Foreign home-shoppers in Texas are nixing more deals due to immigration rules, an annual survey suggests.
Over a quarter of international clients who decided not to buy a home in Texas between April 2025 and March 2026 did so because of immigration laws, according to a survey of Texas real estate agents published last week by the trade association Texas REALTORS.
It is the highest share of such answers on records going back to 2023.
Among international clients who backed away from deals during the reporting period, the top three reasons they decided not to buy were immigration rules, cost, and inability to find a suitable property, all tied for first place at 27 percent, according to Texas REALTORS.
Foreign clients considered immigration law to be less of an obstacle to purchasing a Texas home in previous years.
It ranked fifth among deterrents in 2025, with just 18 percent of clients citing it as the reason they decided not to buy a property in Texas. Immigration ranked sixth in 2024 as the primary dealbreaker for 10 percent of clients, and fourth in 2023 with 19 percent. Surveys before 2023 don’t include a breakdown of client motives.
Mexico, India, and China account for the greatest shares of foreign buyers, representing 35 percent, 14 percent, and 9 percent of the total international buyer count, respectively. Texas also ranked first nationally for Mexican buyers and second for Indians, according to the group.
Perry Henderson, an Austin broker who often works with clients from China, Pakistan, and India, relayed that both business trends and immigration concerns depress sales among these buyers.
Many Indian and Chinese buyers in the Austin area work in the tech industry, exposing them to volatility that might not affect other sectors, such as the decline of remote work trends, Henderson said.
“Most of my clients are high-tech workers who work for all the big names around — Dell, Apple, Amazon, you name it … Things are changing in their [lives] where they’re actually going back or having to relocate, and the sales market is not favorable to them,” Henderson told The Texan.
“I imagine the stress of immigration, the stress of uncertainty right now, is pushing a lot of issues.”
Heather Shepherd, a Houston luxury agent who works with Mexican clients, reported less concern about immigration among wealthy Mexican buyers, who tend not to be concentrated in a single industry.
“I’m really not seeing them hesitant to purchase homes in Houston,” Shepherd told The Texan.
The average price of a Texas home purchased by an international buyer with legal resident status in America was $450,000, and the average price of a Texas home purchased by an international buyer domiciled in another country was $607,000, according to Texas REALTORS. The state average sales price during this period was about $422,000, according to the Texas Real Estate Research Center.
The survey follows reports by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas that home sales have declined this year in areas reliant on recent immigrant buyers.
The Texas REALTORS survey was conducted by the National Association of Realtors, its parent organization, which received responses from 1,627 Texas members, 164 of whom reported working with an international client.