Purpose This paper highlights Bryan MacGregor's contribution to the literature on the definition of real estate submarkets in the context of hedonic house price analysis and commercial property investment diversification. Design/methodology/approach This paper provides a summary and discussion of Bryan's work on real estate submarkets, focusing on three of Bryan's published research papers. Findings Bryan's publications include an application of principal components analysis and cluster analysis to the definition of housing submarkets for hedonic modelling purposes. They also include studies of the usefulness of cluster analysis for commercial property investment diversification. Although Bryan is best known for his work on commercial property markets, his most-cited work is the paper on housing submarkets. Originality/value This paper calls attention to Bryan's contribution to research on real estate submarkets, particularly the analysis of housing submarkets.