BLS WORKING PAPERS 

 

U.S. Department of Labor 

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 

Office of Prices and Living Conditions 

The Puzzling Divergence of U.S. Rents and User Costs, 1980-2004: 

Summary and Extensions 

Thesia I. Garner, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 

Randal Verbrugge, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 

Working Paper 409

October 2007

All views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the 

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 
PRICE AND PRODUCTIVITY MEASUREMENT, Volume 1: Housing 

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© Alice Nakamura, Canada, alice.nakamura@ualberta.ca, 2006. Permission to reprint granted with credit to authors and editors. 

Chapter 8 

THE PUZZLING DIVERGENCE OF U.S. RENTS AND USER 

COSTS, 1980-2004: SUMMARY AND EXTENSIONS 

Thesia I. Garner and Randal Verbrugge1

ABSTRACT 

This paper constructs, for the five largest cities in the United States, user costs and rents for the 

same structure, in levels (i.e., measured in dollars). The levels formulation is a major advantage 

over indexes since one can answer questions like “Is it cheaper to rent or to own?” or “Are 

houses overvalued?” because such questions are essentially about the levels of rents and house 

prices and their fundamentals. These new measures are constructed using Consumer Expenditure 

Survey (CE) Interview data from 1982 to 2002, along with house price appreciation forecasts 

from Verbrugge (2007a). Characteristics, current market value, and rental equivalence of owneroccupied housing are used in a regression framework to predict the rent associated with a 

structure with median characteristics in each city. The property value of this median house is 

used to construct a user cost estimate for this structure. We find that, for the median structure in 

each city, estimated user costs and rents diverge to a surprising degree, in keeping with the 

previously noted findings of Verbrugge (2007a). It is not always cheaper to own: user costs 

sometimes lie well above rents. Finally, the dynamics of the estimated price-to-rent ratio are 

generally similar to those found in conventional estimates based upon indexes, suggesting that 

the present study might be useful for scaling or normalizing other estimates. 

 

1 Division of Price and Index Number Research, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. They can be reached at 

garner.thesia@bls.gov and verbrugge.randal@bls.gov, respectively. Thanks to Uri Kogan, who provided 

outstanding research assistance, and to Chris Cope, who answered detailed questions about the CE data. In that this 

paper summarizes Verbrugge (2007a), thanks for comments are also due to Richard Ashley, Susanto Basu, Mark 

Bils, Erwin Diewert, Paul Emrath, Tim Erickson, Josh Gallin, Bob Gordon, John Greenlees, John Haltiwanger, 

Jonathan Heathcote, David Johnson, Greg Kurtzon, Steve Landefeld, Elaine Maag, Alice Nakamura, Leonard 

Nakamura, Marc Prud’homme, Marshall Reinsdorf, Matthew Shapiro, Robert Van Order, Christina Wang, Elliot 

Williams, Anthony Yezer, and Peter Zadrozny, and participants at the 2004 SSHRC and 2004 IARIW conferences. 

However, none is responsible for remaining errors. All views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do 

not reflect the views or policies of the Bureau of Labor Statistics or the views of other BLS staff members. 
Thesia I. Garner and Randal Verbrugge 2

1. Introduction 

Accurate measurement of the value and costs of homeownership is crucial for estimating 

inflation dynamics, as well as for generating consumption measures, since shelter occupies such 

a large fraction of total consumption. Mismeasurement could well alter both the level, and the 

dynamic properties, of key macroeconomic aggregates. In many simple models, an appropriate 

measure of homeowner costs is given by an ex ante “user cost” measure consisting of the 

expected financing, maintenance and depreciation costs minus the present value of its expected 

resale price. But simple frictionless models also imply that the house’s rental price will equal its 

user cost. 

 Verbrugge (2007a) demonstrated that in the case of U.S. housing data, rents and ex ante

user costs diverge markedly, for extended periods of time: a seeming failure of arbitrage2

 and a 

puzzle from the perspective of standard Jorgensonian capital theory. It is well known that ex post

user cost measures are typically much more volatile than the corresponding rent measures (see, 

e.g., Gillingham 1983). But ex ante user cost measures are of greater interest, since theory 

suggests that rents should equal ex ante user costs, and since ex ante user costs form the basis 

upon which economic decisions are made. Thus, prior to Verbrugge’s paper, one might have 

expected a much tighter empirical linkage between rents and ex ante user costs. And since ex 

ante measures involve expected rather than actual home price appreciation, one might have 

expected them to have far less volatility than ex post measures. Indeed, such considerations have 

led some (e.g., Diewert 2003) to suggest that, for the purposes of constructing official statistics, 

ex ante user cost measures are superior to ex post measures. 

Verbrugge (2007a) constructed several estimates of ex ante user costs for U.S. 

homeowners and compared these to rents. That study had four novel findings, which are 

reviewed in more detail in Section 4. To summarize: first, even if appropriately smoothed, ex 

ante user costs are far more volatile than rents. Indeed, their extreme volatility probably rules out 

the use of ex ante user costs as a measure of the costs of homeownership in consumer price 

indexes.3

 Second, rents and user costs diverge not only in the short run, but gaps persist over 

extended periods of time, contradicting the hypothesis that user costs and rents are roughly 

equivalent measures of the cost of housing services even in the medium-term. Furthermore, rents 

do not appear to respond very strongly to their theoretical determinants (see Verbrugge 2007b). 4

These findings constitute a puzzle to the standard theory, and cast grave doubt on the usefulness 

of user costs for measuring inflation. Third, despite these divergences, and despite the large size 

 

2

 Himmelberg, Mayer and Sinai (2005) is focused on explaining house price dynamics, and asked whether these 

have been driven by bubbles or fundamentals. However, that study did not directly address the issue of rents versus 

user costs, since its measure of expected appreciation was a one-sided fifteen-year moving average. Such a measure 

cannot possibly reflect the covariance between interest rates and expected appreciation at higher frequencies, which 

is crucial for exploring the relationship between rents and ex ante user costs. 3

 Statistics Iceland uses an estimate of user costs to compute shelter costs (Diewert, 2003; Guðnason and Jónsdóttir, 

2007). In Iceland’s user cost measure, CPI inflation is used in place of expected house price appreciation; however, 

this corresponds to an assumption of no real capital gains even in the short run. Expected inflation will not generally 

equal expected house price appreciation. 

4

 This finding accords with findings of earlier work by Follain, Leavens and Velz (1993), DiPasquale and Wheaton 

(1992) and Blackley and Follain (1996). In contrast, Green and Malpezzi (2003) find a stronger relationship between 

rents and user costs. 
Thesia I. Garner and Randal Verbrugge 3

of the detached unit rental market, this earlier research suggests that there were no unexploited 

profit opportunities, due to the large transactions costs typifying real estate transactions. Finally, 

the use of theoretically-inferior expected appreciation measures (such as expected CPI inflation) 

yield user cost measures which feature less divergence; this suggests that rent inflation stickiness 

may play a key role in explaining rent-user cost divergence. 

 This paper extends Verbrugge (2007a) by constructing, for the five largest cities in the 

United States, user costs and rents for the same structure, in levels (i.e., measured in dollars). 

The levels formulation is a major advantage, since – as stressed by Smith and Smith (2006) – one 

cannot use the movements of indexes to answer questions like, “Is it cheaper to rent or to own?” 

or “Are houses overvalued?” because such questions are essentially about the levels of rents and 

house prices and their relationship to each other and to other fundamentals such as interest rates. 

The fact that a house price index has risen faster than a rent index does not imply that houses are 

currently overvalued; this conclusion follows only upon the imposition of an additional 

assumption that house prices were free from the influence of speculative or irrational influences 

(i.e., were close to fundamentals) previously. One must have data on the value of a particular 

house and its associated rent level in order to directly compare that home’s user cost to its rent 

(and if one wants to compute that home’s fundamental value, one must use auxiliary assumptions 

in addition to this; see Smith and Smith 2006). 

 These new measures are constructed using Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) Interview 

data from 1982 to 2002, along with house price appreciation forecasts from Verbrugge (2007a). 

The CE asks owner-occupants to report the characteristics, current market value, and rental 

equivalence of their homes. We constructed a regression model for each city that related the log 

of reported monthly rental equivalence to reported market value and housing characteristics. 

These estimates were used to predict the rent associated with a structure with median 

characteristics in each city. The property value of this median house was used to construct a user 

cost measure for this structure. 

 We find that, for the median structure in each city, estimated user costs and rents diverge 

to a surprising degree, in keeping with the previously noted findings. It is not always cheaper to 

own: user costs sometimes lie well above rents. Finally, the dynamics of the estimated price-torent ratio are generally similar to those found in conventional estimates based upon indexes, 

suggesting that the present study might be useful for scaling other estimates. 

 The outline of the study is as follows. Section 2 describes the data. Section 3 discusses 

the construction of the user cost measures. Section 4 presents the findings of Verbrugge (2007a), 

and section 5 presents new findings based upon CE data. Section 6 offers some conclusions. 
Thesia I. Garner and Randal Verbrugge 4

2. Data Description 

Several sources of data are used for this study and Verbrugge (2007a). Data used include the 

internal U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) rental housing data, Consumer Expenditure (CE) 

Interview data, the Freddie Mac Conventional Mortgage Home Price Indexes (CMHPIs) for the 

U.S. and for 10 U.S. metropolitan areas, the U.S. Census Bureau’s new home price index, the 

average contract rate on commitments for 30-year conventional fixed rate first mortgages in the 

United States, and CPI rent indexes for all-U.S. and for 10 metropolitan areas. 

2.1 Consumer Expenditure Survey Data 

CE Interview data collected between 1982 and 20025

 from the five largest cities in the United 

States were used as the basis for estimating user costs and rents for the same structure. CE 

Interview survey data have been collected on a continuing basis since 1980. On behalf of the 

BLS, the U.S. Census Bureau collects data from consumer units6

 using personal interviews for 

this survey. The CE Interview is designed so that each consumer unit in the sample is 

interviewed over five consecutive quarters, once every three months. The first interview is used 

to bound expenditure estimates using one-month recall, and to collect other basic data such as 

housing unit characteristics (e.g., number of rooms). Interviews two through five are used to 

collect detailed expenditures and related information from the three months prior to each 

interview, and for the current month in some cases (e.g., rental equivalence). 

 Among the data collected in the CE Interview are estimated current market values and 

“rental equivalences” or rental values for owner-occupied and vacation homes. Current market 

value is asked only in the first interview (if the property was currently owned), and is 

subsequently inventoried to the following interviews.7 Since July 1993, the rental values for 

owner-occupants have been collected each quarter, rather than only once as was the case earlier. 

Consumer units are asked, “About how much do you think this property would sell for on 

 

5

 Data for more recent years are not considered for this study since the character of the data changed markedly in 

2003; improvements to the data collection instrument resulted in much higher responses to the rental equivalence 

question. 

6

 A consumer unit is defined as: (1) all members of a particular housing unit who are related by blood, marriage, 

adoption, or some other legal arrangement, such as foster children; (2) a person living alone or sharing a household 

with others, or living as a roomer in a private home, lodging house, or in permanent living quarters in a hotel or 

motel, but who is financially independent; or (3) two or more unrelated people living together who share certain 

major expenditures. Financial independence is determined by the three major expense categories: housing, food, and 

other living expenses. To be considered financially independent, at least two of the three major expense categories 

are to be provided entirely, or in part, by the respondent. Students living in university sponsored housing are 

included in the sample as separate consumer units. (See http://stats.bls.gov/CE/csxgloss.htm) 7

 If a property is owned when the bounding interview takes place, the interview respondent is asked to estimate the 

current market value of the property as of the date of the interview. If a property is acquired in a later interview, the 

current market value of the property is collected as of the time of the first interview after acquisition of the property. 

Beginning in April 2007, the market value of owner-occupied housing and vacation homes has been asked each 

quarter, rather than only once. 
Thesia I. Garner and Randal Verbrugge 5

today’s market?” and “If someone were to rent your home today, how much do you think it 

would rent for monthly, unfurnished and without utilities?” 

 For this study, a number of restrictions were placed upon the data. Only owner-occupied 

housing was considered. None of the costs of this housing could have been paid for by Federal, 

State, or local government. Only second interview data were used; this ensured that no 

households would be double-counted, and that market values and rental equivalences referred to 

the same time period (pre-July1993 data) or to quarters that were adjacent (post-June 1993 data). 

The only exception would be for newly acquired properties and for consumer units entering the 

survey after the bounding interview. If property value, rental equivalence, or number of rooms in 

the housing unit was missing or imputed, the observation was dropped from the sample. This 

reduced the sample significantly. In addition, since regression analysis was to be used to estimate 

the predicted rental values of property types, we wanted to reduce the effect of overly influential 

observations. Observations were dropped from the sample if the ratio of property value to rental 

equivalence was plus or minus 2.5 times the standard deviation of the mean of the ratios. This 

resulted in only 45 observations being dropped. Additional outlier treatment is discussed in 

section 5. 

 As noted above, we restricted our attention to the five largest cities in the United States, 

to facilitate comparisons of results from this study with those of Verbrugge (2007a). In particular, 

homeowners living in the following primary sampling units (the geographic area designation 

used for sample selection) were included in the study sample: New York City and New YorkConnecticut suburbs; Philadelphia-Wilmington-Atlantic City, PA-NJ-DE-MD; Chicago-GaryKenosha, IL-IN-WI; Houston-Galveston-Brazoria, TX; and Los Angeles County and Los 

Angeles suburbs, CA. The regression model was run for each year for each of the five 

geographic areas. 

 The total number of second interview reports from owner-occupants whose housing was 

not paid for by the government is 9,243 for the 1982-2002 time period. Our restrictions regarding 

missing and imputed data and outliers further reduced the sample size to 4,952; this is about 54 

percent of the base sample of owners. 

2.2 House Price Indexes 

The CMHPI indexes, like the more widely known Office of Federal Housing Enterprise 

Oversight (OFHEO) indexes, are quarterly house price indexes constructed using a weighted 

repeat sales method (see Case and Shiller, 1987, 1989) based upon Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae 

repeat mortgage transactions data; the CMHPI construction is described in Stephens et al. (1995). 

The Census new home price index is an index which uses hedonic regression techniques to 

estimate a price index for constant quality newly constructed homes over time; independent 

variables include numbers of bedrooms and bathrooms, air conditioning, and so on. Verbrugge 

(2007a) discusses potential benefits and weaknesses in these indexes. As will be noted below, 

however, the major conclusions do not depend upon whether the CMHPI, Census, or CE-based 

house price indexes are used. 
Thesia I. Garner and Randal Verbrugge 6

2.3 Interest Rate and Marginal vs. Average User Cost 

A key component in a user cost series is the interest rate. The choice of the interest rate is 

contentious. In one view, the interest rate used in a particular agent’s user cost should correspond 

to their idiosyncratic opportunity cost of capital – the rate at which future nominal returns are 

discounted. However, the work of Wang, Basu and Fernald (2005) implies that the appropriate 

interest rate is rather the rate which corresponds to risky housing investment; in other words, it 

should contain the risk premium relevant for mortgages. (One could argue, on the same basis, 

that the interest rate should also contain a default premium, reflecting the purely idiosyncratic 

part of the return, i.e., the part that is orthogonal to aggregate housing risk.) These considerations 

would suggest the use of the current mortgage interest rate, which contains both a risk premium 

and a default premium. Further lending support to this view is the fact that actual debt in the 

house must be financed at a mortgage interest rate. (This choice is also convenient in that it leads 

to a simpler user cost expression.) However, as in the case of the house price index, the 

resolution of this contentious issue appears not to matter; the basic character of the results is not 

affected if the T-bill interest rate – a rate that contains neither a risk nor a default premium – is 

used in place of the mortgage interest rate. 

 A second issue related to the interest rate is that of marginal versus average user cost. A 

quarterly user cost measure will most naturally be a current user cost, i.e., it will incorporate the 

current period home price and the current period interest rate. However, rent indexes generally 

do not share this temporal feature. Instead, these indexes are averages constructed from a sample 

of all existing rent contracts, rather than from a sample of new contracts each period; thus, these 

indexes are implicitly temporally aggregated, being averages of contracts that were renewed this 

month, renewed last month, and so on. Additionally, in the case of BLS rent indexes in particular, 

there is an explicit temporal aggregation, which is briefly discussed below; see Ptacek and 

Baskin (1996) for details on the construction of the BLS rent indexes. 

 Fortunately, it is straightforward to transform the marginal user cost series into a 

temporally aggregated series which approximately matches the temporal structure of the rent 

indexes. Most rent contracts are renewed annually; if one assumes that all rental contracts are 

renewed on an annual basis, and that renewal dates (and new contract dates) are distributed 

uniformly across all quarters, the user cost series can be put on the same temporal basis by 

replacing the current user cost with its average over the current and previous three quarters (i.e., 

a one-sided 4-quarter moving average). This transformation will clearly impact the volatility of 

the user cost series, but will not influence its lower frequency dynamics. 

2.4 Comparability of Rent Measure to User Cost Measure 

Since the goal is to compare estimated user costs to rents, one would ideally want to construct a 

measure of user costs that is as comparable as possible to the rental data. Both CPI and CMHPI 

indexes are constructed on the basis of price changes of units in the sample, a procedure which 

implicitly controls for unit-specific characteristics. But their underlying data sources are not 

completely comparable. The CPI rent sample includes some rent-regulated units; only about onequarter of this sample consists of detached housing; and the CPI performs a quality-adjustment 
Thesia I. Garner and Randal Verbrugge 7

whenever there are major structural changes (such as the addition of air-conditioning).8 The 

CMHPI sample consists mostly of detached housing units, and there is no adjustment for major 

structural changes. This comparability issue was partly addressed in Verbrugge (2007a) via the 

construction of a detached rent index based upon CPI microdata. Here we address this in a more 

elegant fashion, using CE data; in these data, the rent and house price measures derive from the 

same structure. 

3. User Costs 

In principle, the ex ante user cost is simply the expected annual cost associated with purchasing a 

house, using it for one year, and selling it at the end of the year.9 With risk neutral landlords, and 

under the assumption of no transactions costs, this should equal the market rent for an identical 

home. (For more details and discussion about user cost, see Diewert 2003). 

 In Verbrugge (2007a), three different (one year) user cost formulas were employed, all of 

which are standard.10 Since results were not affected, here we focus on the simplest measure, 

which ignores the preferential tax treatment given to homeowners: 

(8-1) user cost ( ) h h

t tt t

h

t t

Pi E

P

γ π

ψ

= +−

=

 In (8-1), h Pt is the price of the home, t

i is a nominal interest rate,11 γ is the sum of 

depreciation, maintenance and repair, insurance, and property tax rates (and potentially a risk 

premium) – all assumed constant, 12 h π t is the 4-quarter (constant quality) home price 

appreciation between now and 1 year from now, and E represents the expectation operator (so 

that the final term is expected annual constant quality home price appreciation). As Diewert 

 

8 The rents used to construct Rent indexes are the current dollar rent, plus any other payments or payments-in-kind 

paid by the tenant in the form of subsidies or work reductions. OER indexes are constructed using different 

aggregation weights (for example, rent-regulated units are removed), and the rents receive a utilities adjustment; see 

Verbrugge (2007c). All rents receive an aging-bias adjustment; see Gallin and Verbrugge (2007). 9

 In this paper, transactions costs and financing constraints (such as minimum down payments) are ignored. The 

relationship between market rents and user costs which take such complications into consideration has yet to be fully 

explored. (However, see Díaz and Luengo-Prado 2007 and Martin 2004.) The standard frictionless theory, which 

builds upon Hall and Jorgenson (1967), implies that rents equal user costs, and is exposited in Gillingham (1980, 

1983) and Dougherty and Van Order (1982); see also Diewert (2003). Wedges resulting from taxes and transactions 

costs were considered in Verbrugge (2007a). 10 See, e.g., Katz (1983), Diewert (2003), Green and Malpezzi (2003), Glaeser and Shapiro (2003), and Katz (2007). 

The measures here are all end-of-period user costs, easily transformed into beginning-of-period user costs by 

dividing by (1+ it), or to middle-of-period user costs by dividing by the square root of this term (Katz 2007). For the 

present purposes, this choice turns out to be inconsequential. 

11 See section 2 on the choice of the appropriate interest rate. 12 BEA estimates of the depreciation rate indicate minimal variation; it remains in the range of 0.015-0.016. Census 

estimates of maintenance and repairs imply only modest variation once a strong seasonal component is removed. 

Although it would be preferable to use actual property tax rates, in fact these rates often diverge significantly from 

official property tax rates, since tax requirements can be based upon out-of-date official appraisal data. 
Thesia I. Garner and Randal Verbrugge 8

(2003) points out, one may interpret ( ) h

t t i E− π as a period t real interest rate.13 For house price 

data that are quarterly, this gives rise to a quarterly user cost series. (Note that some authors refer 

to ψ t as the user cost.) 

 Rather than using a crude proxy, Verbrugge (2007a) constructed a forecast for h Eπ , as 

described below. This choice is crucial, for three reasons. First, expected home price 

appreciation is extremely volatile; setting this term to a constant is strongly at odds with the data, 

and moreover its level of volatility, and its correlation with t

i , is of central importance to the 

dynamics of user costs. Second, this term varies considerably across cities, and its temporal 

dynamics might well vary across cities as well. Finally, the recent surge in h Eπ is well above its 

15-year average, and implies that the user cost/rent ratio has fallen dramatically. A single year 

appreciation rate was used since the study considered the one year user cost, in order to remain 

comparable to the typical rental contract. 

 Note that the user cost consists of two terms which are multiplied together: property 

value h Pt , and the parenthetical expression ψ t . Movements in ψ are dominated by changes in the 

“gap” between interest rates and expected home price appreciation. We would not expect ψ to 

exceed 20%, nor to drop to 0%; thus, over long periods of time, user costs must track home 

prices. However, variations in ψ will be strongly amplified, since the term is multiplied by the 

home price. Put differently, unless interest rates and home price appreciation move almost 

perfectly in sync with each other – implying that expected home price appreciation is driven only 

by interest rates – we should expect user costs to be highly volatile. The larger is γ, the less 

volatile are user costs. Furthermore, as Himmelberg, Mayer and Sinai (2005) point out, the 

smaller is ψ, the more it will move when i moves. 

 As noted above, to construct user cost measures for each region, one must forecast fourquarter-ahead regional home price appreciation, h π t . The forecasting approach settled upon in 

Verbrugge (2007a) combined three forecasts, and this produced a reasonable fit to the data (in 

sharp contrast to the traditional 15-year average). Home price appreciation has a significant 

forecastable component, in that periods of home price appreciation tend to be followed 

immediately by periods of additional home price appreciation. In keeping with this, both 

anecdotal and survey evidence (e.g., Case, Quigley and Shiller, 2003) suggest that homebuyers’ 

appreciation expectations appear to be simple extrapolations of recent appreciation rates. There 

is one caveat: for some cities and some time periods, to ensure that the user cost expression (8-1) 

remained sensibly bounded below, an alternative “censored” forecast was used. This censored 

forecast equaled 4 ˆ h π t+ except when the inequality 4 ( ) 0.005 ˆ h

t t i +− < γ π + held, in which case the 

forecast was set to 4 ˆ 0.005 h

t t π γ i + =+− . Two final notes regarding Verbrugge (2007a): first, the 

forecast series were not appreciably smoother than the actual home price appreciation series; this 

plays a key role in the volatility present in ex ante user costs, since it turns out that – at least over 

the more recent period – mortgage interest rates are not perfectly correlated with expected house 

 

13 Many other authors base their user cost measures upon an expression such as (r E ) h +γ− π , where r is a real

interest rate. This is erroneous, as can be understood by comparing two riskless economies which differ only in their 

rate of inflation. 
Thesia I. Garner and Randal Verbrugge 9

price appreciation, leading to substantial volatility in ψ t . Second, the divergence between rents 

and user costs does not appear to hinge crucially upon the forecasting method used (see 

Verbrugge, 2007a). 

 Note that, though commonly practiced or suggested, it is inappropriate to smooth 

appreciation forecasts: if expectations about future house price inflation are volatile, then this 

should be reflected in ex ante user costs. Smoothing forecasts using two-sided filters is especially 

inappropriate, since this implicitly grants the forecaster with information from the future, and 

distorts parameter estimates (see Ashley and Verbrugge, 2007). The only smoothing which might 

be justified in this context is the smoothing outlined in section 2.3, a procedure which transforms 

a marginal user cost series into a (temporally) “averaged” user cost series, in order to mimic the 

temporal structure of the BLS rent indexes. 

4. Review of Results in Verbrugge (2007a) 

Over the period January 1980 (1980:1) through January 2005 (2005:1), nominal aggregate home 

prices (measured by the CMHPI) rose by 125%14 (or, as measured by the Census price index, by 

92%), nominal aggregate CPI rents rose by 100%, and the CPI15 rose by 82%. But we would not 

necessarily expect these measures to rise by exactly the same amount: not only are underlying 

structural characteristics different, but more fundamentally, theory tells us that rents should 

coincide with user costs, not house prices.

 Figure 1 compares the movement in two aggregate rental series and two aggregate user 

cost series. The rental series are the official CPI rent index,16 and a research series constructed in 

Verbrugge (2007a) which tracks rental inflation in detached rental units. The user cost series are 

constructed as in (8-1), using either CMHPI (and CMHPI-based appreciation forecasts) or the 

Census index (and Census index-based appreciation forecasts). Each series is logged, and user 

costs are smoothed using a one-sided 4-quarter moving-average to mimic the implicit smoothing 

in BLS rent series. Then the log user cost series and the log CPI rent series are shifted by a 

constant so that each has an average value of 1.0 over the time period 1980 through 2005 quarter 

one. Finally, the log detached rental series is shifted by a constant so that its value in January 

1988 equals that of the CPI rent series. 

 

14 Individual cities, of course, had different experiences: Boston’s prices rose by 206%; Houston’s, only 64%. 15 More specifically, the CPI-U-RS, a research series constructed with current methods; see Stewart and Reed, 1999. 

16 Verbrugge (2007a) made the historical adjustments to the index recommended in Crone, Nakamura and Voith 

(2006). 
Thesia I. Garner and Randal Verbrugge 10

Figure 1. Log User Cost versus Log Rent Based on Indexes for All U.S. 

-0.2

0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

1.2

1.4

1.6

1980:01

1981:02

1982:03

1983:04

1985:01

1986:02

1987:03

1988:04

1990:01

1991:02

1992:03

1993:04

1995:01

1996:02

1997:03

1998:04

2000:01

2001:02

2002:03

2003:04

2005:01

Scaled CMHPI user cost

Scaled Census user cost

Scaled CPI rent

Scaled Detached rent

 This graph provides little evidence in favor of the hypothesis that user costs and rents are 

equivalent measures of the cost of housing services – reinforcing the theoretical arguments in 

Díaz and Luengo-Prado (2007). This is true regardless of which measures of rents or of house 

prices are used. Rents steadily and smoothly increase over the period. User costs, in contrast, are 

anything but smooth, and do not even appear to share the trend in rents. In the case of the user 

cost series constructed using the CMHPI, this series jumps up dramatically at the beginning of 

the period, and is subsequently more or less trendless, before ending with a significant dip. In the 

case of the user cost series constructed using the Census index, this series appears to have a 

slight downward trend over the entire period. Housing prices increased steadily over this period; 

the reduction in the differential between mortgage interest rates and expected home price 

appreciation over this period is responsible for the failure of user costs to track the rise in home 

prices. In other words, the deviation between rents and user costs is largely explained by the 

movements in ψ t : seemingly small changes in interest rates or expected appreciation can have 

very large effects on user costs, since these often represent large percentage changes inψ t .

17 (To 

give a sense of the importance of these terms inψ t , note that toward the end of this period, 

expected appreciation in housing prices caused user costs to plummet. If one counterfactually 

imposed a “pessimistic” expected appreciation of 0% in the final period, the scaled CMHPI user 

cost index would have risen to a level 26% above the scaled rent index.) 

 

17 Recall that ln(user cost ) ln ln h

tt t d dP d = + ψ . 
Thesia I. Garner and Randal Verbrugge 11

 Noteworthy are the lengthy periods of divergence. Similar divergence is visible, to a 

greater or lesser extent, in each of the ten cities that were examined, and across the four Census 

regions; see Verbrugge (2007a). After 1980, following a period of very low user costs, CMHPIuser costs rose rapidly, driven by rising interest rates and falling expected appreciation rates. The 

rise in user cost between 1987 and 1990 resulted primarily from a decline in expected home price 

appreciation. Since 1981, despite rising home prices, user costs – while volatile – have displayed 

no upward trend at all: the steady upward trend in home prices has been effectively “cancelled 

out” by a reduction (over this period) in the gap between the mortgage interest rate and the 

expected home price appreciation. In contrast, rental prices have risen steadily over this period. 

Thus, the relative price of homeownership to renting has fallen substantially over the period. The 

decline in the relative price of homeownership is consistent with the concurrent uptick in 

homeownership rates.18

 We turn next to the second finding, related to volatility. The growth-rate comparison is 

crucial for statistical agencies which are responsible for producing inflation statistics: measuring 

inflation in homeowner shelter costs via the rental equivalence method means using rent inflation

in neighboring rental markets – adjusted for the costs of utilities and so on – as the measure of 

inflation in homeowner shelter costs. Thus, for such agencies, the growth rate comparison is 

more important. The contrast is stark. Not only are the respective means of the rent index growth 

and user cost index growth series different (rent inflation being, on average, well above user cost 

inflation over this period), their volatility is also strikingly different. In particular, the volatility in 

the inflation rate of smoothed aggregate user costs is over 10 times larger than that in aggregate 

rents.19 The divergence would be even greater on a monthly basis. As owner-occupied housing 

typically possesses a large weight in consumer price index formulas, this level of volatility 

would essentially render such indexes useless – such volatile movements in housing costs would 

drive the entire index on a month-to-month basis, likely drowning out the signal in noise. 

 The apparent divergence between rents and user costs highlighted above is confirmed via 

regression analysis in Verbrugge (2007b): there is only weak evidence that rents respond to the 

determinants of user costs. In other words, regression analysis confirms the conclusions above: 

rents and user costs are not related in the expected manner. (Indeed, even cointegration between 

rents and user costs can be rejected in the aggregate, and in most of the cities as well.) 

The third novel finding relates to the issue of arbitrage. The massive divergences suggest 

the presence of unexploited profit opportunities, particularly since about one-quarter of all rental 

housing consists of detached units, which are readily moved between owner and renter markets 

(so that the capital specificity issue highlighted by Ramey and Shapiro (2001) should not play a 

big role). However, Verbrugge (2007a) found that the large costs associated with real estate 

transactions would have prevented risk neutral investors from earning expected profits by using 

the transaction sequence buy-earn rent on the property-sell, and would have prevented risk 

neutral homeowners from earning expected profits by using the transaction sequence sell-rent 

from someone else for one year-repurchase. 

 

18 Chambers, Garriga and Schlagenhauf (2004) attribute much of this uptick to mortgage market innovations such as 

interest only mortgages. These explanations could be complementary. 

19 As noted earlier, similar temporal and volatility divergences were observed between rents and the two CPI-U 

experimental ex post user cost indexes, which were constructed in 1979 (with a start date of 1967) and published 

through 1983. Both of these measures used 5-year appreciation rates. See BLS (1980). The large rent-to-price 

volatility noted by Phillips (1988a,b) is only about one-fifth as large. 
Thesia I. Garner and Randal Verbrugge 12

The fourth novel finding hints at a possible resolution to the divergence puzzle. As long 

as one uses a reasonably accurate forecast of annual appreciation in the user cost formula, one 

finds large divergence. But if one instead replaces expected annual appreciation with expected 

CPI inflation (which corresponds to an assumption of no real capital gains even in the short run) 

or alternatively with an annualized longer-horizon forecast, the resultant user cost measures 

feature appreciably less divergence from rents. Thus, a rationalization for rent inflation stickiness 

might provide the basis of an explanation for the divergence puzzle.

5. Extensions: Dollar User Costs and Rents for Median Structures in Five Cities 

The research conducted by Verbrugge (2007a) is based on rent and house price data that are in 

the form of indexes (i.e., the CPI, CMHPI and the Census new home price index); thus, one 

could not directly compare dollar rents with dollar user costs. Moreover, the indexes used by 

Verbrugge are not completely comparable; as noted above, BLS rent indexes are based on rents 

that include multi-unit rental properties, while CMHPI data are dominated by detached owneroccupied homes. However, Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) Interview data include both 

property value and characteristics data, and rental equivalence data, in dollars, for the same 

property – which does allow the comparison of dollar rents and dollar user costs for a given 

property (once an appropriate measure of expected appreciation is constructed). 20 It further 

allows one to compute the house price/rent ratio for a particular property. 

Consumer Expenditure Interview data collected from January1982 through December 

2002 were used to obtain cross sections (over time) of reported rental equivalence, property 

value, and number of rooms for owner-occupied structures, for five cities. On an annual basis for 

each city, the CE data were used to estimate the log rent level based upon the property value and 

number of rooms of the structure, using the simple regression model specification in (8-2). 

(8-2) i,t Jan Jun i,t

h 2

2 i,t

h

i,t 1 i,t ln(rent ) = a + b (p ) + b (p ) + d(rooms ) + gI + e −

where Jan Jun I − is an indicator variable which takes the value 1 if the CE interview takes place in 

the first half of the year. The indicator variable is included since rents on average rise over time 

and because we wanted to produce semi-annual indexes rather than annual indexes. The model 

was estimated separately for each of the five cities under consideration: New York, Philadelphia, 

Chicago, Houston, and Los Angeles. To prevent the influence of non-representative observations, 

we dropped each sample observation which, after an initial fit of the model (8-2), possessed an 

externally studentized residual greater than 2.5. Regression sample sizes ranged from a low of 16 

for Houston (in 1984) and Philadelphia (in 1995) to a high of 135 for Los Angeles (in 2000). 

Regressions were run without weights. The average adjusted 2 R was 0.66, with a minimum of 

0.33. 

 Using coefficient estimates derived from (8-2), after applying the requisite log bias 

adjustment, one can form an estimate of the expected rent for any hypothetical property with 

particular characteristics. The characteristic values that we selected are those at the median, i.e., 

 

20 It is reasonable to assume that property owners have ready access to measures of recent house price appreciation, 

since these are both important inputs into housing decisions and are frequently reported upon by the popular press. 
Thesia I. Garner and Randal Verbrugge 13

the median number of rooms and the median property value, within each city. (Hereafter we 

refer to this hypothetical structure as the median structure.) For each city, taking these estimated 

rents as true market rental prices, we constructed semi-annual measures of rents for this median 

structure. We constructed semi-annual measures of user costs using the house price appreciation 

forecasts from Verbrugge (2007a), along with the median structure price or house value. We then 

constructed the price/rent ratio for each city, and plotted these in figure 2. The price was the 

median house value and the rent was the estimated market rent for the median structure. User 

costs and rents for each city are plotted in figures 3a-3e. 

 The price/rent ratio has received much attention lately, because several studies (e.g., 

Leamer 2002, Krainer 2003, Hatzius 2004) have suggested (on the basis of “P/E ratio” logic) that 

since house price indexes have risen faster than rent indexes, house prices are likely overvalued. 

(As noted previously, one cannot use indexes to adequately address this question; instead, as in 

this study, one must have level data on rents and house prices, since this question is 

fundamentally about levels.) Smith and Smith (2006) remind us that, although the fundamental 

value of a house does depend upon rents, we should not expect the price/rent ratio to be constant. 

This is because the price/rent ratio depends upon many variables: not only interest rates, tax laws, 

risk premia, and the like, but also anticipated future values of rents, interest rates, and so on. Still, 

as Krainer (2003) points out, if houses were indeed overvalued, we might expect to see signs of 

it in the historical price/rent ratio. 
Thesia I. Garner and Randal Verbrugge 14

Figure 2: Price/Rent Ratio for Median Structure, 1982-2002 

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

Chicago

Houston

LA

NY

Philadelphia

 In figure 2, we plot price/rent ratios for the median structure, which are smoothed using a 

3-period moving average since there is substantial variation. Over this time period, we observe 

the following lower frequency movements of these ratios. 1) The price/rent ratio in Chicago 

displays no discernible trend, with an average of 11.7. 2) The price/rent ratio in Houston is 

generally low, and displays a decline followed by a slight rebound starting at about 1992. 3) 

Between 1986 and 1990, the price/rent ratio in Los Angeles climbs rapidly and flattens out, then 

starts in 1992 to gradually decline to a low of 12 (in early 1998) before rebounding up to 14. 4) 

The price/rent ratio in New York starts at a very low level and displays rapid growth until 1988 

(peaking above 15), followed by a decline until early 2001, then climbs rapidly up to 14. 5) The 

price/rent ratio in Philadelphia starts at a very low level, grows until 1990 and then falls starting 

in 1994, ending where it began, with a price/rent ratio of only 10. 

 How do these dynamics compare to those in the ratio of the CMHPI index to the BLS 

rent index? There are broad similarities, but some key differences as well. The ratio of indexes is 

much smoother. The comparison is closest for New York, Los Angeles, and Houston, where both 

the general character and the turning points are very similar to those based upon CE data. Most 

of the differences relate to behavior toward the end of the period. In particular, the index ratio 

starts to climb in every city somewhere in the 1996-1999 period, eventually rising to meet or 

exceed the level of its previous peak in all cities except Houston. This is not true of the CE-based 

ratios, and indeed, in Philadelphia the CE-based ratio falls at the end. And as for Chicago, the 

CMHPI/BLS rent ratio rises modestly until 1990 (in contrast to the CE-based ratio, which falls), 
Thesia I. Garner and Randal Verbrugge 15

plateaus, then rises again starting in 1999. It is difficult to discern these dynamics in the CEbased ratio. 

 What explains the divergences between these measures? Turning points are likely 

influenced by sampling variation, and such variation can also conceal broad trends. Price/rent 

ratios vary by price level. This can exacerbate the effect of sample size if the data are dissimilar; 

and it implies that the estimated ratio is sensitive to the dynamics of the sample median.21 And 

the low frequency divergences, particularly toward the end of the sample, may partly reflect the 

greater house price inflation suggested by CMHPI indexes than by other indexes, such as the 

Census home price index. (Similarly, the CMHPI index for Philadelphia displays about 5% 

greater growth between 1990 and 2002 than does Gillen’s hedonic Philadelphia House Price 

Index (Gillen, 2005).22) 

 Overall, the behavior of our CE-based measures are not too dissimilar from index-based 

measures, which is reassuring and perhaps suggests that it might be useful to scale or normalize 

conventional measures to match the estimates here. Some may question the use of reported rental 

equivalence as an accurate measure of rents. But, previous research finds these to be similar for 

similar renter and owner structures. Francois (1989) analyzed CPI housing survey data which 

were collected from renters and owners to compare owners’ reported rental equivalence with 

imputed rents based on renters’ rents for structures with the same characteristics. After 

accounting for renter length-of-residency discounts and rent-control in his regression-based 

analysis, Francois found that imputed rents and reported rental equivalence on average were not 

statistically significantly different. Francois noted that this is in contrast to the findings of others 

who reported rental equivalence estimates to be substantially higher than imputed rents. 

 Figures 3a-3e demonstrate that there are large divergences between rents and user costs 

in these five cities. For these graphs, we use the following user cost formula, which captures the 

tax advantages to homeownership: 

(8-3) user cost [ (1 ) (1 ) ( )] h Fed prop Fed h

t tt t t t t = − + − +− Pi E τ τ τ γπ (

 In (8-3), prop

t τ is the property tax rate (assumed fixed at 2%), Fedt τ is the marginal federal 

income tax rate facing a family of four with twice the median income,23

g

( (which, unlike in (8-

1), does not include the property tax rate) equals 5%, and h Eπ t is censored as above.24 

 

21 For this reason, we actually use a smoothed time estimate of the median, rather than the sample median. 

22 Philadelphia is an interesting case for other reasons: for example, in 1999, 60% of the housing units in 

Philadelphia were priced at less than 90% of construction costs (Glaeser and Gyourko 2002, based upon American 

Housing Survey Data), and house prices in that year were roughly where they were in 1990. The CE data for 

Philadelphia are also unusual; for example, the median property value displays quite large swings over time. 

23 These tax rates were constructed, and graciously shared, by Elaine Maag; see Maag (2003). 24 The 2% property tax and 5% marginal federal income tax rate facing a family of four with twice the median 

income are fairly typical in the literature. The family of four with this income was selected as being representative of 

homeowners. 
Thesia I. Garner and Randal Verbrugge 16

Figure 3a: Rent and User Cost for Median Structure, Chicago 

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

198219831984198519861987198819891990199119921993199419951996199719981999200020012002

user cost, median structure

predicted rent, median structure

Figure 3b: Rent and User Cost for Median Structure, Houston 

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

198219831984198519861987198819891990199119921993199419951996199719981999200020012002

user cost, median structure

predicted rent, median structure
Thesia I. Garner and Randal Verbrugge 17

Figure 3c: Rent and User Cost for Median Structure, New York City 

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

30000

35000

40000

198219831984198519861987198819891990199119921993199419951996199719981999200020012002

user cost, median structure

predicted rent, median structure

Figure 3d: Rent and User Cost for Median Structure, Los Angeles 

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

30000

35000

40000

198219831984198519861987198819891990199119921993199419951996199719981999200020012002

user cost, median structure

predicted rent, median structure
Thesia I. Garner and Randal Verbrugge 18

Figure 3e: Rent and User Cost for Median Structure, Philadelphia 

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

198219831984198519861987198819891990199119921993199419951996199719981999200020012002

user cost, median structure

predicted rent, median structure

 For each city, we observe significant and lengthy divergences between rents and user 

costs. User costs are much more volatile than rents. Low frequency movements appear to be only 

loosely related. Indeed, in New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, the two series appear 

almost unrelated. It is not surprising that researchers have difficulty detecting a relationship 

between rents and user costs over extended periods of time. 

 Since these series are in levels, we may directly compare user costs and rents in dollars at 

each point in time. The most surprising conclusion is that, even taking account the tax 

advantages of homeownership, user costs sometimes lay well above rents. It is not always 

cheaper to own than rent (when comparing the same structure). However, in the latter part of the 

period, user costs were well below rents in every city, contrary to what popular press accounts 

had suggested. 

 These results are very similar to those in Verbrugge (2007a) in which different rent and 

house price measures are used. This leads to two conclusions. First, different rent and house 

price measures (and different tax adjustments) will lead to different low frequency dynamics; but 

the differential between the interest rate and expected appreciation, which is likely the key driver 

of user costs, appears to dominate even the medium frequency dynamics. Second, since these 

CE-based measures also display the large divergences observed between CMHPI based user 

costs and BLS rents, this suggests that these divergences do not stem from index construction 

errors. 
Thesia I. Garner and Randal Verbrugge 19

6. Conclusions 

Verbrugge (2007a) demonstrated that appropriately smoothed ex ante user costs diverge 

markedly from rents, a puzzle from the perspective of standard Jorgensonian theory. In 

particular, these measures diverge markedly both in growth rates – user costs are substantially 

more volatile – and in levels – user costs diverge from rents over extended periods of time. These 

divergences hold at both aggregate and disaggregate levels. These findings are of substantial 

importance to statistical agencies, since housing services form a large proportion of the typical 

household’s total consumption, so that the choice of the homeowner inflation measure is crucial 

for inflation measurement. We offer our conclusions below. 

 In this paper, we extend Verbrugge (2007a) by comparing, for five cities, user costs and 

rents for the same median structure, in levels (i.e., measured in dollars). These measures are 

constructed using Consumer Expenditure Interview Survey data, combined with house price 

appreciation forecasts. The overall picture that emerges is similar: our estimated user costs and 

rents diverge to a surprising degree. Surprisingly, even after taking account of the tax advantages 

to homeownership, it is sometimes far cheaper to rent. (Still, it is doubtful that it would have 

been profitable to become a renter temporarily: Verbrugge (2007a) found that the large costs 

associated with real estate transactions would have prevented risk neutral agents from making 

profits in expectation by selling one’s home, renting for a year, then repurchasing the house.) 

Arbitrage is evidently rather slow, likely compounded by the search process that plays a key role 

in real estate transactions. We also found that the dynamics of the estimated price/rent ratio is 

broadly similar to the dynamics of conventional price/rent ratio measures for housing. 

 Do any other factors contribute to the measured divergence? Verbrugge (2007a) used 

indexes from multiple sources, leaving open the possibility that errors in the construction of 

these indexes might have been responsible for some or all of the divergence. But our finding of 

divergence in CE-based measures suggests that the explanation lies elsewhere. It is possible that 

the expected house price appreciation measure could be improved upon; but evidence in 

Verbrugge (2007a) suggests that results are not sensitive to details in how this is constructed.25

Our understanding of user costs is almost certainly deficient; but Verbrugge (2007a) argues that 

even using current generation user cost approximations (e.g., Díaz and Luengo-Prado 2007, 

Martin 2004) would not result in an elimination of the puzzling divergence. 

We believe that the empirical puzzles found here suggest that there is some industrial 

organization work to be done regarding rent determination. A challenge for this theory will be 

the marked non-specificity of detached housing, which forms a sizable proportion of the rental 

market. 

 In the context of this volume, we re-emphasize the point that the findings herein favor 

rental equivalence, over user cost, as the measure that official statistical agencies use for 

 

25 Imposing the equality of rents and user costs and solving for expected appreciation as a residual results in an 

implied expected appreciation series which diverges markedly from actual appreciation. The correct expected 

appreciation measure derives from applying the correct model to the data; in other words, “fundamentalist” forecasts 

are required. However, we do not fully understand house price dynamics; we don’t even know if there was or is a 

bubble, for example. Martin (2006) provides a structural model of house price dynamics with surprising 

implications. 
Thesia I. Garner and Randal Verbrugge 20

estimating homeowner shelter cost inflation. First, extant measures of ex ante user costs, even if 

smoothed to mimic the implicit smoothing in the CPI rent series, would be too volatile to be of 

practical use. Second, until the divergence between rents and user costs is explained, it is more 

conservative to continue to use rental equivalence; the alternative is to use a potentially suspect 

user cost formula and an appreciation forecast which will remain controversial, no matter how it 

is done, until the economics profession settles on a model of house price dynamics. Finally, 

while it can no longer be claimed that user costs are an alternative way to measure rents, there 

remain other theoretical justifications for using rental equivalence, outlined in detail in Poole, 

Ptacek and Verbrugge (2005). To summarize some of the argument, consumer price indexes seek 

to track inflation in current consumption. But for a homeowner, a house is not only a 

consumption good; it is also an investment good, so that housing is akin to a bundled commodity. 

The statistical agency must estimate the price or value of the consumption services, but – since 

these are considered out-of-scope for most price indexes – must separate out the financial aspects 

of homeownership. Hypothetical rents are arguably the correct measure of the flow of services 

consumed by the homeowner. The fact that user costs diverge from rents merely reflects, in this 

view, out-of-scope financial asset movements. The fact that homeowners might misjudge their 

own property’s market rent level does not rule out the use of rental equivalence; as long as the 

true measure of homeowner rental equivalence grows at the rate of market rents, the inflation 

rate in rental equivalence will be correctly measured. 

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