On Tuesday, Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) updated an August homeownership and household growth report with an addendum that adds a low-immigration scenario.
Under the low-immigration scenario, the number of homeowning households would decline by approximately 88,000 to 99,000 per year relative to a baseline scenario assuming historical immigration levels. The number of renter households would also decline by between 74,000 and 86,000 annually.
The authors behind the report, “Projections of Homeownership Rates and Household Growth by Tenure for 2025-2035”, updated the research to reflect the possibility of relatively low population gains from international immigration over the next decade.
The addendum comes as the immigrant population in the U.S. is decreasing. After peaking at 53.3 million in January, the immigrant population fell by 1.3 million by June, according to Pew Research data. Further deportations and restrictions on legal immigration have continued since, likely reducing the immigrant population further.
The Harvard study examined how low immigration levels could impact homeownership rates and household growth, in comparison to a middle-series scenario.
The middle-scenario projection assumes an annual net international immigration of approximately 870,000 between 2025 and 2035, reflecting the average historical immigration levels over the last three decades. In comparison, the low-immigration population assumes net immigration of 420,000, roughly half of the total.
“The drop in cross-border immigration starting in late 2024 and the current political climate raise the likelihood that population gains from net international immigration in 2025–2035 may be below average and therefore lower than those in the middle-series projections used in the analyses above,” the report read.
According to the report, total household growth, including new native-born and foreign-born residents, in the low-immigration scenario would be 20% lower than in the middle scenario. In practice, this would imply 6.9 million new households, compared with 8.6 million in the middle-series scenario.
Since the immigrant population tends to be pretty young, nationwide household growth in the low-immigration scenario would skew older. Nearly 60% of the reduction in household growth in the low-immigration scenario would be borne by households under 45.
The report concludes that this could have a slight positive effect on future homeownership rates, as younger people are less likely to own homes. However, the impact would be minimal, between 0.1% to 0.2%.
