Trump Blames Biden Border Policy for Rising Home Costs

President Donald Trump posted on social media about a Federal Reserve working paper as evidence that unauthorized immigration drove up home prices during the Biden administration, a topic he has frequently raised. The paper, by economists Daniel Wilson of the San Francisco Fed and Xiaoqing Zhou of the Dallas Fed, analyzes the local economic effects of an estimated seven million unauthorized immigrants added to the U.S. population from 2021 to 2024.

The study found that an influx of unauthorized workers equal to 1% of a local workforce raised area home prices by 2.2% and rents by 1.4%. Trump wrote that the paper suggests the "illegal immigrant wave drove up home prices 30%." However, the paper's actual finding is that unauthorized immigration accounted for roughly 30% of the growth in home prices within an average metropolitan area over three years, not a 30% increase in overall home costs.

In those average markets, total home prices rose 22.4%, meaning the migration influx contributed about 6.6% to total home price appreciation. Because unauthorized immigrants were heavily concentrated in a few major metropolitan areas, the impact on the typical U.S. real estate market was smaller: the influx accounted for about 13% of home-price growth and 9% of rental-rate growth.

The economists identified the underlying issue as a supply-and-demand mismatch rather than legal status. When new residents arrived suddenly in regional housing markets, residential construction failed to expand enough to absorb the demand.