Spatial Segmentation of the Urban Housing Market

Neighborhood correlates of house price changes for the San Francisco Bay area are analyzed for the metropolitan area as a whole, and also for sub-markets defined on the basis of real estate board jurisdictions, the racial-ethnic composition of neighborhoods, and the average house price of neighborhoods.Regression analysis reveals different patterns of correlates for the market and submarket models, and an F-test indicates that the board of realtors submarket model is superior to the other models in accounting for variance in price change.These findings suggest that submarket models should be used in the analysis of housing, but only if submarkets are carefully defined to bound areas which are likely to show discrete attribute-price structures.