Immigration and real estate

Fellow not-under-rock-dwellers know that Obama issued an executive order yesterday granting a kind of contingent, temporary reprieve from deportation for several categories of illegal immigrants.

This blog is about real estate, not politics, so I don’t want to get into debating whether what he did was right or wrong.

But it is worth thinking a bit about how immigration impacts our business (investing in apartment buildings).

In general, as suppliers of rental housing, we have a strong interest in:

  • Population growth, and particularly growth in younger people (who are more likely to rent than own)
  • Employment growth, since you need a job to pay the rent

It seems to me that anything which spurs increased immigration (eg population growth) and makes it easier for people to work / start businesses is, on the face of it, positive for our business, because it increases demand for- and, therefore, the price (rent) of rental housing.