- Immigration under President Joe Biden increased housing prices by 2.2%, a federal report found.
- This accounted for 30% of total increases in home prices from 2021 to 2024, the paper said.
- Another study found that deporting construction workers reduced housing supply by 5.7%.
A Federal Reserve report highlighted by the White House found that the immigration surge under President Joe Biden increased housing prices across the country.
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For every uptick in “unauthorized immigrant workers” equal to 1% of the local workforce, house prices grew by 2.2% and rental prices by 1.4%, the authors concluded.
In the average metropolitan area, illegal immigration accounted for roughly 30% of the total growth in housing prices and 20% of the total growth in rents under Biden.
From day one, President Trump and I have said this very thing. Stopping the flood of illegal migrants into this country will bring down home prices and make housing affordable again for young Americans who are trying to start a family.
Despite the left’s incessant whining,… https://t.co/WMhTY8ctWA
— JD Vance (@JDVance) July 7, 2026
“From day one, President Trump and I have said this very thing,” Vice President JD Vance said in a post on Tuesday.
“Stopping the flood of illegal migrants into this country will bring down home prices and make housing affordable again for young Americans who are trying to start a family.”
The working paper, published in March by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas research department, was labeled as a preliminary draft, compiled for professional feedback.
It also found an insignificant impact of immigration on home construction, suggesting the shock in demand was not met by a spike in supply powered by migrant labor.
How big was the ‘immigration boom’?
An estimated 7 million immigrants were added to the United States population from March 2021 to March 2024, the report said, citing the Congressional Budget Office.
This is the largest increase in net migration in U.S. history, averaging 1.75 million illegal entries per year, compared to the average of 100,000 per year for the two decades prior.
The population of immigrants living without legal permission in Utah nearly doubled during that same period from around 95,000 to nearly 180,000, according to multiple estimates.
Lawmakers moved to support schools with influxes in English learners and to penalize unlicensed drivers, while an effort to block all state-funded aid to immigrants failed to pass.
However, the report found that illegal immigration actually decreased the cost of government programs.
An increase in workers living in the country illegally equal to 1% of the labor force corresponded with a 4.5% reduction in local welfare spending due to positive effects on employment.
This was driven by the fact that around 80% of newly arrived immigrants were of working age and had an employment rate of roughly 70% which reduced overall community reliance on SNAP and Medicaid.
Immigration impacts housing demand
Salt Lake County Republican chair Mike Carey, who is a home developer, has long been critical of state policies he believes attract illegal immigration and hurt Utahns.
Carey worries Utah’s First-Time Homebuyer Assistance Program can be used by individuals who entered the U.S. illegally to get $20,000 no-interest loans for homes.
He points to Spanish social media posts from real estate agents advertising the $80 million program which has reportedly helped 3,000 Utahns with down payments or closing costs.
In 2023, the Migration Policy Institute estimated 58,000 of Utah’s “unauthorized population” are homeowners.
Carey is pushing for an audit of the program, he told the Deseret News. Policy disagreements cannot hide the fact that immigration has put pressure on state demographics.
International migration accounted for a majority of Utah population growth in 2023 and 2024, totaling around 30,000 new individuals each year, state data shows.
Salt Lake City had the third highest rate of immigrant arrivals of any city in the final 18 months of Biden’s presidency.
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But one of the state’s preeminent housing experts believes immigration has little to do with Utah’s expensive market.
Home prices soared by 40% after COVID-19 due to supply chain friction and low interest rates, said Jim Wood, former senior fellow at the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.
So, even if immigration did impact Utah housing prices, it was dwarfed by inflation, Wood told the Deseret News.
“In terms of the contribution to the increase those 2.2% and 1.4% for rents are fairly modest,” Wood said.
What’s driving Utah’s housing prices?
The University of Utah’s Gardner Policy Institute has ranked Utah as the nation’s ninth costliest housing market.
While long-term demand depends on demographics, short-term demand stems from monetary policy and zoning, said Dejan Eskic, a housing researcher at the Gardner institute.
It is difficult to isolate the influence of immigration on Utah’s housing market because there are a “dozen factors” pushing prices up, Eskic told the Deseret News.
“It’s not nothing, but it’s not the impact that people are attributing to it in the media,” Eskic said. “Housing has systemic issues on the supply side.”
The report says 20-30% of the price increase comes from immigration, Eskic pointed out, which leaves 70-80% to other causes, like slow construction from overregulation.
If anything, immigrants will be the ones impacted most by an expensive market, according to Robert Dietz, the chief economist at National Association of Home Builders.
“If you think about your typical immigrant, they’re not going to have the same level of household income and savings, net worth, as someone that has been in the United States for some period of time,” Dietz told the Deseret News.
“So they’re not going to be possessing the same level of demand for for-sale housing.”
Immigration impacts housing supply
A study published by University of Utah professor Troup Howard in November found that removing immigrants actually increased home prices in most places.
President Donald Trump claims to have overseen the deportation of more than 605,000 immigrants who entered the country illegally since returning to office in 2025.
While deportations immediately decrease demand for housing, they create an even larger “negative supply-side shock,” according to the paper co-authored by Howard.
“Because the residential construction sector relies heavily on undocumented labor, removing these workers bottlenecks production,” the study said.
Counties that experienced a crackdown in immigration enforcement saw a 5.7% reduction in new single-family homes, or roughly 80 fewer homes built per year.
This translated to a 4.5% increase in new construction prices, and 3.4% for resale prices, in these communities.
Immigrants make up a large share of construction workers. Some analyses put the share as high as one-third.
The study estimated a net loss of nearly 300,000 construction workers nationwide, or 2.7% of the total workforce, because of immigration enforcement.
Domestic workers replaced deported immigrant builders at a rate of 40% for lower-skilled roles, the study found.