Socio-spatial segmentation of apartment transactions in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in 2010 and 2022

Abstract

Interconnected with the production of urban space, real estate markets are configured as complex expressions of economic, political, and social processes operating across multiple scales. Their formation and structure are linked, among other factors, to different stages of capital accumulation, to micro and macroeconomic dynamics, to urban and regulatory policies, and to the social division of space itself. Based on data on property characteristics, market variables, and income levels, this study carries out an exercise of socio-spatial segmentation of the residential apartment market in Belo Horizonte in 2010 and 2022. The results reveal strong socio-spatial segregation, highlighting a real estate production directed toward the elites and a tendency, over time, toward a relative homogenization of submarkets, a process that we consider to be associated with the aging of the housing stock and that reaffirms and consolidates inequalities previously produced in urban space.