A large population of international immigrants have the potential to give California’s homeownership rate the boost needed to catch up with the rest of the country. It all starts with positive immigration reform.
Immigration reform for growth
Beginning January 1, 2016, the California Bureau of Real Estate (CalBRE) will allow individuals to become licensed real estate agents and brokers, regardless of their immigration or citizenship status. This change in licensing law comes along with many other immigrant-friendly laws in California.
California is one of:
- ten states which allows individuals to apply for driver licenses, regardless of immigration status;
- 20 states which allows unauthorized immigrants to attend college at in-state tuition rates;
- 15 states which supports President Obama’s executive action to give work permits to four million unauthorized immigrants (1.2 million in California), protecting them from deportation, according to the New York Times; and
- three states which prohibits a law enforcement official from detaining someone (once charges have been dropped or bail has been posted) due to a S. immigration policy unless they have committed specific crimes. This allows law enforcement to focus on dangerous criminals instead of unauthorized immigrants, according to the Immigration Legal Resource Center. [Calif. Government Code §7282]
To obtain their real estate license, each applicant will need either a Social Security number (reserved for U.S. citizens) or an individual tax identification number (ITIN). They are also required to fulfill all licensing education requirements.
Editor’s note — Homebuyers lacking a social security number can also use an ITIN to take out a mortgage, though some lenders screen for immigration status.
Reform opens the doors to homeownership
Authorizing undocumented immigrants to act as licensed real estate agents is a positive step for California’s homeownership rate, which is at 54.4% in the second quarter of 2015. This is well below the 63.3% average U.S. homeownership rate. However, with more than 6% of California’s population and 9.4% of workers consisting of unauthorized immigrants (according to the Public Policy Institute of California) our low homeownership rate makes some sense.
That’s because only a small percent of non-citizen immigrants are currently homeowners. The homeownership rate of unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. for at least ten years is roughly 45%, according to a report by the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals (NAHREP).
Consider a gainfully employed individual who has the desire and means to become a homeowner, but who is an undocumented immigrant. The run-of-the-mill real estate agent is unlikely to know how to help this individual overcome the unique barriers placed between them and homeownership due to their immigration status. However, an agent who is personally familiar with these obstacles is most suitable to assist qualified, unauthorized immigrant homebuyers.
Areas where unauthorized immigrants make up a significant share of the population will likely see a larger boost in homeownership in the coming years. Take a look at this map by the Public Policy Institute of California, which shows the highest share of unauthorized immigrants concentrated in central California:
Source: Public Policy Institute of California
However, as far as pure numbers go, Los Angeles County has the largest population of unauthorized immigrants, at 815,000 as of 2013. Orange County is a distant second, followed by Santa Clara and San Diego counties.
Many unauthorized immigrant families are cut off from the possibility of homeownership due to:
- being unaware of their ability to buy a home in California without a social security number;
- being too worried about deportation to apply for a mortgage; or
- having insufficient access to funds.
However, with access to a licensed real estate agent who is also an unauthorized immigrant, some of these obstacles may be more easily navigated and overcome.
Immigrant homeowners: a success story for everyone
Over the past twenty years, one-third of the net growth in U.S. homeowners has been due to unauthorized immigrants purchasing homes, according to NAHREP.
The homeownership rate amongst this population increases further when pathways are created for unauthorized immigrants to become citizens. The NAHREP report claims residential construction spending has the potential to increase by $68 billion annually over the next 20 years — with proper immigration reform. This may have even more of an impact on the housing market, since unauthorized immigrant workers hold a disproportionate number of jobs in the construction industry, according to the Public Policy Center of California.
As for real estate sales transactions, immigrants who have been able to become U.S. citizens have the potential to contribute $180 billion in real estate costs, which leads to a correlated increase in consumer spending, according to NAHREP.
All of this spending can be great for the economy — if it has a chance to happen, of course. The NAHREP report and the Bipartisan Policy Center claim future immigration reform has the potential to:
- reduce the cumulative federal deficit by $570 billion;
- grow the U.S. labor force by 8.4 million without taking away from average worker wages;
- increase economic growth by 4.8%; and
- increase gross domestic product (GDP) by 0.5%.
On the other hand, stifling immigrant access to legal employment and citizenship is expected to have the opposite effect, by:
- increasing the federal deficit by $100 billion; and
- reducing GDP by 1.5%.
For the housing market, this translates directly to more transactions and eventually more single-family residential (SFR) construction.
Related article:
Your thoughts on immigration
In a 2013 poll of first tuesday readers, just under half of respondents said immigration reform will make a positive impact on California’s housing market. One-third of readers said it will make a negative impact and one-fifth said it will have no effect.
Now that 2015 is here and immigration reform continues to progress, what are your thoughts on immigration’s influence on the housing market?
What kind of impact will immigration reform have on the California housing market?
- Negative (56%, 94 Votes)
- Positive (36%, 61 Votes)
- No effect (8%, 14 Votes)
Total Voters: 169
Bu hu hu!!! I’m one that will benefit from this opportunity and I will be taking your commissions you whinning greedy narrow minded R.E. agents complaining here. I’ve always said competition makes any business better so buckle up cause any person from anywhere in this beautiful world (not just from the southern border) with dreams, determination and goals and will take your next commission check by focusing on what you are not!! Sell sell sell!!! Pound the pavement and grind!!! Eventually you will get over it when you understand we all deserve a chance to prosper like your immigrant families did decades ago. Get with it or become a statistic years from now when you read a survey showing how successful new ITIN agents became. Embrace the competition.
The SBA has been actively pursuing loan origination with undocumenteds for more that 30 years; financing all kinds of properties: gas stations, restaurants, mobile food service unites, “roach coaches”, retail properties, etc. This activity went gang-busters during Clinton years. As an SBA stringer, I was assigned to make application for a few such applicants.
Although the article didn’t state it, I sense the comments presume the illegal immigrants are Hispanic and with little education or few employable skills. This seems like an unnecessarily broad brush. Might there also be many Asians that entire our country illegally? How about the refugees currently running away from the Middle East and North Africa? As for education, I don’t imagine this was an issue when the flood of Irish or Eastern Europeans arrived. Besides, aren’t there many people working in Silicon Valley who are non-legal status foreigners? The issues may remain the same, but it just feels wrong to apply such a general profile to the non-legal immigrants.
Appalling! I am consoled only by the reader comments above…
Make America Great Again. Trump 2016
What the heck I work with a lot of Hispanics over the years and all that I worked with were good clients. I treated them just like I treated all my clients sold them homes they could afford for their families. I have a lender that does Daca loans, but if they’re ileagal and don’t have a good social security number they can’t buy I would like to know who does Itin numbers loans as that would be great. Who approved this for illegals to get Real Estate licenses that are illegal no way they committed a lot of Fraud last time that’s not right. Now for all of us that work hard are citizens educated and have earned our rights and paid our dues to sell Real Estate and then your going to further cut into our income with illegals who don’t understand honesty fairness and integrity and now your going to give them a license to Steal this is wrong on so many levels who approved this vote I certainly wasn’t asked. Who do I protest to.
Dear Miss “Educated”,
Why do you feel so threatened by this law? How are illegals going to “cut” into your income? Do you feel threaten that we might actually be more capable of selling real estate than you? Don’t be afraid of a little competition now. You’re nobody to downplay the significance of this law coming into place. You’re basically saying all illegals are dishonest with no integrity when all we want is an opportunity to prove ourselves. To prove that we didn’t come to this country to become criminals like most of you think we did I graduated HS with honors, went to college and graduated with Honors (No Loans, no FAFSA) So as far as my “education”, I think I’m in the right to say that not all illegal immigrants are out there to cause trouble. I pay my taxes under my ITIN number right now and with this law coming into play, I will be able to obtain my Real Estate license, establish my real estate business and become a successful real estate entrepreneur. Maybe even do a little investing, who knows. My point is, there is absolutely nothing you or anyone can do to stop this from happening. If you want to protest, send a letter directly to Jerry Brown. I’m sure he’ll have a ball reading all your sentence fragments, mispelling, & grammatical errors.
Sincerely,
Your future “Competition”. lol
Wow! So much for your Honors in HS. It’s very simple, it is a Federal Crime to gain access to the US Illegally…hence those who do are CRIMINALS. Got it? Can you understand how dumb your comments are? Scared!
I’m looking forward to start in the business as well and would like to get advice from someone who is of the same background. If you could possibly guide me that would be great!