Why aren't house prices included in CPI?

To keep to official rate of CPI down, otherwise the official CPI would be very much higher.

Another way of keeping the CPI down is to substitute cheaper items in place of the previous more expensive things. So if a pound of hamburger mince is no more expensive than a pound of prime steak used to be, there is officially "no inflation".

Inflation is really a tax. It's tax on your wages, it's a tax on your savings. But it's a stealth tax that most people don't even consider to be a tax at all.

One simple way of looking things: This year you have $100, one year later, with an inflation rate of 3%, your $100 can now only buy about $97 worth of goods. (It would cost you $103 in a year's time to buy what you can buy today for $100.) What happened to that $3? It has evaporated as a stealth tax.

Keep that $100 for enough years, and it will then be only worth ONE single today's dollar. I calculated recently, that with 50 years of inflation since Nixon took the US off the gold standard back in 1971, it would take THIRTY-EIGHT 2021 dollars to buy what just ONE 1971 dollar would buy.