ABSTRACT
The authors portrayed that housing markets as a single entity, with winners and losers, and this is precisely how they work. However, once individual choice and rational decision-making are taken as the starting point for thinking about urban land markets, one steps onto a slippery slope that can lead to statements that defy common sense or are simply mystifying. As originally discussed by Tiebout, this typically causes a sorting of individuals by income and class across communities in a metropolitan area. The language of choice and supply and demand is also particularly ill suited to real estate markets, since land cannot be produced. Each plot of urban land is a sort of monopoly, since you cannot really create another plot that is exactly interchangeable in location and attributes. Differing value systems between ethnic groups or social classes may account for sub-markets in some consumer goods, but this rarely applies to real estate, which is a very expensive.
