Tourism and Housing Prices in Santa Marta, Colombia : Spatial Determinants and Interactions

We analyze Real Estate effects of Tourism-Oriented Development in Santa Marta, a touristic Caribbean city. We hypothesize that non-local demand affects the spatial distribution of housing prices and their determinants, for both –high and low-income groups. This is the first spatial economic analysis of the relationship between Tourism-Oriented Development and Real Estate Markets in a Global South city. We use 2016 housing transaction data to identify price determinants for different income groups using Spatial Quantile Regression. The regression results go beyond describing differentiated submarkets by income group, more common in the literature, identifying predicted prices by income groups in contiguous locations. These results are refined using qualitative information that confirms that Tourism-Oriented-Development affects the spatial distribution of prices, while increasing the everyday transport hardship in the urban agglomeration