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When more immigrants come into a neighborhood, relative property values tend to go up. This is the finding of a study of 192 separate Census Department tracts in the District of Columbia from 1980 to 1998 by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution.
Virginia and Maryland suburbs, studied over the same 18-year period, showed a similar positive relationship, though the trends appear to be strongest in the highly urban environment of D.C. Likewise, commercial real estate values seem to correlate positively with an increased percentage of immigrant ownership. All these figures are buttressed by anecdotal evidence, interviews with leading commercial and residential realtors, and property owners in key D.C., Virginia, and Maryland neighborhoods. Much work remains to be done to confirm or refute the apparent relationships suggested by the figures in this paper. But the different layers of evidence all tell roughly the same story. When immigrants come in, as one D.C. real estate agent put it, "there goes the neighborhood -- up." To purchase a copy of the report go to the publications page |
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