The “Affordability Crisis” - Home Prices and Apartment Rents Are Decreasing as Deportations Increase

Let’s talk some more about the “affordability crisis” that the media and President Trump’s critics are hammering him about. As I keep mentioning, it is a ridiculously unfair argument that because overall prices haven’t deflated from the runaway inflation of the Biden-era, Trump is to blame.

But some prices are actually coming down. As Ace and I have been discussing, gasoline prices are historically low thanks to Trump’s drill-baby-drill energy policy.

But the largest item in most household budgets is the mortgage or rent. So how are those prices doing? They’re coming down too.

“Home Prices Are Poised to Dip in 22 U.S. Cities Next Year, a New Analysis Says” [CBS News – 12/04/2025]

This piece mentions that inventory of homes has expanded, which would certainly impact the supply/demand equation, and that prices are returning “back down to earth” following the “frenzy” of the Covid-era.

But it also mentions that some of these metropolitan areas simply have “lighter demand” now than in recent years. Interesting. It’s almost as if there is some other force affecting supply and demand of housing units if there is suddenly lighter demand for housing.

Rental housing is also seeing rents drop and vacancies rise:

“Rent Decline Deepens as Vacancy Rates Hit Record High” [CRE Daily – 12/04/2025]

Per this article, the median national rent payment is declining, including 1% in just the past month alone. In some places the decrease is quite significant. For instance, in Austin the median rent has decreased by 6.8% in the past year. Meanwhile, the national vacancy rate for multi-family properties (e.g. apartments) just hit a record high in November, with 7.2% of units unleased.

This article offers some explanations for the decline in rents and the glut of unleased apartments, including a cooling labor market, and hundreds of thousands of new housing units coming online in the past year.

Yes, new units becoming available for lease certainly is an input into the supply/demand equation, but even in a cooling labor market, people need a place to live.

Again, it just seems that there might be another force at work here that is not being discussed.

Oh…

“Trump's second term sees 2.5 million illegal aliens leave, shattering historic records” [CBS Austin – 12/11/2025]

The Department of Homeland Security announced on Wednesday that an estimated 2.5 million illegal aliens have left the country since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term.

Over 600,000 aliens have been deported and another 1.9 million have self-deported. Those 2.5 million people were occupying a lot of housing that is now competing for new tenants.

The “affordability crisis” is a term being thrown around by those who want to sabotage the Trump presidency and help Democrats defeat Republicans in the mid-terms next November. But by causing millions of illegal aliens to depart the country, the Trump administration is actually taking powerful action to reduce the cost of housing and shelter. Coincidentally, most of the NeverTrump critics trying to kneecap the Trump agenda with the “affordability” issue are hell-bent on stopping deportations and throwing the border back open to illegal labor.

Those people parroting the “affordability crisis” talking points need to be challenged to admit that Donald Trump’s deportations and closed border are bringing down the cost of housing.

Reducing the cost of housing is the highest priority when talking about “affordability,” and President Trump’s policies are making it happen.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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