No, Zillow’s CEO didn’t say Trump’s deportation plan would lower housing prices

Would deporting millions of immigrants help more Americans afford homes in the United States? 

That’s what social media posts claim the CEO of online real estate marketplace Zillow, said during a recent interview. 

"BREAKING: Zillow CEO just said on CNBC Trump's deportation plan will help with housing affordability," reads an X post by conservative commentator Ryan Fournier that was reshared Nov. 8 on Instagram.

The post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman appeared on CNBC, but he didn’t say President-elect Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan would help make housing more affordable.

In a Nov. 7 interview on CNBC’s "Squawk on the Street," Wacksman spoke about Zillow’s revenue growth amid a sluggish housing market.

Co-host Sara Eisen turned to Trump’s deportation plan, asking Wacksman, "What President Trump had said about it is that, a lot of it, the affordability problems 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?"

Wacksman said the real estate market has a supply-and-demand imbalance and that the country is chronically underbuilt. He did not say whether he thought Trump’s plan would make housing more or less affordable, or whether immigrants were driving a significant source of demand. 

Here is what he said:

Wacksman: "The big challenges in the real estate market are affordability and availability. Those are the two structural problems we have to work on. 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 prepandemic levels, we’re down sharply and we are chronically underbuilt as a country. And so bringing new inventory, new-home starts online is going to be one of the things that really helps the supply-demand imbalance."

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

Wacksman: "We’ve seen demand across all segments. The buyer demand is there. Any time rates move a little bit you see demand spike on sites like Zillow. 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."

In an emailed statement, Zillow told PolitiFact the primary driver of housing affordability issues continues to be a lack of supply influenced by "years of underbuilding and restrictive zoning rules."

Housing and real estate experts have said Trump’s plan could exacerbate home prices, primarily because of the hit the construction industry would take.

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"Sending immigrants back, as Trump has proposed, risks doing serious damage to the supply side of housing," said Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, a real estate and finance professor at Columbia  Business School. "About a quarter of construction workers are immigrants; in some places like California, the share is even higher. Some trades like roofing, masonry, and drywall installation are highly reliant on immigrant labor. There are persistent labor shortages in plumbing and electrical work that immigrants help mitigate." 

Construction Dive, an online site covering the building industry, cited a 2021 study showing that migrants in the U.S. illegally comprise about 23% of the construction labor force.

Nieuwerburgh said research has shown that tighter border control results in higher construction costs and lower housing affordability, adding that stimulating the entry of new businesses and  workers into the construction industry is what’s needed to help alleviate the housing strain.

Other research has pointed to regulatory red tape as a major culprit behind the low inventory. In some states, such as California, the combination of rules, regulations, permits, approval processes and fees dramatically increases construction timelines, making it costlier to build and pushing supply further behind.

Zillow pointed to its research on housing affordability and its proposed solutions. These include policies that allow for new construction and standards that address regulatory restrictions at the local, regional, state and federal levels that would require a reexamination of zoning, financial, permitting and development practices.

In an October interview with NPR, Chloe East, an associate economics professor at the University of Colorado, Denver, who studies immigration’s effect on U.S.-born people, said immigrants may play a small role in increasing housing prices in some areas but that there are much larger causes. 

"The main factor is a slowdown in new residential construction that has been happening since the Great Recession," East told NPR, mentioning the increase in restrictive zoning laws. "High interest rates that we've seen in the last few years have been causing people not to sell their homes. There was also an increase in demand for housing during the pandemic because of an increase in remote work."

East also said immigrants in the country illegally primarily rent their homes, partly because their legal status can limit their buying options. She said immigrants in the country illegally are also likelier to double up and live with family members or nonrelatives compared with U.S.-born households.

Social media posts claimed Zillow’s CEO said on CNBC that Trump's deportation plan will help with housing affordability.

Wacksman didn’t say this. In his CNBC interview, Wacksman discussed the U.S. supply-and-demand housing imbalance and said the country is "chronically underbuilt" and needs new inventory.

Zillow told PolitiFact its research shows the housing affordability crisis’ primary driver continues to be a lack of supply influenced by "years of underbuilding and restrictive zoning rules." Other housing experts and studies have reported similar findings.

We rate this claim False.