The mortgage industry just confirmed what President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance have been saying all along: mass immigration drives up housing prices.
The admission came quietly, buried in a new report from the Mortgage Bankers Association.
The MBA, a lobbying group for the mortgage industry, published a report showing that the Trump administration’s strict immigration policies and the subsequent drop in immigration are weakening housing demand. In other words, they’re admitting immigration creates more demand — which drives up prices.
Trump and Vance were right.
Trump, Vance, Stephen Miller, and the White House have taken relentless grief for making this exact argument.
The White House released a fact sheet in January showing that deportations were playing a role in driving down housing costs in top metro areas like Austin, San Diego, and San Jose.
Vance hammered the point during the 2024 vice-presidential debate against Tim Walz.
“Look, in Springfield, Ohio, and in communities all across this country, you’ve got schools that are overwhelmed, you’ve got hospitals that are overwhelmed, you have got housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes,” he said.
NBC News scrambled to quote economists skeptical of Vance’s claim. Even the pro-mass immigration CATO Institute — funded by billionaire Charles Koch, who is heavily invested in real estate development — acknowledged Vance was correct.
Of course, CATO tried to spin it: “Yeah, he’s right about this problem, but this problem? It’s actually totally fine.”
Now the mortgage industry is singing the same tune — but for a very different reason.
The MBA is also sounding the alarm on America’s fertility crisis. Why? Because if the population shrinks, housing demand shrinks. The supply of homes stays the same. When Boomers die, fewer migrants arrive, and fertility rates stay low — housing prices fall.
And if housing prices drop, so do the profit margins on mortgages.
“Slower housing demand growth could have important implications for the mortgage industry, including effects on mortgage origination volumes, borrower equity accumulation, and credit performance.”
That’s MBA Chief Economist Mike Fratantoni speaking in plain English: We’re screwed.
The MBA is basically announcing to D.C. policymakers that the solution — since young Americans aren’t coupling, marrying, and having families because everything is too expensive and they can’t afford homes — is to import more and more migrants to inflate demand.
A problem caused by neoliberal economics needs to be solved with more neoliberal economics, apparently.
To be fair, it’s not just the MBA. Many American homeowners don’t want housing prices to fall either. Retirees on fixed incomes see their home’s market value as the golden nest egg. They’re rich on paper. If prices crash before they downsize, their retirement plans are toast.
That position is understandable. But importing migrants to boost housing demand comes at a great cost to others — maybe not to mortgage lobbyists in tony D.C. neighborhoods, but to middle-class communities facing rapid demographic change and the breakdown of social cohesion.
The housing issue is a tough nut to crack. But the mortgage industry just admitted Trump and Vance were right. And the only way the industry keeps raking in profits is if America reverses course and begins importing waves of migrants once again.
It’s not just about cheap labor. It’s also about making sure the mortgage industry gets what it’s owed.
Heaven forbid things are affordable for the average Joe.
