There's this wild take floating around that housing affordability crashed because of undocumented workers snapping up properties left and right. Here's the thing—that narrative doesn't hold up when you look at the actual mechanics.

These workers aren't the ones bidding at open houses. They're the ones literally framing the houses, pouring foundations, doing the grunt work that keeps construction moving. Remove that labor force? You're not magically freeing up inventory. You're choking supply and watching construction costs explode.

The real culprits behind runaway home prices? Look at monetary policy. The Federal Reserve kept rates absurdly low for years, making cheap money flood into real assets. Then you've got the Federal Housing Administration and government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie and Freddie essentially backstopping the entire mortgage market, creating this implicit guarantee that juiced demand beyond what organic market forces would support.

When central banks print money and housing agencies amplify lending capacity, asset prices inflate. That's Econ 101. Blaming construction workers for a problem created by institutional policy is missing the forest for the trees. The leverage and liquidity pumped into the system did far more damage than any demographic shift ever could.