Yeah, Tuesday’s inflation report really stunk. Yeah, the already 40-year high rate of inflation actually increased from July as the cost of food hit fresh 43-year high inflation rates. Yeah, Joe Biden aviators and all, celebrated it. Yikes. None of that’s pretty. But that was what happened nationally. Here at home, the inflation story has been even more dramatic – though thankfully free of Joe Biden’s parties. Inflation typically runs hotter in South Florida than the country overall. It’s not complicated, a lot of people want to be here. A lot of people think we’re lucky to already be here. Far more people would prefer to be here than just about anywhere, USA. It’s what’s commonly referred to as the price of paradise. But it wasn’t just that the price of paradise continued to pace above the national average last month. It’s that we hit a fresh 41-year high inflation rate in the process – surging past June’s previous high in this cycle. Rather than having us wait to see what happened here at home, the Bureau of Labor Statistics dropped the goods on a smattering of metros across the country including South Florida. The cost of living in South Florida, the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro, rose by 10.7% - higher than the previous high of 10.6% in June. Like what happened nationally – food inflation was a huge factor, however the prominent reason for our fresh 41-year high inflation rate is housing. The average cost of buying a home has risen by about 13% over the past year, the average cost of rent has paced about a 15% increase. And that leads me to the next related point. When it has come to housing in South Florida guessing has been losing. As part of my weekly stock market update, I make a point of mentioning that over 90% of the time investors try to time the market/investments they end up worse off than if they’d stayed the course with their original plan. That number is likely much worse for those attempting to time a decline in home prices.
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