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Donald Trump's presidential campaign has proposed deporting millions of immigrants, in part to solve the nation’s persistent housing shortage. However, research shows that would expel many people who are building homes and could worsen the problem.Trump’s campaign promise of “mass deportations” and its connection to housing has been repeated across the campaign trail by the former president and his running mate, JD Vance. It took the spotlight at the vice presidential debate when Vance blamed immigrants for, among other things, the surge in home prices since the pandemic hit.“You have got housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes,” Vance said.
Indeed, home prices have gone up more than 50% since the pandemic hit, according to the S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index. Hourly wages have risen 23% over the same period, meaning purchasing a home has become much less affordable.
Ever since the Great Recession, the population has grown faster than the housing stock, creating what Moody's Analytics estimates is a 2.9 million home shortage. Without enough homes to satisfy demand, home prices have soared.
But would expelling illegal immigrants, as Trump and Vance propose, help matters?
Studies have linked immigration with increases in rents. A 2017 analysis published in the Journal of Housing Economics found that areas with immigration equal to 1% of their population saw home prices and rents rise 0.8%, with higher increases in home prices in surrounding areas.However, recent research suggests that removing immigrants could actually worsen the housing affordability problem in the long run. A study published in March by Troup Howard, a professor of finance at the University of Utah, and researchers Mengqi Wang and Dayin Zhang of the University of Wisconsin, looked at what happened between 2008 and 2013 when a federal program deported 300,000 undocumented immigrants.
Because the deportation campaign rolled out in different places across the country at different times, the researchers could examine what happened to home prices in counties that had deportations versus those that didn’t.
It turned out that many of the people who got deported were working in the home building industry. When undocumented immigrants left, there weren’t enough workers to take their place. As a result, the industry, and in turn homebuyers, paid the price.Three years after the deportations, the average county had built 1,997 fewer homes, the equivalent of losing an entire year’s worth of homebuilding, the study found. The researchers found that new construction parcels were $57,300 more expensive than they otherwise would have been, an increase of 17%.
The heavy impact on the homebuilding industry was unsurprising given the demographics of the workforce.
As of 2022, about a third of all workers in home construction were foreign-born, according to an analysis of Census data by the National Association of Home Builders. Among some construction trades, the figures were even higher, with immigrants making up 64% of drywall and stucco installers, for example.
The homebuilding industry relies heavily on both legal and illegal immigrants, Jim Tobin, CEO of the National Association of Home Builders, told Investopedia in an interview. “We have got to increase the supply of American-born workers, but until we do that, the demand in our industry is so high that we rely to a large extent on immigrant labor,” Tobin said. “Anytime you're talking about mass deportations, you risk disrupting the labor force in our industry or any industry that is relying on immigrant labor.”The reduction in the workforce would raise labor costs, which would be passed on to buyers, Tobin said.
Experts say that if housing is going to become more affordable, the U.S. will simply have to build a lot more homes. They blame local zoning regulations that restrict construction for much of the housing shortfall.
"There is pretty strong consensus among housing economists that the primary structural problem in the U.S. housing market stems from a very long period of underbuilding homes in this country due to unnecessarily strict land use regulations,” Ralph McLaughlin, senior economist at Realtor.com wrote in an email.
“While a band-aid solution would be to reduce aggregate demand for homes, getting to the root of the problem involves sorting out supply-side issues instead,” he said.
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Rapper Dremo has advised his colleagues
He said if your next track is going to sound like your last one, or the one before that, please don’t release it.
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This year, Oct. 14 is the second Monday of October, the date that Columbus Day is celebrated in the U.S., meaning you may be wondering if stock markets will be open for trading.
Considering the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Nasdaq largely follow the calendar of federal holidays for closures, it may come as a surprise that both will be open and operating normally on Monday.
The two remaining holidays on the exchanges' respective calendars for 2024 are Thanksgiving and Christmas, with additional shortened hours on the day after Thanksgiving and on Christmas Eve.
However, federal operations like the Federal Reserve and post offices will be closed, as will commercial banks that follow the federal holiday schedule. Bond markets will also be closed.
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Instablog9ja
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Senator Shehu Sani has responded to former Kaduna State First Lady, Hadiza El-Rufai, after she corrected his grammar.
He said he unfollowed her and she reciprocated same to him but he was still surprise she is hanging around. Please leave me alone mummy.
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Businesswoman Sandra Iheuwa, has reacted to reports that the U.S. has accused AirPeace CEO, Allen Onyema, of obstruction of justice in amended $20 million fra¥d Charges.
She said he deserves it and hopes he gets extradited.
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Investopedia
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Shares of BlackRock (BLK) hit an all-time high Friday after the investment firm easily topped financial estimates and posted records for assets and inflows.
The company reported third-quarter adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $11.46, with revenue increasing 14.9% year-over-year to $5.20 billion. Analysts surveyed by Visible Alpha were looking for $10.38 and $5.02 billion, respectively.
BlackRock's assets under management (AUM) rose $2.4 trillion to $11.5 trillion, and net inflows came in at $221 billion, both all-time highs.
The company explained that the big jump in revenue came from "the positive impact of markets on average AUM, organic base fee growth, and higher performance fees."
Chief Executive Officer CEO Larry Fink said, "Our strategy is ambitious, and our strategy is working." He noted that the firm was driving "access to the enormous investment potential of infrastructure, especially to support AI innovation." Fink added that "the opportunities ahead of us have never been greater."
BlackRock shares recently rose 3% to $983.28 after earlier touching a record $995.99. They are up more than 20% year-to-date.
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