Falling Rents: Three Forces, One Trend

Introduction

The Department of Homeland Security said on Sept. 25, 2026, that it is “reducing your rent,” crediting immigration enforcement for falling rents in states that cooperate most with ICE.

In a post on X, the agency said Texas accounted for about a quarter of ICE arrests in July and posted the country’s sharpest rent drops: San Antonio down 4.8%, Austin 4.3%, and Dallas and Houston about 3%. It also cited Miami (-2.6%), Phoenix (-4.2%), Atlanta (-3.2%), Nashville (-5.3%) and New Orleans (-8%).

NexfinityNews tested the claim against federal enforcement data, a Federal Reserve working paper, and four national rent indexes. The overlap DHS describes is real. The timing is not a good fit: Texas rent declines began in 2023, ran deep through 2024 and 2025, and have narrowed in 2026 even as ICE arrests in the state nearly doubled. The longer record points to three forces arriving in sequence: new construction from 2023, a steep drop in border crossings from mid-2024, and stepped-up interior enforcement from 2025.

Background

U.S. rents have been soft for three years, and the softness is concentrated in the South and Mountain West.

Realtor.com reported that the median asking rent across the 50 largest metros fell 0.9% year over year in August 2026, to $1,699 the 37th straight month of annual declines. RealPage found the South is the only U.S. region still posting annual rent cuts, while the Midwest led the country with 2% growth.

The main driver named across the industry is supply. RealPage data show apartment completions peaked near 588,000 units in late 2024 and fell to about 340,200 in the year ending in the second quarter of 2026.

Enforcement has risen sharply over the same period. According to the Deportation Data Project, ICE made 10,331 arrests in Texas in July 2026, up from 5,787 a year earlier, and 5,501 in Florida, up from 1,938. ICE made a record 50,925 arrests nationwide in August.

In simple terms: rent indexes measure asking rents on listings, and each company builds its own. The same city can show a 3% drop in one index and an 8% drop in another.

The Claim, Explained

DHS measured enforcement by ICE arrests, not deportations, and did not name the source of its rent figures.

The distinction matters. An arrest is the start of a removal case, not a completed departure. The rent numbers also do not match any single public index. For San Antonio alone, August figures range from -3.7% (RealPage) to -5.1% (Apartment List) to -8.6% for one-bedrooms (Zumper). DHS’s -4.8% falls inside that range but cannot be traced to a specific report.

The research the administration points to is a Dallas Fed working paper by Daniel Wilson and Xiaoqing Zhou, published March 23, 2026. It found that a 1% increase in unauthorized immigrant worker flows raised local home prices about 2.2% and rents about 1.4%.

For the average metro, the authors estimated that 2021–2024 inflows pushed rents about 4.3% higher, roughly 20% of total rent growth in that period, according to The Dallas Express. The authors describe the paper as a preliminary draft circulated for comment.

In simple terms: the paper measured what happened when migrants arrived. It did not measure what happens to rents when people are removed, and the two effects are not guaranteed to be mirror images.

Examples

Austin: declines shrinking as arrests grow. Austin rents were down 6.8% year over year in August 2025 and 2.9% in August 2026, Apartment List reported. Over the same 12 months, Texas ICE arrests rose about 79% for the month of July. If enforcement were the main driver, the decline should have deepened, not halved.

Texas’s share has not changed. A Texas Tribune analysis found 24% of ICE arrests from Jan. 20 to July 29, 2025, were in Texas. That is roughly the “about a quarter” DHS cited for July 2026. Texas held that share in 2025, when its rent declines were steeper.

Denver and Aurora: steep cuts outside the cooperating-state pattern. Aurora, Colo., posted a 4.6% annual rent decline in August, among the largest in the country, per Apartment List. Denver had the highest share of listings offering concessions of any large metro, 71.9%, per Realtor.com. Colorado is not among the states DHS described as cooperating with ICE.

New Orleans: a figure we could not match. DHS cited an 8% decline. Biz New Orleans reported Point2Homes data showing about -2.8% in March, and CoStar reported the metro’s strongest monthly rent gain in more than two years in June.

Long Beach: a real effect at building level. A Southern California property manager told Multifamily Dive that move-outs at two Long Beach buildings spiked to unprecedented levels after raids began in 2025, while calling the link anecdotal. Effects like this are concentrated in specific neighborhoods and price tiers that metro-wide indexes do not isolate.

The Longer View: Three Forces, 2023–2026

Rents in the cities DHS named began falling in 2023, and three forces arrived in sequence: a construction boom, a steep drop in border crossings, and then stepped-up interior enforcement.

Period	New construction	Border crossings	Interior enforcement	Rents
2023	Austin delivers 26,718 units (The Real Deal)	Record 2.5M southwest border encounters in FY2023; monthly peak of 249,740 in Dec. 2023 (CRS)	Pre-surge levels	National asking-rent declines begin (Realtor.com streak)
2024	Austin delivers ~30,000 more units (KXAN); U.S. completions peak near 588,000 late in the year	June 5 asylum proclamation; apprehensions fall about half from May to Oct.; Dec. encounters 81% below Dec. 2023 (CBP)	Pre-surge levels	Austin -9.3%, Nashville -8.3%, San Antonio -8.2% (May 2023–May 2024, KVUE)
2025	Supply still elevated	June apprehensions of 6,072, lowest on record (CIS)	ICE arrests rise; Texas holds ~24% share	Austin -6.8% (Aug.)
2026	Completions fall to ~340,200 (year to Q2)	June apprehensions of 9,848 (CBP)	Record 50,925 ICE arrests in Aug.	Austin -2.9% (Aug.); first quarterly rise since 2022 in Q2 (The Close)

Rent figures come from different indexes (Realtor.com, Apartment List) and are not directly comparable across rows.

Construction came first and is the best documented. Austin added nearly 97,000 market-rate apartments from 2020 through mid-2026, according to The Close. Declines in Austin, Nashville and San Antonio were already among the nation’s steepest in spring 2024.

The border slowdown cut new demand from mid-2024. The Dallas Fed paper found 2021–2024 inflows raised rents, and its authors date a rapid slowdown to mid-2024. That slowdown followed the June 2024 proclamation and deepened after January 2025, when the new administration ended the CHNV parole and CBP One entry programs.

Interior enforcement came last. ICE arrests reached record levels in 2025 and 2026, after the largest rent declines had already occurred.

In simple terms: more apartments raised supply, fewer arrivals slowed demand growth, and deportations began removing some existing renters. The first two are measured and line up with the timing. The third has not been measured at the rental-market level.

Impact

For renters in Sun Belt metros, leverage is the highest it has been in years, whatever the cause. In August, 43.5% of listings in the 50 largest metros offered a concession such as free rent or waived fees, up from 40.4% a year earlier, per Realtor.com.

For landlords in immigrant-heavy neighborhoods, enforcement has shown up as unpaid rent more than as lower asking rents. In Los Angeles, tenant advocates said detained breadwinners left families unable to pay, and the county board rejected an expanded eviction shield in February after landlords argued it would shift those losses onto them.

Outside the supply-heavy South, rents are rising. RealPage reported San Francisco leading major markets at 14% annual growth.

Analysis

Deportations are a plausible contributor to falling rents, but the data do not support them as the reason the cities DHS named lead the country.

The timing test. National asking rents have fallen for 37 straight months, a streak that began in 2023, before the current enforcement surge. Austin’s steepest measured decline came in 2024, a 9.3% annual drop per Realtor.com.

The dose test. If arrests drove rents down, more arrests should mean steeper drops. Texas arrests rose sharply over the past year while Austin’s decline narrowed by more than half and RealPage recorded Austin and Phoenix cuts easing to roughly 1% to 1.4%.

The comparison test. Aurora, Denver and Las Vegas show large declines and heavy concessions without being cited as enforcement leaders. What the high-decline metros share is a construction boom. Zumper CEO Shawn Mullahy attributed Texas’s declines to supply outrunning demand, per CultureMap.

The mechanism question. The Texas Tribune found that local jails are the main channel sending people into ICE custody in Texas. In simple terms: a person arrested by ICE out of a county jail may not free up an apartment that day, because they were already in custody.

The mechanism still has support. The Dallas Fed paper shows migrant arrivals raised rents, and Cato Institute economist Alex Nowrasteh told The Washington Times that reduced immigration has lowered rents and home prices. The most likely effect is real, modest, and concentrated in lower-cost units and specific neighborhoods. No public dataset yet measures it at that level.

Conclusion

Falling rents in the cities DHS named are the product of three forces that arrived in sequence: a construction boom that began delivering in 2023, a sharp drop in border crossings from mid-2024, and stepped-up interior enforcement from 2025.

Construction came first and is the best documented. The border slowdown plausibly removed the demand growth the Dallas Fed tied to 2021–2024 inflows. Deportations may be adding pressure at the margin, but the largest declines came before the enforcement surge and are easing now. Crediting enforcement alone leaves out the two forces that were already at work.

Key Takeaways

DHS said on Sept. 25, 2026, that states cooperating with ICE are seeing the largest rent declines, citing Texas’s roughly 25% share of July arrests.
DHS measured ICE arrests, not deportations, and did not name the source of its rent figures; its New Orleans number could not be matched to major indexes.
Austin’s annual rent decline narrowed from 6.8% to 2.9% over a year in which Texas ICE arrests nearly doubled.
A Dallas Fed working paper found 2021–2024 migrant inflows raised average metro rents about 4.3%; it did not study the effect of removals.
Apartment completions peaked near 588,000 units in late 2024, and the steepest rent declines track that construction wave.
The decline began in 2023: new construction came first, border crossings fell sharply from mid-2024, and interior enforcement rose from 2025.