Reduced immigration to the U.S. contributed to weakened housing demand last year, a recent Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies analysis found.
Net international migration — the number of immigrants minus the number of emigrants — halved in the U.S. in 2025, a result of more restrictive U.S. immigration policies, according to JCHS. The number of migrants is expected to drop another 75% in 2026 to 321,000, about a third of the 900,000 the U.S. averaged annually from 2001 to 2019, JCHS said, citing U.S. Census Bureau projections.
“We have a significant slowdown in natural population growth due to slower births, more deaths from the baby boomers aging, so the big driver of household growth has been immigration,” JCHS Managing Director Chris Herbert said during a June panel discussion. “And the crackdown on immigration is pushing down household growth.”
Household growth, which surged in the early years of the pandemic, dropped for the third straight year in 2025 to 1.1 million, according to the JCHS report.
“We project that's going to go down to an average of 700,000 over the next decade,” Herbert said. “That's a small number.”
In 2024, recent immigrants accounted for two-thirds of overall renter household growth, according to JCHS, and the curtailment of immigration is expected to “meaningfully suppress rental demand.”
Weakened demand and rising inventories led to stalled housing construction last year, a slowdown that threatens progress in improving the nation’s housing supply, according to JCHS.
However, even an increased inventory might not be enough to solve the country’s most pressing housing needs.
“We're trying to signal to people, don't expect this slowdown, this shortage of supply, to last forever,” Herbert said. At the same time, Herbert noted, it’s not simply a matter of overall housing units — it’s about housing units at different price points.
“Even if we get into a place where we have enough supply overall, we still don't have enough housing that's affordable to people at the lower end of the income distribution,” he said.
Households with the lowest incomes are those most impacted by the nation’s housing crisis, with an estimated 11 million competing for just 3.8 million rental units within their price range, according to the JCHS report. Meanwhile, the supply of the most affordable housing options continues to shrink, the report found.
“We need to shift the conversation about supply to not just overall supply, but supply at what price point for whom?” Herbert said.
