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January 7, 2003
6:10 p.m.
Business News Wire -- America's real estate boom has led prices for
new and existing homes higher across the board in the U.S., but in
neighborhoods with high or rising immigrant populations in Washington,
DC's metro market, the gains have been even stronger, according to
the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution.
In an update to a 2000 study in Washington, DC property values, the
study found that for both 1999, 2000, and 2001, price increases in
high-immigration neighborhoods were more than double the metro average
(which rose more than 10 percent over the period.) This extended a
trend noticed in the earlier AdTI study, which covered D.C. property
values from 1980 to 1998.
(The original study looked at Census Bureau tracts linked to block-by-block
variations in immigrant population. The study update looked at a less-finely
grained measurement of overall neighborhoods, defined by zip codes.
A comparison of this methodology to previous findings, according to
Tocqueville Chairman Gregory Fossedal, "suggests that there might
be a variation of 2 percent or less, small enough to make the findings
significant within the margin of error.")
"The title of our original study," Fossedal notes, "was
'There Goes the Neighborhood -- Up.' It appears that immigrants, who
bring a strong ethic of work, family values, education, and safe streets,
continue to be good for the neighborhood."
As in 2000, Fossedal said, the impact seemed most pronounced not in
the city's affluent suburbs, but in downtown D.C. neighborhoods where
immigrants and refugees move in and upgrade their property.
