Tracing Rental Housing Financialization - A Spatio-Temporal Approach

Abstract

The increasing relevance of institutional investors on rental housing markets has recently caught the attention of researchers and policymakers alike. Despite producing relevant insights, the literature on (rental-) housing financialization has traditionally been lacking comprehensive quantitative evidence. Drawing on arguments from both theoretical and applied contributions, we thus propose a quantitative approach to empirically capture housing financialization as a spatio-temporal process. Therefore, data concerning juristical owners, built structures, as well as company activities and ownership chains needs to be assembled and merged. We then derive several measures of rental housing financializaton from these data. To exemplify the value of the proposition, we draw on the case Vienna after the 2008 financial crisis. It can be shown that there has indeed been a significant increase of financialized ownership in rental housing featuring a pronounced spatial pattern, despite the city’s longstanding tradition of decommodified housing provision. This is perceived as a particular challenge for future urban planning.