President Donald Trump’s reforms to the United States housing market are showing real impact as mortgage loan rate locks for migrants seeking Federal Housing Administration (FHA) have plummeted.
In March, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) ended FHA-insured mortgages for non-permanent residents living in the United States, such as H-1B visa holders, refugees, and asylees, as well as illegal aliens with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status, among others.
The goal of the Trump administration, partially spearheaded by Vice President JD Vance, is to shore up the housing market for Americans and those on green cards who are on track for naturalized U.S. citizenship.
Recent data making the rounds on social media indicates a massive drop in the number of migrants seeking FHA mortgage loans as a result of the Trump reforms, a move that the White House hopes will bring down housing costs as competition for homes and apartments cools off.
“It’s impossible to overstate how much the Biden admin betrayed our country,” former Trump administration official Theo Wold wrote on X, posting data from John Burns Research & Consultancy, which published the report this month.
“While young Americans couldn’t afford to buy a home, FHA loans were being shelled out to non-citizens on H1B Visas. It’s time to end the H1B scam once and for all,” Wold wrote.
The National Association of Mortgage Brokers (NAMB) has lobbied the Trump administration not to implement the reforms and not to extend such reforms to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
“Non-permanent residents often contribute to the vibrancy and diversity of communities. Limiting their access to homeownership could have adverse social implications,” NAMB executives wrote in the letter to Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director Bill Pulte.
Editor in Chief of Residential Club, Lance Lambert, posted monthly data on U.S. home prices, showing a continued decline from August to September of this year.
“… nationally aggregated pricing is what I’d call ‘soft’ right now — but not really getting softer at the moment,” Lambert wrote on X.
In August, Vance spoke on the issue, crediting Trump’s agenda with tumbling home prices that have made homebuying somewhat more affordable for younger Americans than in the prior four years.
“Why did housing get so unaffordable for American citizens? Two big problems: Number one … interest rates were too high. Number two, you had way too many people in this country who are competing against American citizens for scarce homes,” Vance told Fox News. “And that’s the illegal immigration problem.”
“Why has housing leveled off over the last six months? I really believe the main driver is you’ve had negative net migration into the United States for the first time in 60 years in this country,” Vance said. “You cannot flood the United States of America with 20, 30, 40 million people who have no legal right to be here, have them compete against young American families for homes, and not expect the price to skyrocket. It’s simple supply and demand. You increase the demand, they increase the price.”
Last year, during a congressional hearing, Center for Immigration Studies Director of Research Steven Camarota told Congress that “a 5-percentage-point increase in the recent immigrant share of a metro area’s population is associated with a 12-percent increase in the average U.S.-born household’s rent, relative to their income.”
“Adding very large numbers of people to the country must significantly impact housing prices by driving up demand for rental properties … the Census Bureau reports that the increase in rents in 2023 was by far the largest in the past decade,” Camarota said.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter here.
Read the full article here