Spatial Change and the Structure of Urban Housing Sub-markets

Many applied studies of the structure of urban housing systems involve considerable imprecision in terms of the identification of sub-market boundaries. This is often a function of reliance on prior knowledge, particularly of the potential spatial divisions within urban housing systems. This paper introduces an application of the multi-level hedonic model as a tool to identify housing sub-markets, and as a method of identifying temporal change within the sub-market system. Based on empirical analysis of two study years (2002 and 2006) in the city of Glasgow, this study demonstrates a finely-grained approach to the identification of spatial sub-markets and uncovers evidence of spatial change between the two study years. The multi-level derived sub-market boundaries are shown to be a credible and statistically meaningful alternative to prior notions of the sub-market system. The paper concludes that multi-level models have considerable potential as a tool both to identify the sub-market structure, and for detecting temporal change in the delimitation of sub-markets.