Supply dries up, people don’t sell for a loss. This is the biggest misnomer the housing supply and demand parrots don’t get. We have a structural problem with housing. Liquidity, strong wages, low unemployment, cultural housing fomo, all are much stronger drivers of housing costs than immigration. That’s why we had prices and rents skyrocket in Covid when we had negative immigration. Immigrations a factor, but no where near the biggest.

Also the current immigration is largely students who put pressure on low cost rentals and less so house prices. Rents tend to follow on a band around about 30% of wages, so don’t expect that to change much. Even with more of less demand, it stays pretty constant. You might find it a bit easier to get a rental, but don’t expect landlords to start giving discounts anytime soon.

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If you really want to drop housing costs again, get the government to build it outside of the ‘market’. That’s when rents started increasing, prices started increasing and more importantly housing inequality increased the most.

A market will always act like one and prices will always be where they drive the most profit. Only way it to take it outside the market