Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 5.1
Correlates of annual nominal house prices in Vancouver, 1971-96
National bank rate
−0.12
BC unemployment rate
0.16
Net domestic migration (Vancouver CMA)
−0.32
Rental vacancy rates (Vancouver CMA)
−0.03
Dwelling starts (Vancouver CMA)
0.48
Population change as % of starts (Vancouver CMA)
0.52
BC GDP
0.98
Consumer price index (Vancouver CMA)
0.95
Population count (Vancouver CMA)
0.98
% BC labour force in quaternary jobs
0.89
Net immigration (Vancouver CMA)
0.96
Business immigrants as % of all immigrants (Vanc CMA)
0.83
Immigration as % of dwelling starts (Vancouver CMA)
0.84
Immigration as % of population growth (Vancouver CMA)
0.62
Foreign direct investment in Canada
0.97
Overseas visitors to BC
0.95
Exchange rate $CAN to $US
−0.62
Source
: Ley and Tutchener 2001, reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd
strongly linked to changing real estate prices, an important study showed
that when decomposed to the census tract level, the effects of immigration
were much less apparent (Burnley and Murphy 1994; Burnley, Murphy and
Fagan 1997). The same is true in Toronto where robust relationships at the
metropolitan scale become much more complex in a census tract analysis
(Ley et al. 2002). In part this anomaly may be related to the range of influ-
ences operating in different housing submarkets. Any analysis looking for
single effects would be muddied by gentrification in the inner city, social
polarization in existing rich and poor districts, and the compositional effects
of highly diverse immigrant cohorts in immigration reception areas. Dehesh
and Pugh (1999) warn against looking for any single-factor explanations in
the property markets of global cities, while Burnley and Murphy caution
that in a metropolitan area with hundreds of census tracts, 'correlation can
mask such (diverse) influences' (1994: 68).
In this context of crosscutting and muddying influences at the intra-
metropolitan scale, the consistently clear signal in Vancouver across scales
and across different price indicators is quite remarkable. Using the census
definition of dwelling value, the correlates of changes in dwelling values in
metropolitan Vancouver and Toronto were sought for the inter-censal peri-
ods 1971-86, and 1986-96 (Ley et al. 2002). The Toronto correlations are
generally inconsistent between these time periods in part because of the
