Understanding Real Estate Markets and Submarkets

This chapter explains the workings and characteristics of real estate submarkets and the interaction of the submarkets with the larger local market. Market analysts have often defined a real estate market by political divisions such as a county, city, or metropolitan area (e.g., Palm Beach County, the City of Los Angeles, Baltimore- Washington, DC metropolitan area). Market trends are compared and contrasted between real estate markets, such as the growth of Baltimore-Washington, DC versus the decline of Buffalo-Niagara Falls metro areas. Such comparisons at a large geographic scale are valuable because they can identify potential opportunities and potential investment failures. However, as discussed in the previous chapter, the real estate decision is a site-specific decision. Analysis at the appropriate scale and for the appropriate submarket is required to support the real estate decision. Submarkets are areas within the larger market area that stand out in some important way (see Thrall and Amos 1999; Thrall and McMullin, 2000b). For example, . . . Sites within the submarket are at the same stage of a cycle with one another, while perhaps being countercyclical with sites in the larger market or other submarkets. Land use within the submarket is homogeneous and differs from land use in other adjacent submarkets (e.g., a submarket of office buildings or retail). A submarket might be composed of households of similar demographic characteristics (lifestyle segmentation profiles), and have housing in a similar price range. . . . The city is an aggregate of submarkets. Each submarket is affected by the whole city; each submarket affects, and in turn is affected by, other nearby submarkets. In other words, submarkets are interdependent with one another and each is interdependent with the whole. Nearby submarkets generally have greater interdependency with one another than they have with submarkets that are more remote. However, some submarkets may be highly interdependent, even though they are distant from one another, such as submarkets of office buildings or industrial park land uses. An urban area will have few office building submarkets that depend on the same geographically large urban market to sustain them; overdevelopment of one office building submarket can have a price effect on another office building submarket.