How Immigration Policy, Demographic Trends Affect Multifamily

Stricter immigration policy is lowering demand for apartments, while economic uncertainty is leading many residents to stay in rentals and delay buying a home, experts said during a recent webinar.

Immigration policy changes and other demographic trends are shaping U.S. housing demand, according to a recent webinar from John Burns Research and Consulting, an Irvine, California-based firm that conducts market research on the housing industry.

Demographic changes are typically a slow-moving, predictable yet powerful force, Eric Finnigan, vice president of demographics research at John Burns, said in a March 31 presentation. But that was not the case in 2025.

“Sometimes [demographic change] feels a little bit like a glacier: You know where it’s going to be heading, you know where it’s going to be a year from now,” Finnigan said. “But sometimes, like the last year, demographics can suddenly shift, and it can sort of feel like an avalanche. So the idea here is to be paying attention to what’s going on with demographic shifts and make sure you’re not in this house at the bottom of the avalanche.”

Here are major shifts that multifamily pros should be watching:

Immigration policy

Upon retaking office, President Donald Trump instituted a slew of major changes to the country’s immigration policy. Immigration into the U.S. is on track to be the lowest level in modern history, and it’s impacting the entire housing market, Finnigan said.

“Looking back at 2025, we were calling for about a three-quarter decline, about 75% decline in 2025 immigration. What we ended up seeing is about an 82% decline, really the lowest level in 40-plus years,” Finnigan said. “Plan for 2026 to be even lower than 2025.”

Household formation drives apartment demand, and right now, fewer people are entering the country to fill apartments, especially at the lower end of the market. The decline in immigration and the step up in enforcement is denting the rental housing industry, according to Finnigan.

“The takeaway here is that it’s hurting leasing and occupancy, especially in the apartment market,” Finnigan said. The policies are having very different effects by region, but in “our sample of our apartment developers and investors in that survey that we run quarterly, 40% nationally [are] saying that there’s an impact [while] two-thirds in Florida [are seeing] an impact.”

The impact of lower immigration is less pronounced in the single-family rental space, however.

“Twenty-eight percent are saying that immigration policy shifts are hurting leasing and occupancy, but most of that is on the somewhat negative impact side. Where we saw more of the severe, significant impact [is] from builders and rental developers and investors,” Finnigan said. “Very few SFR operators are seeing a significant negative impact.”

Economic conditions, household changes

Low consumer confidence has become a binding constraint on the housing industry, Maegan Sherlock, manager of consumer research at John Burns, said on the webinar.

“Nearly half of consumers tell us that they think it’s a bad time to buy a home today, and that’s more than double the share who think that it’s a good time,” Sherlock said. Most consumers “are citing economic conditions as the top factors that are contributing to their sense of uncertainty today, and that’s followed pretty distantly by the state of their personal finances.”

However, the conditions leading some to put off buying a home can be a boon for the rental industry. The renter market has been more resilient in terms of household growth during slow economic periods, since fewer renters leave to buy their first home, Finnigan said. 

“Sometimes homeowners are flipped back to renting as a household into the rental market, but also renters that are thinking about buying — if the economy is weak, if they’re nervous about their job, or maybe if they’re, you know, one of the one of a person of a couple gets laid off — they hold out,” according to Finnigan. 

Other societal shifts have impacted past and future household growth, including that young adults are moving out of their parent’s house later and later. Roughly one in four 25- to 34-year-olds have delayed forming their first household and live with parents or a roommate, according to Finnigan.

“By the time they hit 35, 90% of these folks have moved out on their own,” Finnigan said. “We think about delayed or deferred or lost households, they’re more delayed. We think they’re gonna form eventually, it’s just more in the future. So what’s been a drag in the past is going to turn into a lift in the future.”

At the same time, people are getting married later, and fewer of them eventually get divorced. “There’s less of a need for divorced couples to downsize. [There’s] also less need for additional homes for couples that split up,” Finnigan said.

Regional movement

With lower immigration, birth rates at a 40-year low and an aging population, “the biggest source for population growth and housing demand growth in most metro areas now is going to be domestic net migration,” Finnigan said.

The Sun Belt is still attracting most of the relocating households today, according to Finnigan, though domestic migration is boosting housing demand less than it used to. Midwest markets are starting to draw more people because housing is more affordable there.

“Another trend we see is that young families are moving from high, really high cost of living areas along the coast and then along the North in the Northeast, into the South in Texas,” Finnigan said. 

Conversely, migration has slowed down in some areas in Texas, Florida and Las Vegas, which used to be very strong. 

Taken together, “these long-term societal shifts really put what I call floor under housing demand,” Finnigan said. “There’s a lot of shifts year to year, but the demographics say that it can only go so low. So there’s actually a quite strong case for sustained household growth over the next 10 years.”