Household Debt Service

Household Debt Service Payments as a Percent of Disposable Personal Income

View on FRED · TDSP ↗

11.11%

yoy

▼ 0.12%

41 obs · quarterly · percent── 1y ago 11.12%

What it is

How stretched households are. High = rent-raise ceiling; low = headroom for demand.

source: FRED
frequency: quarterly
units: percent
s.a.: yes

What it’s telling us · as of 2026-04-01

Household debt service sits at 11.11%, essentially flat a year ago and down about 12 basis points from the peak last October. That stability masks what actually matters: the ceiling on your rent raises just didn't move. Households are spending the same slice of income on debt now as they were twelve months back, which means their capacity to absorb higher rents tracks where it was — tight but not tightening further. If you're modeling a 5-8% rent increase on renewal, you're banking on income growth to make the math work, because debt service isn't giving tenants any new headroom.

⟡ auto-generated weekly · claude-haiku-4-5 · reviewed before publish

Related metrics

Get the data

Python · fredapi

"""
Household Debt Service — How stretched households are. High = rent-raise ceiling; low = headroom for demand.
Freq: quarterly · Source: FRED
"""
from fredapi import Fred

fred = Fred(api_key="YOUR_FRED_API_KEY")
series = fred.get_series("TDSP")
print(series.tail())

LLM prompt

You are analyzing FRED series TDSP — Household Debt Service Payments as a Percent of Disposable Personal Income.

Context: How stretched households are. High = rent-raise ceiling; low = headroom for demand.

Attributes
- Units: percent
- Frequency: quarterly
- Source: FRED

Latest observation: 11.11% as of 2026-04-01
Year-over-year change: -0.12%

Analyze this metric for a tech-forward real estate investor with 1–3 properties. What is it signaling right now? What should I watch next?