Work

The Financialisation of Rental Housing 2.0: Releasing Housing into the Privatised Mainstream of Capital Accumulation

Year: 2018

Type: article

Abstract: 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.

Source: Antipode

DOI: 10.1111/anti.12382

Authors: Gertjan Wijburg, Manuel B. Aalbers, Susanne Heeg

Institutions: KU Leuven, Goethe University Frankfurt

Language: English

Topic: Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism

Subfield: Finance

Field: Economics, Econometrics and Finance

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Sustainable cities and communities

Open Access status: green

Funders: European Research Council, FP7 Ideas: European Research Council