Baltimore City Housing Market Typology

The Baltimore City Department of Planning partnered with Baltimore Housing and The Reinvestment Fund (TRF) on the development of the Baltimore City Housing Market Typology. The primary purpose of the typology is to assist city government and local foundations in developing neighborhood strategies that better match available public and private resources to neighborhood housing market conditions. In addition, the typology can inform neighborhood planning efforts by helping residents understand the housing market forces affecting their communities.

The typology was developed through the use of a statistical process called cluster analysis. Eight variables about the housing market were aggregated to census block group geography and the data standardized as rates. Variables included percent home ownership, median value home sales, and percent code violations. Cluster analysis grouped the block groups into classes so that each block group in each class is as similar as possible, and each resulting class is as different from others as possible. The resultant five classes are: Distressed, Transitional, Stable, Emerging, and Competitive. After the classification was complete, descriptive statistics and qualitative narrative were developed for each of the market clusters.

Courtesy of the City of Baltimore, Maryland, and The Reinvestment Fund.