The Variegated Financialization of Housing Aalbers, Manuel B.
International journal of urban and regional research,
July 2017, 2017-07-00, 20170701, Letnik:
41, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
There is a small but growing literature on the financialization of housing that demonstrates how housing is a central aspect of financialization. Despite the varied analyses of the financialization ...of housing and the importance of housing to financialization, the relations between housing and financialization remain under‐researched and under‐theorized. The financialization of housing is not really a specific form of financialization, transcending as it does a number of different forms of financialization. Housing systems, in particular, vary widely across the globe, which implies that housing financialization will be inherently variegated, path‐dependent and uneven. In this introduction to the symposium, I will discuss how the articles to follow contribute to the literature on the financialization of housing. Housing has entered a post‐Fordist, neoliberal and financialized regime. Increasingly, both mortgaged homeownership and subsidized rental housing are there to keep financial markets going, rather than being facilitated by those markets. There is little evidence that the global financial crisis has resulted in any de‐financialization of housing. There are common trajectories within uneven and variegated financialization, rather than radically different and completely unrelated forms of housing financialization.
This report discusses the financialization of urban governance and the built environment as an explicit state strategy, focusing on municipal finance and the use of financial products by the local ...state and (semi-)public sector. A number of lessons can be drawn regarding the temporality and spatiality of financializing ‘the urban’. Firstly, the financial crisis that started in 2007 has not resulted in a definancialization of the city. Secondly, despite a number of common trends, the literature also highlights the diversity of experiences. Yet it would be too easy to conclude that the financialization of the land, housing and real estate is exclusively a Global North phenomenon, as it extends into the Global South. Finally, the literature notes an emerging gentrification-touristification-financialization nexus. The role of the state in all of this is variegated and often ambiguous.
Geographers have started studying residential (housing) and commercial real estate (offices, retail, leisure) at the intersection of financial and urban geographies to understand how the built ...environment – chunky and spatially fixed – has been turned into a (quasi-)financial asset – ‘unitized’ and liquid – through a range of regulatory and socio-technical changes and constructions. The financialization of real estate is not limited to the rise in household debt, mortgage securitization and international investment in office markets, but increasingly also affects rental housing: private equity, hedge funds and REITs buy up large portfolios of social and private rented housing, while housing associations use derivatives and other financial instruments. This report surveys the most recent research on finance, real estate and housing.
‘The Changing State of Gentrification’ (2001) by Jason Hackworth and the late Neil Smith is one of the most influential papers ever published in TESG. By introducing three waves, or periods, of ...practices and patterns of gentrification, it changed the way we think about gentrification. This Introduction to the Forum discusses the three waves introduced by Hackworth and Smith as well as fourth wave introduced by Lees et al. Finally, I will argue that during the global financial crisis we have entered fifth‐wave gentrification. Fifth‐wave gentrification is the urban materialisation of financialised or finance‐led capitalism. The state continues to play a leading role during the fifth wave, but is now supplemented – rather than displaced – by finance. It is characterised by the emergence of corporate landlords, highly leveraged housing, platform capitalism (e.g. Airbnb), transnational wealth elites using cities as a ‘safe deposit box’, and a further ‘naturalisation’ of state‐sponsored gentrification.
Subprime Cities Aalbers, Manuel B
2012, 2012-01-17, 2012-01-19, 20120101, Letnik:
71
eBook
Subprime Cities: The Political Economy of Mortgage Marketspresents a collection of works from social scientists that offer insights into mortgage markets and the causes, effects, and aftermath of the ...recent 'subprime' mortgage crisis. Provides an even-handed and detailed analysis of mortgage markets and the recent housing crisisFeatures contributions from various social scientists with expertise in critical social theories who have assembled and analyzed detailed empirical informationOffers a unique and powerful rebuttal to many of the misleading popular explanations of the crisis and its aftermathReveals how racial minorities and the neighbourhoods inhabited by them are more likely to be targeted by subprime and predatory lenders
This article presents two cases of listed real estate companies that operate in the Ruhr metropolitan region of Germany. The first is Immeo Wohnen, a subsidiary of the French real estate investment ...trust (REIT) Foncière des Régions that was previously owned by a US hedge fund. The second is Vonovia, Germany's largest real estate company, originally a subsidiary of a British private equity firm. Both examples embody what we call the shift from financialisation 1.0 to financialisation 2.0, i.e. the transition from pure speculation to long‐term investment. We show that long‐term investment strategies are used by REITs and listed funds in order to release housing into the privatised mainstream of capital accumulation. With the advent of the financialisation of rental housing 2.0, the long‐term investment focus of these funds paradoxically enables a short‐term investment focus by buying and selling shares in these funds on the stock exchange.
Kurzfassung
In diesem Beitrag werden zwei im Ruhrgebiet tätige börsennotierte Wohnungsgesellschaften in den Blick genommen. Die erste Aktiengesellschaft ist Immeo Wohnen, eine Tochtergesellschaft des französischen Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT) Foncière des Régions, die sich zuvor im Besitz eines US‐amerikanischen Hedge Fonds befand. Das zweite Wohnungsunternehmen ist Vonovia, das gegenwärtig größte Wohnungsunternehmen in Deutschland. Ursprünglich war Vonovia ein Ableger einer Britischen Privat‐Equity‐Gesellschaft. Beide Beispiele stehen für das, was wir als eine Verschiebung von Finanzialisierung 1.0 zu Finanzialisierung 2.0 bezeichnen, d.h. der Übergang von reiner Spekulation zu langfristigem Investment. Wir argumentieren, dass langfristige Investmentstrategien von REITs und Aktiengesellschaften darauf zielen, Wohnen in den privatisierten Mainstream der Kapitalakkumulation zu überführen. Allerdings wird der langfristige Investmentfokus beider Aktiengesellschaften mit Beginn von Finanzialisierung 2.0 von einem kurzfristig orientierten Börsenhandel der Aktien dieser Gesellschaften begleitet.
Centring Housing in Political Economy Aalbers, Manuel B.; Christophers, Brett
Housing, theory, and society,
10/2014, Letnik:
31, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The issue of "housing" has generally not been granted an important role in post-war political economy. Housing-as-policy has been the preserve of social policy analysis and of a growing field of ...housing studies; housing-as-market has been confined to mainstream economics. This paper insists that political-economic analysis can no longer remain relatively indifferent to the housing question since housing is implicated in the contemporary capitalist political economy in numerous critical, connected and very often contradictory ways. The paper conceptualizes this implication by identifying the multiple roles of housing when "capital" - the essential "stuff" of political economy - is considered from the perspective of each of its three primary, mutually constitutive guises: as process of circulation, as social relation and as ideology. Mobilizing these three optics to provide a critical overall picture of housing-in-political-economy (more than a political economy of housing), we draw on and weave together the many vital contributions of housing research to our evolving understanding of capitalism.
The paper focuses on transnational wealth elites buying residential properties in New York and London as an investment rather than as a primary residence. The transnational wealth elite is a group of ...people that have their origin in one locality, but invest their wealth transnationally since they entertain transnational jobs, assets and social networks. New York and London real estate has the unique quality that it is perceived to be highly liquid, i.e. easily resold to other investors. Together with the safe haven and socio-cultural characteristics of both cities and the way the real estate market and its professionals are organised, global city residential real estate functions as a ‘safe deposit box’. The paper brings together different geographies: of the wealth elite, of offshore financial centres through which most real estate purchases are organised, and of real estate investment locations. It also maps the consequences of the safe deposit box function of real estate, in terms of not only house prices increases, but also of economic, social and cultural changes and how elite decision-making impacted this comprehensive set of changes in the fabric of the city. In doing this, the paper substantiates work on the financialisation of real estate by focusing attention on the agency of the wealth elite and their investment and legal networks rather than on property developers, housing associations or institutional investors.
Taxation in general and tax evasion in particular are inherently geographical in nature, but only a small number of geographers have focused on them. In this progress report I present geographers’ ...research on offshore financial centres alongside the work of researchers from other disciplines to present an overview of what we know about the geographies of tax evasion and avoidance. It is argued that not only much regulatory work but also much research remains to be done on tax havens.
The managers of a growing wall of money are continuously searching for investment opportunities. The financialization literature describes how this mobile capital puts pressure on commodities, debt, ...public services and economic activities to transform into investable, tradable, financial products. Regarding real estate, these investigations show how opaque, local, non-standardized goods, highly depending on both local legislation and developments, have been transformed into liquid, globally traded financial assets. By analysing the real estate investment strategies of Dutch institutional investors since the 1980s, this paper shows how a quantitative framework increasingly provides the basis for institutional investors' real estate investment strategies. Direct ownership of properties has been exchanged into shares of properties, that is, fictitious capital, creating an impetus for 'objectified numbers' to measure the performance of these indirect investments. As knowledge about real estate has been outsourced, Dutch institutional investors now perceive real estate increasingly as 'just another asset class', thereby increasing leverage and volatility. This paper not only shows how finance 'financialized' itself by adopting a quantitative investment perspective, but it also offers an empirical account on how investment properties are transformed into financial assets that put pressure on state agencies to mobilize urban planning to deliver more of such assets.
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