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Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News
Prashant Gopal
in
Sarah Holder
the suburbs north of Dallas, a housing boom has started to go bust.
Prashant Gopal
Some key towns that we're talking about are Prosper, Frisco and Salina, which is one of the fastest growing towns in America.
Sarah Holder
Prashant Gopal covers the US Housing market for Bloomberg. He says the burst of new construction kicked off during the pandemic. Remote workers were looking for affordable housing outside city centers. Corporations were relocating to the Dallas Fort Worth area, bringing white collar jobs, and a new population of workers had started moving to the region.
Prashant Gopal
A lot of the builders I spoke with, they told me that, you know, 70% of their buyers were, you know, South Asian, which was actually what got me onto the story to begin with. I was sort of stunned that it would be that high.
Sarah Holder
For the past decade, Dallas has been experiencing one of the fastest demographic transformations in the country, as Indian families are drawn there for the jobs, the schools, the weather, and the growing South Asian community. Many of the newcomers are here to work in tech roles on H1B visas, temporary visas for highly skilled workers. From 2021 to 2024, the federal government granted almost 32,000 H1B visas to the Dallas area, more than Silicon Valley, Seattle, D.C. or San Francisco. And the largest group of recipients by far is from India.
Prashant Gopal
H1Bs are kind of like a stepping stone toward the American dream, right? Once you get an H1B, often one of the first things you do is buy a house.
Sarah Holder
One housing analyst told Prashant that in Dallas, the South Asian community became the most important first time buyer group for builders. But recently the market has been changing. Mortgage rates have risen. AI is driving tech layoffs, and the Trump administration is making it harder to get H1B visas. Now all those new homes are getting harder to sell.
Prashant Gopal
Collin county, which is sort of the heart of this northern corridor, home prices are down 9% year over year. That's a pretty big drop.
Sarah Holder
Prashant traveled to the greater Dallas area to get to know the residents who've been navigating this downturn. He says many of them are grappling with job insecurity and starting to worry that the American dream they were building could be slipping away. I'm Sarah Holder and this is the big take from Bloomberg News. Today on the show, how the Trump administration's immigration crackdown is intensifying a housing downturn in Dallas and upending lives. Like many stories of downturns, the one in Dallas, Texas started as a story of growth. Its regional population has increased by 63% over the last 25 years.
Prashant Gopal
The economy has been booming in large part because of its great diversity of sectors. Bloomberg's Prashant Gopal, Finance, tech, healthcare. There's so many different types of jobs there, and they've all been doing really well. There's no state income tax, which makes it really attractive. I mean, you think about the transportation. It's a key hub for airlines. And I think relative to some other places, it's affordable as well. So there are a lot of things going for Dallas.
Sarah Holder
Dallas has become a national hotspot for corporate relocations since 2018. Companies like Charles Schwab, Caterpillar, KFC and Toyota North America have all moved their headquarters to the region.
Prashant Gopal
A lot of the companies that have moved in, they have a lot of IT workers, and so they need to fill those jobs. These are highly paid jobs. It's not like they're making minimum wage. I mean, many of these software developers are, you know, well over $100,000, sometimes significantly more. People have master's degrees, PhDs, you know,
Sarah Holder
to find the right talent. Dallas based companies have been fielding applications from around the world. And one tool they've used to recruit foreign workers is the H1B visa.
Prashant Gopal
You could think of it as a foothold. You know, in America, it's a temporary. It gives you the right to work as long as an employer sponsors you. So many of the people who get H1B visas, you know, maybe they come in to the United States on a student visa. This is sort of the typical path. And from there they get a job, say at a software company or some other job that requires sort of a high skilled worker. They'll then get sponsored for an H1B visa. And then it may take some time, but eventually they'll apply for a green card and at some point maybe they'll get a citizenship.
Sarah Holder
Nationally, the majority of H1B visa holders are South Asian. In 2023, over 70% of recipients were from India, many of them in the market to buy new homes.
Prashant Gopal
I mean, even nationally, some of the like, there's a big public builder called Taylor Morrison. They say that over 40% of their buyers nationally are Asian and Indian. So it's a big group for home builders, especially in this area. They were building a lot of homes.
Sarah Holder
And as Dallas welcomed more H1B recipients in the post pandemic years, the number of Indian families looking for housing in the Dallas suburbs started to grow.
Prashant Gopal
Many of them were looking to buy new construction because the areas north of Dallas, they're a little bit further away from the jobs. But, you know, many were working remotely anyway, so it didn't matter so much and they could get more for their money. And builders were building for this group.
Sarah Holder
Prashant says H1B visas were far from the only driver of Dallas's growing South Asian community.
Prashant Gopal
As more people kind of moved in, a community began to kind of arrive in the area. You know, a lot of the things that makes it more comfortable for people, ethnic grocery stores and movie theaters playing, you know, Tamil and Telugu films, and you have a cricket league. And I have to say, like, you know, several people told me that the weather reminded them of Hyderabad.
Neeraj Gupta
I'll tell you when I landed here, when the person says, for here or to go, I had no idea what they were talking about because that term is not used back home. So I had no idea. So people helped me there.
Sarah Holder
That's Neeraj Gupta, a real estate broker in Dallas. He's been in the area for over 25 years. Before getting into real estate, he Worked in the tech sector on an H1B visa. Neeraj says this sense of community is a big draw for Indian residents who are new to Dallas. They have neighbors who can help them with everything from takeout orders to driver's licenses.
Neeraj Gupta
All those things together we learned. So we have a community who are knit together, you know, closely and we are helping each other.
Prashant Gopal
He said during the COVID boom, he'd just get one call after the other. Indian born workers who want to just not just buy one house, but often they would buy a, a primary home for their family and then they'd buy one or two investment homes in addition because they had good salaries, you know, especially if you had two husband and wife both working, you know, they could be making $250,000 or more so they could buy million dollar houses.
Sarah Holder
But Prashant says the evolution of the Dallas suburbs has made some residents anxious.
Prashant Gopal
This was traditionally kind of a rural area, a lot of farmland, and now it's sort of this multicultural place that has just changed in many ways, not just because of the demographics but also just because of the growth. So I think there was a group of people and, you know, who knows how big, but there is some group of people that didn't like this. Right. They didn't like the change that they were seeing. Maybe they thought it was too much, too fast. And it sort of led to a little bit of a backlash.
Sarah Holder
How anti immigrant sentiment, the Trump administration's crackdown on H1B visas and an uncertain labor market are affecting not only home prices in Dallas, but lives. That's after the break.
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Sarah Holder
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Sarah Holder
Many of the new homes and growing Indian communities are in Frisco, Texas, a 30 minute drive due north from Dallas's city center. Bloomberg's Prashant Gopal recently went there for a city council meeting to listen to residents during a public comment period.
Prashant Gopal
You have people showing up at the meetings to Voice Frustration about H1B visas particularly. Everybody wants to say hate has no home in Frisco.
Commercial Voice
That phrase needs to be changed to
Prashant Gopal
hate has no home in Frisco.
Sarah Holder
Unless you're from India and you want
Commercial Voice
to come to cities.
Prashant Gopal
They steal American jobs, they steal homes, they're stealing our land.
Commercial Voice
Frisco will be remembered as the city that stood up and turned the tide
Prashant Gopal
on the Muslim invasion.
Sarah Holder
Or will you choose?
Prashant Gopal
Of course, you know, the city council has no power over H1B visas, but there, there's a lot of people talking about how there's fraud with H1B visas and, you know, without evidence and also arguing that their area is turning into Mumbai. And while I was there, there was a person who showed up and said, you know, pretty soon the whole city council is going to be entirely Indian. This one Indian member right now. But his fear is that, you know, the whole council will be Indian. And he said pretty soon, he said, I'm going to need Google Translate just to ask where the bathroom is.
Sarah Holder
I mean, and to be clear, what you're describing, Prashant, is racism.
Prashant Gopal
Yeah. I mean, some of it is so outrageous.
Sarah Holder
Prashant says the racism and fear mongering is only one part of the story. At those same city council meetings, other Frisco residents have pushed back on the rhetoric. Shared words of support Friends, we are
Prashant Gopal
not experiencing an Indian invasion. We are experiencing an invasion of ignorance.
Narrator/Announcer
The Indian community itself is a beautifully diverse community. Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and Parsis and more.
Prashant Gopal
We need something better than ridicule, bullying and division.
Commercial Voice
We need decency.
Prashant Gopal
We need accountability, and we need the courage to say clearly that Indians belong here, too.
Sarah Holder
The conversation happening in Frisco echoes one happening at the national level. Prashant says the H1B backlash is an extension of the anti immigration rhetoric and policymaking coming from the Trump administration.
Prashant Gopal
There was a lot of rhetoric against undocumented immigrants, and that's sort of been the main focus in many ways. You know, when you think about Trump's rhetoric about Mexicans and the ICE deportations. But this group is, these are legal immigrants. And so it's a relatively educated, affluent group of people that's also here legally.
Sarah Holder
As part of a national immigration crackdown, the Trump administration has placed new restrictions on H1B visas. On September 19, President Trump signed an executive order, a restriction on entry of certain non immigrant workers.
Prashant Gopal
We need workers. We need great workers. And this pretty much ensures that that's what's going to happen to you. He's imposed like a $100,000 fee for new H1B visas, and he's added some other restrictions.
Sarah Holder
The $100,000 fee is only for new visas. Existing H1B visas aren't impacted by the change.
Prashant Gopal
The country would rather not have to pay $100,000, but they'd rather. How do you do that? You hire Americans, so there's an incentive.
Sarah Holder
But if someone switches jobs or loses their job and getting a new, more expensive H1B from another sponsor could be more difficult.
Prashant Gopal
It's sort of the feeling that anything can change at any time that makes people worried.
Sarah Holder
Texas has pursued its own H1B restrictions, too. In January, Governor Greg Abbott froze H1B petitions for the state's agencies and public university roles to investigate alleged fraud in the program. And there are other pressures on this group of workers, like the changing nature of work itself.
Prashant Gopal
AI is taking jobs right now, and you have a lot of people who are worried about their jobs. And if you're on an H1B visa and you lose your job, the fear is that you have, you know, 60 days to find another company to sponsor you. Otherwise you might have to leave the country. And that's really tough right now because it's hard to find a job, companies are increasingly asking their workers to come back to the office. You know, that's been going on for a while, but tech companies are doing that more and more. And if you're on a visa, you're less likely to be willing to just say, no thanks, you know, I'm going to find another job. You kind of have to move and you know, you have that. You have the layoffs directly hitting this group maybe more than any other group because so many of them are in software.
Sarah Holder
Neeraj Gupta, the property management owner who described the boom north of Dallas, says that by 2025 the dynamic had shifted. He says many of his clients are from India on green cards or H1B visas. And they started telling him they were worried about their jobs and their visas.
Neeraj Gupta
I have seen the influx of home buyers, especially the buyers who are on H1B has reduced drastically, phenomenally, even if financially it makes sense. Because of the uncertainty in the job market and in their own immigration status, many of the buyers are holding back.
Prashant Gopal
Some of them had to sell and they couldn't. So they had to consider renting their property out. The problem is the rental market's also down. A lot of these homes are too expensive for people. They can't afford to buy them. So, you know, prices are coming down, but there's still no buyers for homes, you know, million dollar homes or this many million dollar homes.
Sarah Holder
Prashant says that the developer who told him that South Asians used to account for 70% of his business told him that in the past year the number dropped below 30%, leaving him with a backlog of 125 properties. That's the kind of decline in demand that sent home prices sliding. In Collin county, which includes parts of Prosper, Frisco and Salina, they were down more than twice as much as in the broader metro area, according to data from Redfin.
Prashant Gopal
It's down across the Metro, like down 4%, but it's much more in this area. If you're trying to sell a house in Dallas, you're competing with a lot of these folks. It has economic consequences as well. So builders aren't able to sell these houses. They sit empty. And that means that there aren't as many buyers coming in, you know, people who need furniture and everything else you need when you, when you buy a new house. So you know, there are broader impacts.
Sarah Holder
The consequences for folks who are experiencing these challenges right now go far beyond just the financial peril of not being able to sell their home. You spoke to people who might have to, you know, leave the communities that they've built, leave their neighbors who are losing jobs and livelihoods. Say more about some of the human stakes that you chronicled when writing this piece.
Prashant Gopal
I mean, there's one story that was just truly heartbreaking. I spent some time with a widow and her two children. She raised those kids as Americans with her husband. But then one day she came home and saw her husband weeping. He had been laid off from his software job and he didn't think he could find another job in this kind of environment, you know, and the fear was that they'd be sent back to India. And, you know, about a week later, you know, he died from suicide. And, you know, in his note, he said that he was worried about AI and his ability to compete with AI.
Sarah Holder
That's so heartbreaking.
Prashant Gopal
Yeah. And I was sitting in this living room, there were four suitcases packed because, you know, 10 days later they, they flew back to India. A one way ticket. You know, her kids, you know, were crying. You know, they had no idea what their life would be like because they'd never lived anywhere else right. Besides the United States. The question I'm left with is who is going to kind of fill the hole left by these people who may feel like they no longer have a place in the United States or at least may not have a future here? What is their place in the economy, in society, and in the housing market where in these places they've been really important, They've been especially important to home builders. So I guess, you know, I guess the question is what happens from here? What would it take to kind of make, make people feel comfortable again?
Sarah Holder
This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder. To get more from the big take and unlimited access to all of bloomberg.com, subscribe today@bloomberg.com podcastoffer thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.
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Episode Title: How H-1B Restrictions Popped Dallas’ Housing Bubble
Date: June 3, 2026
Host: Sarah Holder (Bloomberg News)
Featured Reporter: Prashant Gopal
This episode explores how recent restrictions on H-1B visas, combined with rising mortgage rates, tech layoffs, and local demographic changes, contributed to Dallas’ surprisingly sharp housing downturn. The discussion centers on the integral role the South Asian (especially Indian) immigrant population on H-1B visas played in fueling Dallas’s housing boom, the mounting backlash as the region changed, and the profound economic and personal consequences of recent policy shifts.
Pandemic-driven Growth:
South Asian Community Surge:
H-1B Visa as the American Dream Gateway:
Buyer Profile:
Building Community and Comfort:
Demographic Shift Angst:
Community Pushback:
Trump Administration’s New H-1B Restrictions:
In September, President Trump imposed a $100,000 fee for new H-1B visas and additional restrictions ([15:24], [15:38]).
Texas-specific actions:
Broader Pressures on the Tech Workforce:
Impact on the Housing Market:
Anecdotal Accounts:
Personal Stories of Displacement:
On Community Growth:
“You have a cricket league. And I have to say, like, you know, several people told me that the weather reminded them of Hyderabad.” —Prashant Gopal [08:02]
On Anti-Immigrant Backlash:
“Frisco will be remembered as the city that stood up and turned the tide on the Muslim invasion.” —Local resident at a city council meeting [13:23]
“We are not experiencing an Indian invasion. We are experiencing an invasion of ignorance.” —Resident speaking in favor of inclusivity [14:25]
On Economic Fears:
“It's sort of the feeling that anything can change at any time that makes people worried.” —Prashant Gopal [16:18]
On Personal Losses:
“He had been laid off from his software job and he didn't think he could find another job in this kind of environment… the fear was that they'd be sent back to India. And… he died from suicide. In his note, he said that he was worried about AI and his ability to compete with AI.” —Prashant Gopal [20:11]
The episode draws a compelling line from pandemic-driven boom to post-pandemic bust, showing how Dallas’s economic fortunes have been intricately bound up with legal immigration—specifically the H-1B workforce. New, restrictive immigration policies and a changing tech job market have reduced demand for homes, sent prices tumbling, and destabilized communities. As the South Asian buyer pool shrinks, developers and local economies face financial pain—and, most poignantly, so do ordinary families who once saw Dallas as the gateway to the American dream, only to find their future there suddenly in doubt.