EL PASO, Tx., January 8, 2026: El Paso’s home builders started pulling fewer building permits to build new homes around August last year. The latest indicators are that new homes construction in El Paso will continue to drop this year as pressure from several factors continues to impact the local building industry. Construction is one of El Paso’s largest job markets.
Construction jobs in El Paso grew by 1% in early 2025 but last year’s government shutdown, expensive land, high interest rates and El Paso’s high taxes are slowing new home construction putting pressure on the construction jobs. By late last year, the El Paso construction job market had dropped to a 0.6% growth rate. El Paso’s unemployment rate in August, at 4.5%, is now surpassing the state and national unemployment rates.
New home permits followed suit with a drop of 6.5% from the previous August, surpassing the state drop of 6%.
In a July 9 report in the El Paso Association of Builders monthly newsletter, Coldwell Banker broker, Patrick Tuttle, cited several factors including “shifting demographics, rising costs, and regulatory headwinds” for the downturn in El Paso’s new home market. Tuttle said that El Paso home builders are having to “rethink” what they build, and how they price their homes. Tuttle says that in 2024, El Paso experienced a 22% increase in home sales while housing inventories were dropping. The biggest factor is high interest rates, making it difficult for El Paso home buyers to qualify for mortgages. Tuttle added that “labor shortages” persist due to “tariffs and stalled immigration reforms.”
We asked Ray Adauto, the executive director of the builder’s association about the downturn on new home building in El Paso. In an email, Adauto told us that home builders are “unable to build enough” homes that El Paso’s blue-collar workers “can afford to buy.” He added that the local building sector is in “a downturn, or actually still in the covid downturn,” adding that new housing “construction has not recovered from the damages the shutdown caused.”
Among the reasons for the slow growth in new housing, Adauto cited “many components,” including “labor costs, high prices, wages,” and the high “consumer debt” carried by buyers. He added that land to build on is getting more difficult to get and is more expensive.
The largest landowner in El Paso is the Public Service Board (PSB), the quasi-government entity that oversees water services in the city.
Are Immigration Raids A Factor?
Adauto wrote that “cheap labor has vanished,” adding that “immigration crackdowns are hurting the ability to have cheap labor,” causing new home prices to go up. Immigration raids making headline news across the country have no impacted El Paso, although Texas leads the nation in immigrant arrests.
Only one case of an immigrant job site raid in El Paso has made the news.
On December 31, KFOX reported on “an apparent immigration raid in Far East El Paso.” The station used “apparent” because the only evidence of the raid is on video posted on social media. Officials did not confirm the raid to the news station.
Although Adauto cited the lack of less expensive labor, the issue of immigration raids on El Paso’s job sites has not been publicly acknowledged by officials and builders as the cause of the slump in home builds in El Paso.
However, last month, the executive director of the South Side Texas Builders Association posted a video online citing that immigration raids were hurting home builders in the Texas Rio Grande Valley to the point that “construction can’t continue.” The Valley’s construction jobs fell by 5% last year, making it the “single largest dip in jobs in the region.”
In response to the loss of jobs, U.S. Rep. Mónica de la Cruz (R-TX15) announced last Monday that she wants to create a pathway for constructions workers.
We asked Congresswoman Veronica Escobar’s office about legislation for foreign constructions workers. Escobar’s Communications Director, Abbey Thompson, told us in an email that Escobar “co-authored the first bi-partisan, comprehensive immigration reform bill in the U.S. House in a decade (the Dignity Act of 2023).” Thompson added that “her current bill, the Dignity Act of 2025, includes provisions that would protect construction workers, has the endorsement of the National Homebuilders Association, and is co-sponsored by Rep. De La Cruz.” According to her, “there are 15 Republican and 15 Democratic co-sponsors to the bill, and it’s currently the only bipartisan immigration bill with this level of support.”
Although immigration raids at homebuilding sites were “openly assumed that the construction industry was being negatively impacted,” the home builder industry has generally not officially acknowledged it.
Democrat Escobar and Republican de la Cruz are pursuing legislation to allow migrants to openly work on construction sites if their legislation is approved. For El Paso builders, migrant workers are only part of the puzzle to the downturn on home building El Paso is experiencing.
Like Us and Follow Us On Our Social Media!
Visited 20 times, 20 visit(s) today