Does deporting immigrants cause housing or apartment prices to go down in the short term? I get in the long term it would be worse because you have a smaller construction work force.
Executive summary
Short-term effects of mass deportations on housing are mixed but the preponderance of recent studies and reporting finds deportations would not lower prices overall and are more likely to raise them by disrupting construction and increasing vacancies in specific low-rent pockets (see University of Utah study and Urban Institute analysis) [1] [2]. Empirical work using staggered rollouts of enforcement finds reduced residential construction and higher home prices after enforcement increases, while reporting and policy groups warn of foreclosures, localized vacancy spikes, and market destabilization [1] [3] [4].
1. Short-term dynamics: vacated units vs. construction shock
Deportations can temporarily free up apartments in the lowest-rent segments where undocumented tenants cluster, producing localized vacancy increases and downward pressure on rents in those buildings — a pattern observed after some targeted crackdowns historically (Arizona 2007) and noted by property managers in recent reporting [5] [6]. But multiple studies and journalists emphasize that any short-lived demand loss is quickly overwhelmed by the supply-side consequences: fewer construction workers means slower building, which pushes prices on both new and existing homes up, even in the near term as projects stall and repair capacity falls [1] [7] [4].
2. Evidence from causal research: enforcement raises prices by cutting supply
A paper using the staggered rollout of enforcement programs finds a causal link from stricter immigration enforcement to declines in construction labor, lower residential output and higher home prices — the mechanism is a supply shock to building, not sustained demand reduction — and researchers explicitly show the small, temporary downward demand effects are “quickly dominated” by supply-side impacts [1] [8].
3. How construction labor market structure matters
Immigrants made up sizable shares of the construction workforce in recent years — estimates cited in reporting and policy analysis put immigrant shares of construction at roughly one-sixth to nearly 30% depending on source and definition — so removing large numbers of undocumented workers creates immediate shortages for low-skill, on-site roles that are hard to replace quickly, raising labor costs and slowing pace of completions [2] [9] [10]. Those higher costs are passed to buyers and renters, negating any small vacancy-driven downward pressure.
4. Rental-market heterogeneity: winners and losers
Coverage from Stateline and Marketplace highlights uneven effects: low-end apartment owners in immigrant-heavy neighborhoods may see vacancies and downward rent pressure, while landlords that depend on immigrant renters or contractors face income loss, deferred maintenance, foreclosures, or higher insurance/repair costs after disasters, which can ripple into broader market dynamics [4] [6]. Policy groups warn mass deportations could trigger foreclosures among owner-occupied households with undocumented earners, worsening housing-market instability [3].
5. Counterarguments and political framing
Political advocates for deportation argue freed-up units will lower housing costs for citizens; some commentators suggest deregulation and lower taxes proposed alongside deportation could boost supply and offset labor losses [11] [8]. But researchers and industry experts interviewed in multiple outlets say deregulation is unlikely to fully offset an abrupt shrinkage in the construction labor pool, and empirical studies to date show net upward pressure on prices after enforcement increases [1] [7].
6. Limits of the record and what’s not addressed
Existing reporting and working papers focus on episodes of stepped-up enforcement and model short- to medium-term effects; they do not provide a universal, one-size-fits-all prediction for every metro. Available sources do not mention precise magnitudes for short‑term apartment-price declines in specific cities beyond case studies like Arizona, nor do they model counterfactuals where deportations are combined with massive, immediate policy offsets funded and executed at scale (not found in current reporting) [5] [1].
7. Bottom line for policymakers and the public
The empirical and policy literature in the record shows deportations are unlikely to produce broad, sustained downward pressure on housing prices in the short term; instead, evidence points to supply disruptions that raise costs and destabilize markets, with localized rent decreases in low-end inventory as an exception [1] [2] [6]. Those outcomes align across university research (University of Utah/SSRN), policy institutions (Urban Institute, CMS, NILC) and reporting (Stateline, Newsweek) cited above [1] [2] [3] [8].