Silicon Valley's immigrant tech workers are scared of buying homes after Trump's travel ban

After taking time to peruse the market, the couple found a multimillion-dollar single-family home in San Francisco that they loved. In January, they wrote an offer letter to the seller, complete with an attached photo of the young family, and squared away their finances.

In early February, the couple told Gullicksen they would no longer place a bid. They planned to take a three-week vacation in their native country of India, and decided they couldn't risk buying a house if President Donald Trump's administration wouldn't let them back into the US. (While no such restriction exists, they worry the new administration might change its mind.) They declined to speak with Business Insider directly for fear of retribution from the government.

foreign-born tech workers, who often commute to Silicon Valley, are starting to back out of buying property because they worry about an escalating crackdown on immigration under Trump, according to some real estate agents.

More than 100,000 visas have been revoked since an executive order issued on January 27 temporarily banned citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the US.

Dylan Hunter, a real estate agent with Pacific Union International, said he hasn't had a client "pull the red cord" yet, but he knows immigration reform is a concern for some. He's working with a couple based in San Francisco — one is an investment banker, the other works at Google — who are in the market for a $2 million single-family home. Their relatives in India are worried the couple will never be able to visit, and vice versa.

Google's CEO

One ripple effect of the Trump administration's policies might be a downturn in the Bay Area's housing market. Karen Yang, a real estate agent with Fling Yang & Associates, says that if H-1B visa holders (a type of visa that allows US companies to bring in foreign professionals with specialized skills) disappear from the marketplace, a sudden lack of competition could drive down the price of a single-family home in the city.

Most real estate agents we spoke with, however, said their clients should not be directly impacted by the travel ban (at least for now).

In the hypothetical situation that an immigrant worker gets their H-1B visa revoked shortly after buying a house, they would have to pay between 6% and 7% of the home value in closing costs and transfer tax, a one-time fee imposed on the owner when a property changes hands.

Trump's immigration ban sent shockwaves throughout the Bay Area, where technology companies rely on an international talent pool. At Facebook, more than 15% of US employees in 2016 worked for the social giant under a temporary work visa.

"We were just about to submit an offer that was due ... today, actually," Gullicksen said. "

On February 5th, 97 tech firms, including Google, Apple, and Facebook, filed a legal brief opposing the travel ban,Silicon Valley's first united front attack on the new administration. The brief argues

Silicon Valley's immigrant tech workers are scared of buying homes after Trump's travel ban

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