Inflation has been cooling, and a big part of why is that rent increases have as well. That is also why inflation is likely to keep going lower in the months ahead.

Tuesday’s inflation report from the Labor Department showed that overall consumer prices were up 3.2% from a year earlier in October, while core prices, which exclude food and energy prices in an effort to better track inflation’s underlying trend, were up 4%. That core increase, while still obviously too high, was the smallest since September 2021, and a lot nicer than the 6.6% logged in September of last year.