Thread: Harvard Report Says Immigration Crucial for Housing Recovery

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Report Says Immigration Crucial For Housing Recovery

Maurna Desmond, 06.22.09, 11:53 AM EDT

Harvard brain trust predicts "strong" demographics will drive housing recovery, but immigration is a wild card.

A perceived strain on government resources has caused some Americans to begrudge the country's immigrant population. But Harvard researchers, in a new white paper released Monday, are saying that a slowdown in immigration could hurt the long-term real estate market.

In the 2009 State of the Nation's Housing Report, Harvard economists say real estate remains under considerable strain due to rising unemployment, falling home prices and tighter lending standards. "The best that can be said of the market is that house-price corrections and steep cuts in housing production are creating the conditions that will lead to an eventual recovery," says Eric S. Belsky, executive director of the Joint Center for Housing.

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Further out, though, analysts optimistically conclude that "demographic moorings of future demand remain strong" as the "largest generation in American history will be reaching young adulthood in record numbers over the next decade."

While the natural ebb and flow of family formations is expected to reinvigorate housing, the unknown variable, future immigration levels, "remain a wild card that could either dampen housing demand or lift production even higher." Fewer people have been moving to the U.S. since job opportunities have slumped, and if this continues "a deep, prolonged recession would likely suppress immigration to levels that are never fully made up."

One cushion: The echo-boom generation (ages 25 to 44) far outnumbers the baby-boom generation (ages 44 to 60). Assuming that annual immigration falls 40% below the average of the first half of this decade, household growth for the next 10 years should still be close to 1995-2005 levels.

Another silver lining: Due to major production cuts by home builders, the institute estimates that the 1 million- to 1.5 million-unit glut of new homes that existed at the beginning of 2005 fell to a technical shortfall of 100,000 to a half million units by 2009 based on long-term demand. "Progress in working off the oversupply is masked because the weak economy is driving household growth and second-home demand below long-run potential," reads the report.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/22/harvar ... using.html

But Harvard researchers, in a new white paper released Monday, are saying that a slowdown in immigration could hurt the long-term real estate market.

Better to hurt the long-term real estate market than to destory the country!

Our natural resources are finite, not infinite. We cannot sustain our current population growth, and that's a fact!

Harvard brain trust predicts "strong" demographics will drive housing recovery, but immigration is a wild card



Well, from the looks of this article, we no longer have any doubts as to where the brain in "brain trust" is located, now do we?

I wonder which CFR members are paying for this report. "Housing for immigrants" is what killed the economy in the first place!!!

A perceived strain on government resources has caused some Americans to begrudge the country's immigrant population.

"Perceived" my _ss!!!!!

Just a few months ago, these same elitists tried to tell us illegal aliens had very little to do with the sub-prime catastrophe and subsequent collapse of the housing industry. A year passed before the truth came out, not in the old stream media of course, and we discovered the problem is concentrated in three or four states -- all swarming with Mexicans.