Good point Bugs. It would be one thing if developers needed to lower labor costs in an effort to be more competitive on price. But when homes are slated to sell in a new development for $800K-$900K or more, the lower labor costs simply pad the profit margins or help to offset any potential downturns in the market…which were unthinkable until recently.

Like other industries, I imagine that developers/construction companies are in favor of continuing using cheap, illegal immigrant labor, even though they’ll never admit to it. But what sort of effect does this have on those jobs projections and figures that are affected by a housing slowdown? If many of the lost jobs are held by illegal immigrants, and we assume that many are not homeowners, then will there not be as much an impact on making those rising ARM payments? Will there instead be more of an indirect ripple effect on other businesses that depend on the consumption of the illegal immigrants?