At Home in America

When Victor Morales came to California from his native Michoacan, Mexico, in 1984, it was to a dirt-poor existence picking strawberries, tomatoes and grapes. He lived a transient life, following the harvest from Orange County to Fresno and back.

More than a dozen years later, Morales is an assistant supervisor in a factory, married with two children and the owner of a piece of the American dream--his own home.

“I wanted my own house. It’s something, how can I say it, that makes you feel more free,” Morales said of his $75,000 four-bedroom Chino home.

Morales’ story is dramatic but not atypical. Contrary to the common belief that immigrants are reluctant to assimilate and are dependent on the U.S. government for basic necessities, statistics show that immigrants tend to be more likely than native-born Americans to strive for financial stability and, especially, homeownership.

Indeed, the American dream of working hard, getting ahead and becoming a homeowner continues to be a powerful lure for the foreign-born. Even as homeownership is becoming less prevalent among native-born Americans, it remains paramount to those who come here from other lands.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in California, the state with the largest percentage of foreign-born residents. According to 1996 U.S. Census Bureau data, 8 million (or one in four) California residents were born outside the United States.

Foreign-born home buyers are driving much of the housing market in Southern California, with suburbs in the San Gabriel Valley increasingly becoming Asian and urban areas like South-Central Los Angeles turning from black to brown, as Latino immigrants displace African Americans.

“Census figures suggest that once immigrants come to the United

States, they achieve homeownership fairly quickly,” said John

Tuccillo, vice president and chief economist of the National Assn. of Realtors.

In 1995, the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies compared homeownership rates over a decade for native-born Americans who were 25 to 34 to immigrants in the same age group.

Native-born whites had a homeownership rate of 57.4% in 1980 that rose to 72.1% by 1990. Blacks’ rate went from 31.5% in 1980 to 43.5% in 1990.

But in most cases, homeownership rates for immigrants rose more dramatically over the same time period.

In 1980, for example, Mexican immigrants had only a 20.5% homeownership rate. By 1990, that figure had more than doubled to 43.2%. For Central Americans, the rate in 1980 was only 12.9%; it rose to 29.3% by 1990.

Some groups, like immigrants from China and Taiwan, actually surpassed native-born whites during the 10-year period. Their homeownership rate was 38.6% in 1980 and by 1990 it had risen to 82.8%.

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In fact, while doomsday analysts were busy predicting the collapse of the housing market with the coming of age of 46 million Generation Xers--a group thought to be likely to delay by decades such priorities as real estate investment--immigrants were busy filling in the gap, purchasing lower-priced houses being sold by baby boomers moving up to more expensive homes.

In Southern California during the ‘90s, immigrants have kept the sluggish market alive, particularly in inner-city areas.

“Domestic migration right now is so low, particularly in Southern California, that immigrants dominate home sales today. If we didn’t have immigrants, the housing market would vanish,” said Dowell Myers, an associate professor of urban planning at USC and an expert on demographic trends in housing.

Cecilia Ghalambor, originally from the Philippines, and her husband, Hamid, who grew up in Iran, married in 1996 and purchased a home earlier this year after they found out she was expecting their first child.

“My husband is very traditional,” Ghalambor said.

“He didn’t want the baby to be brought home to an apartment.” They found a three-bedroom, two-bath home with two fireplaces, a large yard and big family room in San Dimas, close to a park and an elementary school. Hamid’s job as a bookkeeper is only five minutes away and Cecilia’s job as a nurse is a 20-minute drive. They paid $177,000 for the home.

If immigrant home buying is an important element of the housing market now, it is likely to be come even more so, according to statistics compiled by the Fannie Mae Foundation’s immigrant research project, being done by housing analysts Patrick Simmons and John R. Pitkin.

Their data show that the immigrant population--now representing 24.5 million U.S. residents--will grow to 31 million by 2010.

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As immigrants age and accumulate more time in the United States, more of them will move into homeownership. “If our projections are right,” Simmons said, “the immigrants that are here now are going to make a lot of progress over the next few years.”

Their 1995 survey showed that about 20% of immigrants said they were “very likely to buy a home” within the next three years. Of the native-born population surveyed, only 13% would make the same prediction.

Why are immigrants more likely to believe they will soon become homeowners?

Homeownership, for immigrants, is a powerful symbol, Myers said, a benchmark to show that the struggle, hardship and risk they took were all worth it. And immigrants are more likely to save, delay other purchases and pool the income of many wage earners to achieve it.

“They are more invested in homeownership and more likely to overcome great odds to realize the American dream, which is hard work, getting somewhere and winning the biggest prize of all, owning their own home.”

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“A home is at the top of every immigrant’s list, and they try to push toward that by cutting down on other expenses,” said Gopal Ahluwalia, director of research for the National Assn. of Home Builders.

Some immigrants, particularly those from Asian countries, arrive in the United States with capital that they want to invest quickly, Ahluwalia said. “A home is not only a status symbol, it is a very good investment. Compared to the world market, U.S. real estate is very reasonably priced.”

Last year, Edward Chow, a biomedical engineer who works at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, purchased a $350,000 home in the South Hills area of the San Gabriel Valley. The home, in a gated community, has six bedrooms, 3 1/2 baths and a four-car garage.

His history of homeownership in the United States, however, goes back to when he first arrived from Taiwan in 1980 to attend college.

“I attended Stanford University, and one of the first things I did was purchase a condo in Northern California,” he said.

“In Asian cultures, real estate is considered a good investment and something to pass down to future generations. Many Asian parents put aside money to buy first homes for their children or to help them buy their first homes.”

Chow moved to Los Angeles in 1983 and, two years later, bought a home in Covina and then, after he was married and had children, bought a home in the Via Verde neighborhood of San Dimas.

The house was perfectly adequate for his family’s needs, Chow said, but when he and his wife noticed that the South Hills area had schools that ranked higher on academic tests than their local schools did, they decided to move. “A high-achieving school district is extremely important to us,” he said.

Along with the school district, the Chows wanted a home that was close to family members and to Asian shopping centers. Chow’s sister lives only a mile and a half from their new home, which makes it easy for the extended family to gather each week for a meal. And, being in the Eastern San Gabriel Valley, they are close to Chinese supermarkets, restaurants and importers.

For Victor Morales, becoming an assistant supervisor in a factory job has made him, and his extended family back in Mexico, very proud.

But buying a home was, for Morales, the milestone that proved that his difficult and frightening immigration experience, hard work and sacrifice had all been worth it.

“We were renting an apartment. But it’s better to pay for your own house than to rent,” he said. “Here, my children can play in their own yard. It is ours. We don’t have to pay rent to anybody.”

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Coming Up With the Down

Median down payments by ethnic groups in Los Angeles County:

Asian American: $48,000

White: $30,000

Latino: $7,000

African American: $4,000

Source: 1996 Housing Finance Survey, California Assn. of Realtors