed Rent Index (asking rents). Taxes, insurance and maintenance are excluded. The payment is $1,922 a month (+6.7% year over year) against $1,932 to rent (+2.9%), a ratio of 0.99 for September 2026 at that month's average Freddie Mac 30-year rate of 6.86% (6.35% a year earlier); at the latest weekly rate, 7.4% (October 15, 2026), the same home costs $2,028; the typical home is worth $366,157 (+1.19% year over year). In January 2018 the same calculation gave a payment of $859 against rent of $1,290 (ratio 0.67); the ratio peaked at 1.11 in October 2023 and bottomed at 0.61 in August 2020. Above 1.0 buying costs more per month than renting before taxes, insurance and maintenance; the ratio moves with the mortgage rate far more than with prices, which is why it swung so far after 2021.
Housing starts ran at 1,275 thousand (annual rate, August 2026) with permits at 1,403 thousand — permits lead starts by a month or two, so the two together say whether new supply is turning. Existing-home sales were 3.99 million at an annual pace (September 2026); low sales with firm prices is the signature of a market frozen by rate lock-in rather than one falling. The Case-Shiller national index stood at 337.3 in July 2026, +1.9% year over year; the median sales price was $410,700 (Q2 2026), a mix-affected figure that moves with which homes sell, not only with values. The rental vacancy rate is 7.3% and the homeownership rate 65% (Q2 2026); rising vacancy precedes softer rents by a few quarters.
Of the 50 metros on the page, asking rents are rising fastest in San Francisco, CA ($3,445, +11.8%), San Jose, CA ($3,812, +8.5%), Virginia Beach, VA ($1,886, +7.3%) and slowest in San Antonio, TX ($1,415, -0.7%), Denver, CO ($1,900, +0.1%), Houston, TX ($1,638, +0.2%).
On the payment table (50 metros at 7.4%, the Freddie Mac 30-year rate of October 15, 2026), buying costs the most relative to renting in San Jose, CA (2.21× rent), Salt Lake City, UT (1.88× rent), Los Angeles, CA (1.8× rent) and the least in Pittsburgh, PA (0.86×), New Orleans, LA (0.9×), Chicago, IL (0.91×).
Shelter is 34.04% of the CPI basket (rent of primary residence 7.84%, owners' equivalent rent 26.20%), the largest single item. The BLS reprices each rental unit only every six months, so the official rent index (2.78% for September 2026) and owners' equivalent rent (3.28%) blend leases signed up to a year ago; Nowflation's all-tenant rent index, built from this month's new leases averaged over every lease in force, reads 1.97%. That difference is the largest single reason the Gauge (3.45%) and the official CPI (3.7%) disagree. The second channel is growth: residential construction is the most rate-sensitive sector of the economy, so starts and permits turn before employment does. The Cost-of-Living affordability measure prices owned shelter as home value × the current mortgage rate — the payment a buyer faces, not an inflation rate today, which the CPI's rental-equivalence method never shows.
Zillow data: Data Provided by Zillow Group.