Mass deportations and affordable housing: Zillow CEO says there's a link

The CEO of the Zillow real estate app was pressured in an interview with CNBC to say whether mass deportations would improve the crisis of housing affordability in the U.S.

Jeremy Wacksman was discussing the company's earnings call on the "Squawk on the Street" show when he was asked about President-elect Donald Trump's plans for mass deportations.

'The structural challenges and changes we need to make as a country are really around affordability and availability of supply.'

"Both candidates were talking a lot about housing affordability, clearly a front-and-center issue for Americans in the campaign," said Sara Eisen.

"What President Trump said about it is that a lot of the affordability problem is due to illegal immigration and that after he carries out the largest deportation operation in history, that will ease prices by reducing demand. Do you agree? Are you optimistic that that can help?" she asked.

"The big challenges in the real estate market are affordability and availability. Those are the two structural problems we have to work on," responded Wacksman.

"Affordability, as we talked about, is around what has happened with home prices and inventory, and inventory is our biggest challenge. We are missing listings, listings are up a little bit from last year, but if you look back to pre-pandemic levels, we're down sharply, and we're chronically underbuilt as a country.

"And so bringing more inventory, more new home starts online, is gonna be one of the things that really helps the supply-demand imbalance."

"But have immigrants been a big source of demand for that, and lack of availability?" Eisen pressed.

"We've seen demand across all segments; the buyer demand is there," Wacksman replied.

"Any time rates move a little bit, you see demand spike on sites like Zillow," he added. "The pent-up demand, the desire to buy is always there. Again, the challenge for buyers is affordability and what they can buy. And so the structural challenges and changes we need to make as a country are really around affordability and availability of supply."

The housing crisis in the U.S. has led to a shortage in inventory and high prices, with some of the worst housing affordability rates in decades.

Economist Chloe East told NPR that illegal immigrants might have a small role in affordability but blamed other factors for the housing crisis. But some research has found that illegal aliens increase demand for limited housing, leading to higher rents and higher prices for housing.

Video of Wacksman's appearance on CNBC can be viewed on its channel on YouTube.

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