Thread: Deportations could hit real estate markets in state, nation

Deportations could hit real estate markets in state, nation

BY ANDRES GUERRA LUZ/CRONKITE NEWS | November 29, 2016 @ 8:36 am


Angel Diaz sits at a table in the home he recently purchased. (Photo by Andres Guerra Luz/Cronkite News)

PHOENIX – In September, Angel Diaz bought a house.
As he signed the home-purchase documents, he remembered emerging from the hot desert as an 8-year-old unauthorized Mexican immigrant, barely able to hold his own water bottle after three days of walking the migrant trails.
He’d come so far.

Diaz is now 22 and a pre-law student at Paradise Valley Community College who works fulltime at an insurance agency. He obtained temporary relief from deportation under a 2012 Obama administration directive known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.

He’d missed meals to save $6,000 as a down payment to buy the $153,000 home in northwest Phoenix, and now he has a home he, his mother and two sisters could call their own.
Now, all that could change.

“At this point, even, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Diaz said.

After the presidential election, Diaz and thousands of other undocumented immigrant homeowners were plunged into a state of uncertainty. President-elect Donald Trump had vowed on the campaign trail to revoke DACA, adding DREAMers like Diaz to a group of about 11 million undocumented immigrants Trump said he’d deport.

And while experts say deporting the nation’s undocumented would create administrative backlogs and massive legal hurdles, mass deportations could impact the nation’s housing market.

About 3.4 million unauthorized immigrants may own homes, the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan immigration-issue think tank, reports.

In Arizona alone, about 89,000 undocumented immigrants may own homes, the insitute reports. The institute doesn’t break down numbers for DREAMer homeowners, like Diaz.

In 2015, the average price of an existing home in the United States was $266,400, according to National Association of Realtors.

At that rate, if every undocumented immigrant homeowner is deported and his or her home is foreclosed on, it would cause a roughly $906.3 billion hit to the housing market. In Arizona, the hit would be $23.7 billion.

Ana De Anda, a Phoenix realtor who co-owns American Traditions Realty, told Cronkite News that undocumented immigrants who buy homes often purchase their houses through mortgages with substantial down payments.

If an undocumented immigrant is deported, she said, he or she will likely find friends or relatives to live in the purchased home. The homeowner, even if deported, is still responsible for paying the mortgage, she said.

Dulce Matuz, a former DREAMer who is a Phoenix real estate agent and obtained her citizenship in September, said DREAMer homeowners are unsure of what will happen and are preparing for the possibility that their temporary legal status will be removed.

Matuz, who is also Diaz’s real estate agent, said DREAMer homebuyers in the process of purchasing homes expressed mixed reactions after the presidential election. Some still planned to move forward with buying a house. Others decided not to buy a house following the election, although they’d already been qualified for mortgages.
Deportation uncertainties

During his August immigration speech in Phoenix, Trump laid out a 10-point plan that included taking away President Obama’s two executive actions granting temporary legal status to qualified undocumented immigrants. He also said during the speech he would deport the nation’s undocumented immigrants.

Recently, Trump appointed to his transition team Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who is known for his role in helping draft Arizona’s SB 1070, which required local police to check on the immigration status of people they stopped, detained or arrested.

Kobach is widely viewed as a potential head of the Department of Homeland Security in the new Trump administration. Although Cronkite News called and emailed Kobach’s office several times seeking interviews for this story, Kobach was unavailable for an interview, his spokeswoman said.

He recently told Fox News Trump will largely follow his campaign’s immigration policies.

Trump told CBS’ “60 Minutes” he’d prioritize deporting undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes.

Then, he said, he would determine what to do with the other undocumented immigrants.

Randy Capps, the Migration Policy Institute director of research, told Cronkite News that deporting all undocumented immigrants as Trump promised is unlikely.

Capps said the Obama administration deported approximately 2 million immigrants. About 80 percent of the Obama deportations occurred on the border, he said.

DREAMers and others who might be singled out for deportation would have the option of going through lengthy administrative procedures in immigration courts.

Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that favors strict immigration restrictions and has strongly denied charges that it is anti-immigrant, said repealing DACA would be a deterrent for future unauthorized immigration. It would not necessarily lead to deporting current DREAMers, he said.

Mehlman said that even if they were deported, DREAMer homeowners comprise such a low percentage of the homeowner population that the housing market most likely would not see much change.

He said deporting all unauthorized immigrants also would have negligible impacts on the U.S. economy.

But a November report from the National Bureau of Economic Research predicted the annual financial losses the United States would face in the event of mass deportation of the undocumented. The bureau used the nation’s 2013 gross domestic product as a measure of the country’s economic success. If all the undocumented were deported, the $14.4 trillion GDP would face a $434.4 billion loss in the long-term. In Arizona, that loss would be $9.7 billion.
‘I rarely cry’

The 1,288-square foot house that Angel Diaz bought is white with a grey roof. It has a spiral of lush green grass and a big shade tree in the front yard. Inside, there are three bedrooms and two bathrooms.
“I rarely cry,” Diaz said.
But he did after the election.

He felt a flood of emotions including frustration, disappointment, uncertainty and helplessness.

The uncertainty hasn’t gone away.

But, he said, he has chosen to “hope for the best.”

http://ktar.com/story/1372233/deport...-state-nation/

Put it on the market now. Sell out, pack up and get out.

Oh it will be such a positive impact on housing for Americans. These bloated prices in high immigration areas like California will see less competition and Americans will have more access to housing. It's all win, win, win. Get them out, get them out now, start moving the Americans into these what will soon be vacant properties and apartments. Americans will get the jobs, the income and the house or apartment. For Americans to be unemployed and homeless while housing is occupied by illegal aliens is a SIN that will get those behind it a straight road to hell, if you ask me.

Another threat to the real estate market comes from the cheap labor use to build these pressed wood shacks. And how many of the illegals like those above are connected in some way to the real estate labor? They probably have an inside track on the choice lots. There may even be some graft going on between them and the developers.

And of course these real estate developments need landscapers. They are designed by the architects to need landscaping.

Yeah, just get them out. It will all rework itself to be the way it's supposed to be. Americans can't afford these rents and mortgages, why when illegal aliens can? Because illegal aliens don't comply with single family zoning laws or the zoning laws that limit occupants to an apartment, most Americans do. When you comply with the zoning and occupancy rules, you can't pay as much rent or as big a mortgage because you only have x number of income earners in the place to pay the cost. If Americans could load up multiple households into one house or apartment, then Americans could afford them.

It's funny how when an American breaks the laws or rules, they get punished, yet when illegal aliens break all the rules, nothing happens. So yes, there is plenty of graft, corruption and "inside track" for illegal aliens. When everyone figures out why that is, then they'll truly understand why we have this problem and who is behind it.

Yes Judy, you are right. They stuff 20 people into one single family home. They destroy property values, they have multiple cars all over the driveway and street. They do this to save their money and send it back to Mexico and our City Hall's should be enforcing this!

Exactly. That also stuffs more children into a school district than the whole system was designed to handle. There is no positive for this massive immigration, both legal and illegal. It's all got to stop. That's why we need a 10 to 20 Year Moratorium on All Immigration. If we do that, we'll balance the federal budget, eliminate homelessness and poverty, raise everyone's wages and incomes, increase home ownership or naturally affordable housing, and everything will be as it was supposed to be all along, a natural order of Americans working together to make and keep a great country and by doing so we'll be setting a good example to the rest of the world to do likewise.

Even the Greenies will get it, because overpopulation is the number one threat to our environment. Number One and there is no dispute about that. All the scientists agree 100% on that one, so start with the Number One problem, solve it, then work our way down to the other ones.

He recently told Fox News Trump will largely follow his campaign’s immigration policies.

Trump told CBS’ “60 Minutes” he’d prioritize deporting undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes.

Then, he said, he would determine what to do with the other undocumented immigrants.

Yeah, it the last part that worries me. In my world, no amnesty means deportation. There is nothing to determine.

He's just saying that to avoid riots and mayhem in the streets. He also said at the same time "we'll be enforcing US immigration law and deporting visa overstays, and anyone on welfare." That's everybody. They're all going home. Just watch.

How much could it affect the Real Estate market when they stuff 20 PEOPLE into one home or dwelling? Many of them do not own homes, they are renter's or Section 8.

Good...free up the homes to our Vets and other people who need affordable housing...less people living in the house and the neighborhood gets cleaned up of crime, graffiti, trash and property values will go up.

It is a win for AMERICAN'S!