About the Project

Research question

How do tech migration and other socioeconomic factors affect house values across census tracts in the Bay Area?

We believe that the wealth in tech has spilled over to the real estate industry in the Bay Area. As two individuals interested in pursuing a tech career in emerging tech areas, i.e. Salt Lake City, Utah, or Austin, Texas, we wonder how the real estate scene there will evolve in the future, using the Bay Area as the point of reference.

Models used

Longitudinal Analysis: Generalized Estimating Equation (GEE) Model

Spatial Analysis: Spatial Autoregressive (SAR) Model

Context: An Introduction to the Evolution of Silicon Valley and Its House Values

Silicon Valley is the most established tech center in the world. Home to major technology conglomerates like Google, Apple, and Tesla, Silicon Valley is currently worth approximately $3 trillion. The area has evolved in a way that gradually lays the foundation for the booming tech industry. It started with various education and business opportunities related to electronics and electrical engineering. These business opportunities attracted companies from the semiconductor industry, which is essential to creating software, and the vision for the Internet. This made the area suitable for the rise of startups like Apple, Oracle, and Intel, which have become billion-dollar-worth household names and given way to the rise of the tech startup culture in the area. Although the dot-com bubble burst in 2000 scaled back the explosive overnight growth of the dot-com startups, it has allowed the tech industry to grow more sustainably than ever. The rise of companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon in this century has changed the way we live and think, which has resulted in increasing wealth in the area, reflected in the price of real estate (OnePiece Work 2020).

The real estate market in the San Francisco Bay Area saw an uptick in price ever since the dot-com bubble. Despite being scaled back by the 2008 financial market crash, it has seen the greatest growth ever since (Carlisle 2021). In 2019, the median housing price in the Bay Area for a single-family home was $1.06 million (Neilson 2021; California Association of Realtors 2021), which is 230% more expensive than the median house sales price in the whole United States by the end of 2019 (U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development 2022).