President Donald Trump’s immigration reforms have reduced average after-inflation rents by 13 percent below the height of President Joe Biden’s mass-migration policy.
Average rents jumped to $1,774 in the summer of 2022 and then fell to $1,694 in September 2026, according to rental data from Realtor.com. That is an $80 monthly cut, or $960 a year.
But the cut is larger because post-2022 inflation should have jacked up the 2022 rent to $1,953 in 2026. Once that inflation impact is counted, the rent rollback is roughly $259 per month, or 13 percent below prices in Biden’s unaffordable migration summer.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other deputies have noted the gains for American citizens.
But President Donald Trump’s White House has said little about the gains for renters — likely because Trump is acting as a cheerleader for nervous real estate investors and landlords who lose revenue when migrants are sent home.
The real estate professionals are nervous because the stock value of rental properties has dropped, partly because Trump has reduced the migrant population. For example, in 2021, the Multi-Family Real Estate Apartment Price Index gained $108 billion. That spike created a “record high [of] $412.80 billion (June 2022); the latest level [June 2026] is 22.9% below it,” Macrotrends.net reported in June 2026.
In 2027, Democrat progressives will gain power in Congress, and they are joining hands with real estate lobbyists to demand yet more migration via many asylum and visa channels. The push is being wrapped in the Democrats’ affordability mantra — even though it would shove tens of millions of Americans back to the days of unaffordable Biden rents.
Biden’s Migration
For consumers, the decline in rents since 2022 is masked by the monthly interplay of inflation and wages, which have kept after-inflation wages largely flat under Trump after four years of decline under Biden.
Biden’s decision to open the border in 2021 invited millions of migrants into Americans’ apartment housing.
His economics team expected the low-wage migrants to offset the inflation created by his massive Bidenomics spending plan. But they missed migrants’ massive impact on rental prices, which then bumped up Biden’s high inflation rate.
The sudden rush in renter demand — roughly 1.5 million new migrant rentals — caused an immediate spike in rental costs that peaked in 2022, despite the economic meltdown caused in 2020 and 2021 by the coronavirus.
For landlords, poor migrants were more lucrative than middle-class Americans because the migrants were willing to share bottom-tier housing. In 2024, for example, New York Fire Department officials discovered 70 migrants crowded into a basement, each paying up to $300 a month. They told CBS News:
Inspectors were called to the two-story mixed-use building on 132nd Street and Liberty Avenue on Monday night to investigate reports of an illegal conversion. Down in the cellar, they found illegally converted sleeping quarters with 14 bunk beds and 13 beds and inadequate plumbing and ventilation. A full vacate order was issued.
Democrats in urban districts welcomed the poor migrants, partly because President Joe Biden’s agencies were providing the cities with billions of dollars for migrants’ housing, food, and other aid. Much of that money supported the Democrats’ urban machines, even as it reduced the cities’ average productivity and prosperity.
The policy damaged many millions of Americans. In Arizona, Scottsdale Realtors.com reported in January 2023:
For the past few months, Morgan Rice has called Coconino National Forest home.
Rice and his girlfriend — along with their dog, Rio, and their cat, Kit — have been camping full-time in their 32-foot, 2006 Ford diesel van since August. When monthly rent for their one-bedroom apartment in Avondale increased from around $800 to over $1,300, the couple simply couldn’t keep up. “They outpriced us,” Rice said.
Rental prices reached a peak in 2022, and then lurched down later in 2022 and 2023 as landlords opened more apartments. The construction spree boosted the number of rentals from 43 million up to 46.8 million in 2026 — so helping Americans pay lower rents for better apartments.
Before Trump, Biden’s combination of flat wages, high inflation, and rising rents hurt many Americans. “The number of cost-burdened renters hit a record high in 2022 as half of all households spent more than 30 percent of their incomes on rent and utilities,” Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies reported in 2024.
“More than half of renters are burdened in 12 states, including Florida, Nevada, and California, the Harvard Center reported in 2026.
Subsequently, Trump’s border shutdown cut the supply of new migrants just as many new apartments were being opened. Realtor.com reported in September that month rents were down to $1,694 (in 2026 dollars), adding:
Key drivers are shifting regional rental dynamics:
Cooling supply waves in Sun Belt markets like Austin, TX
Affordability-seeking migration from expensive metros (e.g., Chicago, IL renters moving to St. Louis, MO)
It added:
While the median asking [after-inflation, emphasis added] rent remains $214 (14.5%) above pre-pandemic levels recorded in August 2019, it has fallen $80 (-4.5%) from its August 2022 peak. This persistent softness is increasingly translating into real savings for renters navigating a market that once felt out of reach.
“Given the surge in multifamily construction over the past few years, we anticipate continued year-over-year declines,” the site noted.
Even Trump’s vociferous critics in D.C. gain from the immigration policy. After-inflation rents in D.C., for example, have dropped by roughly 10 percent since 2020, according to data from DC.urbanturf.com. Rents are also dropping in nearby Virginia.
