The cost of rent is dropping, and the Trump administration is taking credit, citing immigration policies that have halted the flood of illegal immigrants and forced out millions of people living in the United States illegally.
The latest data has been encouraging for renters. Although President Trump’s mass deportations are only part of the equation, experts say they are a factor.
Monthly rents fell to their lowest level since 2022 and posted the sixth straight monthly decline in January, with the largest annual drop in more than two years and a 6.2% reduction from 2022.
Trump administration officials say it is obvious that slashing the population by millions of illegal immigrants will reduce the demand for housing and make it more affordable.
“If you have fewer people, fewer illegal aliens trying to buy homes, that means American citizens are finally going to be able to afford a home again,” Vice President J.D. Vance said in a speech in Allentown, Pennsylvania. “It’s very, very simple economics.”
In Jacksonville, Florida, February rental prices declined 4.2% from last year’s rates. Rents fell 6.6% in Austin, Texas, nearly 3% in Houston, nearly 5% in Denver and 4% in Phoenix.
Real estate experts and economists say the declines in rental prices in these cities, and others, are caused by several factors, including hundreds of thousands of newly built apartment buildings hitting the market, creating an oversupply.
They also point to a drop in demand, and part of it is potentially because of Mr. Trump’s deportations and other policies that are reducing both legal and illegal immigration.
“To the extent that the Trump administration has reduced legal immigration, increased deportations and reduced the net inflow of people in the United States, maybe even turn it negative. That has had an effect of lowering rents and housing prices,” Cato Institute economist Alex Nowrasteh said.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said last month that nearly 3 million illegal aliens had left the U.S. “because of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.” The numbers include an estimated 2.2 million self-deportations and more than 675,000 deportations by federal officials. Illegal immigration into the United States has reached a 55-year low after aggressive deterrence, including the renewed construction of the border wall.
The housing vacancies resulting from Mr. Trump’s immigration policies are influencing the rental market in Houston, said Itziar Aguirre, senior director of market analytics for CoStar, a residential and commercial real estate data firm.
The biggest impact is on rentals that attract lower-income individuals and families.
Ms. Agiurre said landlords are coping with suddenly empty apartments that were once rented by people who came to the United States illegally.
“People are leaving in the middle of the night. They’re scared,” Ms. Aguirre said landlords are reporting. “It’s definitely become an issue.”
The sudden vacancies, she said, have translated into concessions that benefit low-income renters in the Houston area.
In the past year, rent has fallen by 1.8%, which averages out to $21 less per month, according to the rental site Apartments.com.
Landlords are offering significant incentives.
“Now we’re seeing even four and six weeks of free rent in certain very cheap properties, because they’ve seen their occupancies drop so much over the last year,” Ms. Aguirre said. “It’s definitely impacting. For sure.”
In Jacksonville, 67% of landlords of multifamily units said the Trump administration’s immigration policies made it harder for them to fill their apartments, according to a survey by the real estate research firm John Burns Research and Consulting.
Realtor.com calculated a 4.2% year-over-year decline in median asking rent for studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments in Jacksonville, which the site said aligns with a national cooldown of the rental market.
It reported that across the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas, median asking rent dropped 1% from a year earlier to $1,693.
The site reported year-over-year rent declines in most of the 50 largest metropolitan areas in 2025.
The biggest drops were in the Sun Belt, including 4.1% in Atlanta, 4.6% in Las Vegas, more than 6% in Phoenix, and 5.9% in the Raleigh, North Carolina, area.
Opponents of Mr. Trump’s immigration policies say the decline is not amounting to big savings for renters.
Mike Konczal, senior director of policy and research for the liberal Economic Security Project, said a reduction in the U.S. population of 1 million would amount to a savings of $4.39 per month in average rent.
Analysts say other factors are driving down rents.
In Houston, the number of new jobs plummeted from an annual average of 65,000 to fewer than 15,000 in 2025. The slide in job growth has curbed housing demand, and the city has added more than 60,000 apartment units since 2023.
“We are working through that supply wave,” Ms. Aguirre said.
In Jacksonville, a vacancy rate exceeding 9% has been largely blamed on more than 32,000 apartments built over the past five years.
Many apartments in Jacksonville are offering up to two months of free rent to lure new occupants.
Top economists support the Trump administration’s assertion that the outflow of immigrants from the U.S. is lowering housing costs.
In an address before the Economic Club of New York in September, Federal Reserve Board Governor Stephen I. Miran projected that by the end of 2025, 2 million illegal immigrants would have exited the U.S., cutting population growth from 1% to 0.4%.
Those reductions, he said, reduce demand for housing and cool the rental market for roughly 100 million Americans.
“Net zero immigration going forward would imply 1 point lower rent inflation per year,” Mr. Miran said.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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