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Manuel Aalbers
  • KU Leuven / Dept of Geography
    Celestijnenlaan 200e / 2409
    3001  Heverlee
    BELGIUM

Manuel Aalbers

KU Leuven, Geography, Faculty Member
The expansion of Residential Real Estate Investment Trusts (R-REITs) represents an important frontier in the financialization of housing and cities. This paper advances the literature on institutional real estate investment and corporate... more
The expansion of Residential Real Estate Investment Trusts (R-REITs) represents an important frontier in the financialization of housing and cities. This paper advances the literature on institutional real estate investment and corporate landlordism by analyzing how and where the 15 largest, publicly-listed R-REITS and REIT-like funds in Germany and the US are growing today. First, we introduce the metaphor of the feeding machine to characterize how key actors like the state, private equity, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) provide R-REITs with the properties, capital, and imperative to grow. Second, we find four geographical expansion strategies at work: (1) investment beyond mainstream asset classes: from multi-family apartments and single-family rentals to student flats, care homes, and mobile home and recreational vehicle sites, (2) the concentration and consolidation of ownership, through mergers and acquisitions and focused investment in select markets, (3) acquisition across national borders, and (4) institution-led new construction. Despite crucial nuances in individual R-REIT strategies and the housing systems of each country, our comparative analysis reveals shared trajectories and rationalities of expansion. We posit that ETFs and the indexes through which they allocate investment increasingly shape the restless urban landscape of R-REIT growth, pumping liquidity into spatially fixed assets.
Javier Moreno's "Residential Accumulation: A Political Economy Framework" does a great job at distilling how two opposite logics-capitalist production and rent extraction-are at work in housing markets. What I am missing from the... more
Javier Moreno's "Residential Accumulation: A Political Economy Framework" does a great job at distilling how two opposite logics-capitalist production and rent extraction-are at work in housing markets. What I am missing from the framework is room for noise, for variation and variegation, for an 'and+and' story, for allowing geographical and market specificity, for different expressions of residential accumulation rather than the assumption that specific forms are the 'normal' or pure forms of capitalist accumulation. Many assumptions and generalisations are made. Some of these may be necessary to construct the ideal type of housing provision under capitalism, but there is a point where the ideal type becomes a specific rather than a general or abstracted type, that is, specific to one set of capitalist relations rather than generalizing from a common, or even majority, form of capitalist relations.
Key words: housing, political economy, ideal types, Max Weber, capitalist accumulation, varieties
Here are five key actions that governments can do to take action to curb the financialization of housing: 1. The federal government should ask the question: it is fair to provide REITs with a tax advantage? Should it create a... more
Here are five key actions that governments can do to take action to curb the
financialization of housing:
1. The federal government should ask the question: it is fair to provide REITs with a tax advantage? Should it create a level-playing field where tax advantages are not selectively doled out to one set of actors?
2. Different levels of government should consider cooperating with not-for-profit, community, grassroots, and other affordable housing providers. They could also consider directly building or managing housing stock.
3. This one should be a no-brainer: governments should regulate rental housing markets better, starting with regulating rent price increases and outlawing no-fault evictions. Governments often fear that this will deter investors. But if investors are buying up existing housing stock with the main aim of increasing rents, deterring them would be a positive outcome for tenants and society at large. Existing landlords can continue to make a profit if rents follow inflation (or income/pension levels).
4. Local governments can use their zoning and land use powers to require inclusionary and affordable housing.
5. Finally, the government should limit monopolies when one landlord is dominant in one market segment, e.g. rental flats within a certain price range or units within a particular neighbourhood.
A highly heterogenous group of actors develops, owns, manages, and purchases tourism property around the globe. In this paper, we discuss the rise of 'tourism-led rentier capitalism'which is a particular fraction of capitaland its... more
A highly heterogenous group of actors develops, owns, manages, and purchases tourism property around the globe. In this paper, we discuss the rise of 'tourism-led rentier capitalism'which is a particular fraction of capitaland its variegated dimensions. Although tourism property investors do not operate as a monolithic bloc or a socioeconomic class, they share similar interests and collectively reshape tourism destinations by extracting tourism rent, a form of monopoly and differential rent, which can be derived from natural and public goods or sign values and imaginations of places that imbue meaning and value into locational attributes. As such, they contribute to unevenly developed and variegated geographies of property investment which are nonetheless driven by common, underlying mechanisms and spatial practices. The conversion of tourism destinations into financialized accumulation frontiers is one broader outcome of tourismled rentier capitalism. The extraction of tourism rent is another. 
Keywords: urban tourism; touristification; gentrification; financialization; Airbnb; short-term rentals; land rent.
Since the financial crisis of 2008/09, the “financialisation of housing” has become a buzzword widely used within and outside academia to describe economic and structural changes in the housing market. One of the most visible dimensions... more
Since the financial crisis of 2008/09, the “financialisation of housing” has become a buzzword widely used within and outside academia to describe economic and structural changes in the housing market. One of the most visible dimensions of this “financialization” is the growing presence of institutional investors as property owners in manifold cities across Europe. This trend has come along with a burgeoning housing affordability crisis that affects at new households in major cities. While housing is placed again under pressure, new questions arise in relation to the role of institutional investors as active agents of housing supply. There is no clear evidence of how institutional investors affect local housing markets and how they relate to housing affordability pressures in each city. Additionally, little is known about how housing policies and politics engage with institutional investors as novel housing actors and which are the challenges faced in housing policy development. To shed light on these questions that still remain underresearched, we have selected seven cities that vary significantly in terms of rental systems and market dynamics, housing policies and provision to examine the different, thus the city-specific effects of this general trend across Europe.
The financialization of housing has already become a major issue in urban and housing studies and research has disclosed the growing relevance of institutional investors, financial motives, financialised management and calculation techniques in the transformation of housing into an asset class (Gabor & Kohl 2022; Wu et al., 2020; Fernandez & Aalbers, 2020; Aalbers et al., 2020). However, after more than 15 years of interdisciplinary research it has become clear that the term "financialisation" is developing as a relatively imprecise umbrella for a broad variety of topics. We tender that the actual “doing” of financialization is highly context-bound, defined by spatial and temporal local particularities and, as such, subject to an immense array of variations. For example, while in Germany and Sweden institutional investors have been buying up entire housing estates and formerly public housing companies, in other cities of central and eastern Europe real estate investment trusts or real estate funds are gaining a foothold in niche markets such as care facilities, student dormitories or micro-apartments. In Spain and Ireland, and more recently, in Greece financialization is often discussed in relation to debt management and the securitization of Non-Performing Loans (NPLs). In our study, we explore these differences and describe the variety of ways in which institutional investors have established themselves in European cities.
The chief aim of our study is to shed light on the role and strategies of institutional investors in local housing markets. First, we trace how institutional investors approach local housing markets in seven different countries. Second, we explore how institutional investors' activities enmesh with the provision of affordable housing. Third, we reflect on the local specificities and the way institutional investors become embedded in local real-estate markets to consider why investment strategies differ significantly amongst cities and, therefore, we disclose the different gateways in the cities under study. In doing so, we highlight the role of local context in the path-dependency of the financialisation of housing. A fourth focus is on the interplay between institutional investors, policy actors and governments. We assume that in a highly regulated field such as urban and housing policy, different forms of exchange and cooperation between institutional investors and local policy actors emerge in each case, reflecting local specificites and dynamics.
To address the above, we have chosen a comparative case study design. Moving away from a conventional comparative approach of identifying similarities and differences, we aim at teasing out how the general restructuring of financialised housing is continuously restructured and reshaped by local dynamics. This helps disclose the path-dependency of housing finanicialisation across seven cities. In other words, it is not only the generic trend of housing financialisation that shapes local housing markets, but local circumstances that define the process of housing financialisation in each case. As such, in this comparative approach we bring together cases that represent different rental systems, different ideologies of housing provision, policies and planning and different market dynamics to explore how the contigent trajectories of housing financialisation are defined by local dynamics and how institutional investors reshape their strategies to adjust and/or accommodate to local circumstances.
To shed light on the role of institutional investors as key actors in the finanicalisation of housing against the background of different local contexts, seven case studies were selected to offer key information on the structure of the housing markets and the current challenges for affordable housing supply. For this, London, Brussels and Milan are selected as cities with a traditionally ownership-centered housing market and in the case of Brussels and Milan with a weak social housing sector and weak rent regulations. This is to some degree also the case of Warsaw where the housing market transitioned from a planned economy to a “super homeownership society” with a peculiar mix of housing rights and a lack of regulation. This contrasts Malmö and Berlin, two cities that were at least in the past characterised by very strong regulation of the private market and a strong non-profit sector. Athens stands as a case of extreme austerity, indebtedness and impoverishment of the local population, forming a very specific environment for the financialisation of housing.
The case study chapters that follow analyse the activities of institutional investors and describe their role in the supply of affordable housing. Additionally, the political and planning instruments which cities employ vis á vis institutional investors are presented. Of particular interest, are the forms of public-private collaboration through which city planners and policy-makers interact with institutional investors. The presentation of the seven case studies is followed by a cross-case summary in which the comparison of the strategies and tragectory of institutional investors is used to identify the path-dependecies of housing financialisation, and the way local contingencies work out the interaction between investors and the political-administrative system. The impact of institutional investors on housing affordability is a recurring theme underlying the queries under scrutiny.
The work presented here is the outcome of a six-month project which was financed by Science Po Paris and included scholars from Athens, Berlin, Brussels London, Malmö, Milan and Warsaw. It has built on the long-term engagement of the participating scientists with their respective cities and a highly developed expertise in the housing conditions, market dynamics, planning regulations and policy issues in different contexts. Nevertheless, the study has an explorative character. It provides first hand ideas about the different financial logics across Europe which need further examination.
Mortgage credit has been central in fuelling housing market dynamics in many countries. While mortgage debt and house price increases used to go hand in hand, we see an uncoupling post-global financial crisis, with relative mortgage debts... more
Mortgage credit has been central in fuelling housing market dynamics in many countries. While mortgage debt and house price increases used to go hand in hand, we see an uncoupling post-global financial crisis, with relative mortgage debts decreasing while house prices are increasing at unprecedented rates. This paper scrutinises this uncoupling, contributing in three ways. First, we argue it is representative of how debt-driven housing dynamics have been supplemented by wealth-driven ones: while mortgage debt remains crucial, it has stagnated, and increased wealth investments have fuelled a new round of price increases. Second, we explore key examples of wealth-driven housing dynamics: the increase in private landlordism (buy-to-let), older homeowners reinvesting accumulated housing wealth and intergenerational house purchases. Third, we demonstrate that these dynamics are associated with increasing fractures along the lines of class, age and place, particularly benefiting affluent and older insiders while advancing uneven development. We base our arguments on an empirical analysis of the Netherlands, a country with a highly financialised owner-occupied market boasting one of the highest mortgage-debt-to-GDP ratios in the world, but our arguments have wider relevance. We conclude that current dynamics point to a new era of house price rentierism.   
Keywords:  Housing, financialisation, wealth, rentierism, spatial inequality, the Netherlands
There are different aims in comparative research: on the one hand, there are studies that want to understand a case better by comparing it to another case or other cases; on the other hand, there are studies that use two or more cases to... more
There are different aims in comparative research: on the one hand, there are studies that want to understand a case better by comparing it to another case or other cases; on the other hand, there are studies that use two or more cases to understand a phenomenon better. Although this distinction may seem obvious, it is rarely explicated in comparative studies, and this results in misunderstandings regarding what a specific comparison is trying to accomplish. In the first half of this essay, I discuss how some of these misunderstandings feed misdirected critiques of comparative studies that are interested in studying a phenomenon in and through the city rather than as a way to study the city per se. Both aims of comparative research are valid in their own right, but in this chapter I will focus on how an approach that starts from concepts that try to understand real-world phenomena in different contexts, can shed light not only on cities – or, more generally, on cases – but also on the nature of these phenomena.

In the first half of this chapter, I will discuss different aims of comparative research. At times, the debate on comparative studies is reduced to the idea that some studies want to demonstrate divergence (places becoming more different over time) and others convergence (places becoming more similar over time). I will argue that we need to move beyond the false divergence-convergence dichotomy, and need to go beyond critiques of conceptual stretching and unleash the potential of comparative urban studies to shed light on key concepts in social science that seek to describe empirical realities in, across and beyond cities. In the second half of this essay, I will take the example of the concept and real-world phenomenon of financialization, and will explain how a comparative approach to urban and housing financialization can shed light not only the cases studied, but also on the phenomenon of financialization itself. Reading across these two main sections, the argument is that a conceptual lens can help to study cases comparatively, thereby bringing to the fore how cases are both similar and different, but also how the comparative study of cases can help in understanding a real-world phenomenon, observed in different cities and countries. The concept used to illustrate this argument is financialization, but this essay it not one that defends this concept vis-à-vis other concepts (but see Aalbers 2019). Instead, the concept of financialization is used to illustrate the main point of the essay, which is that comparative studies have the potential to enhance our understanding of real-world phenomena across as well as beyond different cases. In short, this chapter makes the case for a comparative urban studies that does not only inform the field of urban studies, but social science more broadly defined. What is at stake here is not only comparative urban research but the very meanings and uses of urban studies.
Poststructuralist and postcolonial critiques have led to a necessary corrective in the social sciences, but arguments about difference and incommensurability are also mobilised to put the idea of internationally comparative housing... more
Poststructuralist and postcolonial critiques have led to a necessary corrective in the social sciences, but arguments about difference and incommensurability are also mobilised to put the idea of internationally comparative housing studies into question. This paper argues for a relational and comparative global housing studies that goes beyond global north/south and east/west binaries and dichotomies. I mobilise the concept of 'common trajectories' (as opposed to both convergence and divergence) to illustrate how difference is constructed at multiple dimensions rather than primarily along a north/south or east/west axis. The aim is not to argue against postcolonial theory but rather to show how the misuse of these ideas has stifled theoretically-embedded empirical research in general and internationally comparative research more specifically. Finally, I explore the idea of a relational global housing studies that would focus on transnational actors, regulation and markets, as one route out of the dead-end of contrastive housing studies. 
Key words: global urbanisms, comparative research, global south, relationality, transnational regulation, postcolonial critique 
Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) have been around since 1960 but have only become major players in housing markets in the last twenty years. The current and ongoing wave of residential REIT (R-REIT) expansion has attracted... more
Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) have been around since 1960 but have only become major players in housing markets in the last twenty years. The current and ongoing wave of residential REIT (R-REIT) expansion has attracted significant scholarly and broader public interest. This paper examines how real estate, finance, and the state are configured in relation to each other through R-REITs. While much of the housing financialization literature has focused on the real estate/state axis of this relationship, we explore the under-examined connections between the real estate/finance axis and the finance/state axis of the Real Estate-Finance-State Triangle. We analyze the financial accounts of the world's 15 largest publicly traded R-REITs and R-REIT-like funds in the two largest markets: the United States and Germany. Our findings demonstrate how the ownership of R-REIT stock is remarkably homogeneous: the largest shareholders in each of the studied R-REITs are the three largest index Exchange-Traded Funds, which are heavily backed by pension fund capital. For these investors it is important that R-REITs provide a healthy return on investment at the lowest possible risk. They require the state, in its various guises, to guarantee attractive risk-adjusted returns on R-REITs investments. We identify six dimensions of state de-risking in this context, deepening our understanding of the role of the state in housing financialization. It is the state that creates the trust in real estate investment trusts, and it thus is what generates the investment in real estate investment trusts. 
Key words: housing, financialization, Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT),
Exchange Traded Fund (ETF), institutional investors, asset class
Despite the growing power of finance over cities and housing, the relationships between finance, climate risk management, and urban governance have yet to be examined from a climate gentrification perspective. Putting the practices of a... more
Despite the growing power of finance over cities and housing, the relationships between finance, climate risk management, and urban governance have yet to be examined from a climate gentrification perspective. Putting the practices of a wide array of propertyfinance stakeholders in conversation with the foundational concept of the rent gap, we identify two real estate rent dynamics which are emerging against the prospect of climate-driven urban restructuring: risk rents, or new forms of value capture crafted against future risk, and rent at risk, or the anticipated loss of rent due to risk. We in turn illustrate how climate risk/rent dynamics constitute new or intensified processes of gentrification in Greater Miami, Florida. Through three vignettes, we show how configurations of real estate-finance climate risk management produce variegated yet interrelated opportunities for devaluation and revaluation, displacement, and downgrading. Such strategies push the gentrification frontier into new physical as well as institutional spaces. The Greater Miami story underscores the need for new forms of knowledge, coalition building, and integrated urban climate risk management practices which directly confront underlying financial drivers of housing and spatial injustice in 'risky' real estate markets. 
Keywords: gentrification; real estate; financial institutions; climate risk management; Miami, Florida
Shareholder value orientation has commonly been considered a hallmark of corporate financialization. Today, firms increasingly share their profits with shareholders in the form of cash dividends and share buybacks. Yet how the shareholder... more
Shareholder value orientation has commonly been considered a hallmark of corporate financialization. Today, firms increasingly share their profits with shareholders in the form of cash dividends and share buybacks. Yet how the shareholder payouts are distributed by firms from various sectors, sizes and countries remains unexplored. To complement existing accumulation- and asset-centered approaches that focus, respectively, on how resources enter the firm and change its structure, we present a payouts-centered approach to corporate financialization that focuses on how resources leave the firm. This paper analyses firm-level trends in shareholder payouts in OECD member countries for the period 2000-2019, differentiating between types of distributed payouts. We show that shareholder payouts are high across various sectors and geographical locations, and not limited to a small subset of large, US-American financial corporations, but includes ‘big pharma’ and ‘big tech’ as well as Latin American and Israeli firms. The paper sheds light on the nature of the contemporary corporations and contributes to discussions on the increasing financialization of non-financial firms and their rising shareholder value orientation. 
Keywords: corporate financialization; corporate sectors; non-financial corporations; shareholder payouts; shareholder value
In "The long shadow of the state: financializing the Chinese city" Fulong Wu reflects on the role of the state in financialization processes. The language of symbiosis, with key concepts such as mutualism, parasitism and commensalism, but... more
In "The long shadow of the state: financializing the Chinese city" Fulong Wu reflects on the role of the state in financialization processes. The language of symbiosis, with key concepts such as mutualism, parasitism and commensalism, but also cleaning symbiosis, metabiosis, co-evolution, mutation and mimicry could help us to conceptualize state/finance relationships. Finance and the state have co-evolved and continue to do so. The role of the state in financialization processes often appears to be contradictory. Parasitism by finance may have already limited the state's capacity to respond to urban financialization. In a seemingly commensal relationship, the state may also be facilitating finance. In fact, such patterns may be indicative of a more mutualistic imperative in which the state tries to further its own interests through finance rather than at the expense of finance-it is here that Wu provides most evidence for the Chinese case. In other words, the state creates the conditions for the financialization of the city and by doing so it brings the characteristics of finance inside the state. In the process, the state mimics finance in order to extend state power and mutatesas a result of the specific co-evolution with finance. 
KEYWORDS: Financialization; the state; symbiosis; co-evolution; mutation
Belgium is a typical homeowner society where homeownership is not only the largest but also the 'normalized' form of tenure. The origins of the Belgian homeownership ideology go back to the early days of industrialization but the... more
Belgium is a typical homeowner society where homeownership is not only the largest but also the 'normalized' form of tenure. The origins of the Belgian homeownership ideology go back to the early days of industrialization but the discourses surrounding the ideology are reproduced in the 21 st century. Our investigation of the largest region of Belgium, Flanders, reveals four main homeownership discourses: affordable homeownership, conservative housing finance, asset-based welfare and tenure neutrality. With a nod to Kemeny's 'The Really Big Trade-Off Between Homeownership and Welfare', we demonstrate that there is also a 'Really Big Contradiction' between the discourses that support homeownership as the 'normalized' form of tenure in Belgium and the reality of declining affordability, progressively less conservative housing finance, the fractions and inequalities of housing-based wealth, and the lack of tenure neutrality. In short, we argue that the financialized homeownership model is undermining the stability of homeowner realities and practices, but not so much the discourses and ideologies that support and reinforce the homeowner society.
The financialization of real estate and urban re/development is an increasing trend, not only in the Global North but also in the Global South. This paper presents how urban redevelopment has entered a financialized phase in Rio de... more
The financialization of real estate and urban re/development is an increasing trend, not only in the Global North but also in the Global South. This paper presents how urban redevelopment has entered a financialized phase in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The local government aspires to redevelop the area surrounding the city’s port through a project named Porto Maravilha (“Wonderful Port”). Not only is a federal policy scheme, named “Urban Operation”, utilized to foster this redevelopment project; federal land, and federal investments are also mobilized to enable this massive intervention. Furthermore, additional development rights are traded as a pure financial asset, contributing to the financialization of urban redevelopment. The leading actor in the project, FGTS, is a federal agency that owns the additional development rights, and whose involvement in the project is regulated by a privately-run city agency, CDURP, that operates in a space of exception (outside of normal democratic control mechanisms). In the end, land ownership and development, urban redevelopment and planning, finance, and various arms of the local and federal state have become entangled in a speculative logic. This logic preys on but also furthers uneven development in the Rio metropolitan area, resulting in displacement and selectively channeling investments into areas designated for commercial/office activities as well as into residential areas for the rich. The case of Porto Maravilha shows how land and development is no longer treated only metaphorically as a financial asset (à la Harvey), but also that land development rights are literally treated as just another financial asset. 
 
KEY WORDS: Urban Operation, Urban redevelopment, Financialization, Public-Private Partnerships, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Research Interests:
'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... more
'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 materialization of financialized 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 characterized 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 'naturalization' of state-sponsored gentrification.
Research Interests:
Urban Politics, Land and Property Development, Comparative Urbanism, Housing Affordability, Real Estate Development, and 59 more
In the literature, it is argued that the Fordist regime of accumulation has gradually been replaced by a finance-driven regime. We argue that the contemporary regime in the UK could be best characterized as a finance- and real... more
In the literature, it is argued that the Fordist regime of accumulation has gradually been replaced by a finance-driven regime. We argue that the contemporary regime in the UK could be best characterized as a finance- and real estate-driven regime. Like Fordism, the new regime is thought to fuel the economy by propping up consumption, but unlike the Fordist regime it does not seek to do so through job creation or high and steady wages, but rather through private money creation and real estate price inflation. The reliance of the economy on private housing debt rather than public debt—‘privatised Keynesianism’ (Crouch, 2009)—is a key element of the new regime. The state has not simply facilitated the rise of the new regime but has put its faith in the financial and real estate sectors—both residential and commercial—to prop up the economy. Different layers of the UK government have favoured real estate development and investment, in part enabled by disintermediation and lobbying. For a while, the finance- and real estate-driven regime seemed to create economic growth. Although the regime appeared fragile during the financial crisis of 2007–2009, the neoliberal mode and its accompanying finance- and real estate-driven regime were saved and the dominance of finance and real estate have deepened. This paper is based on the analysis of publicly available statistics, policy and advocacy documents and 39 in-depth interviews with real estate professionals. 
Key words: real estate sector; financialisation; regulation approach; economic growth; United Kingdom; in-depth interviews
Research Interests:
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... more
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 focussing attention on the agency of the wealth elite and their investment and legal networks rather than on property developers, housing associations or institutional investors. 
Key words: elites, financialization, global cities, housing markets, offshore financial centres, spatial fix, London, New York
Research Interests:
In this paper we review the burgeoning literature on the study of corporate financialization, distinguishing three strands of empirical, quantitative studies: 1) national-level and macrocomparative analysis, 2) sector-and firm-level... more
In this paper we review the burgeoning literature on the study of corporate financialization, distinguishing three strands of empirical, quantitative studies: 1) national-level and macrocomparative analysis, 2) sector-and firm-level analysis, and 3) econometric studies. We argue that corporations should be studied in their spatial organization. The spatial organization of the firm can be used to obscure corporate activity. Geography is not simply one of the many features of corporate structure but is key to it and therefore fundamental to shaping corporate financialization, although this is insufficiently expressed in accounting principles that provide consolidated accounts. Finally, we suggest four avenues for future studies: 1) to expand the geographical and temporal scope of research; 2) to pay close attention to how indicators are constructed; 3) to deconstruct large categories of analysis, such as 'financial assets'; 4) to systematically include liabilities in the analysis of nonfinancial corporations, especially in the face of the abundance of credit. 
Keywords: Corporate financialization, corporate governance, critical accounting, financial geography, non-financial corporations (NFCs), shareholder value, spatial organization of the firm
In this article, we employ a Veblenian framework to analyze three dimensions of corporate financialization: the expansion of the balance sheet, the rising importance of intangible assets and the growing levels of financial payouts. Our... more
In this article, we employ a Veblenian framework to analyze three dimensions of corporate financialization: the expansion of the balance sheet, the rising importance of intangible assets and the growing levels of financial payouts. Our focus is the pharmaceutical sector, which is strongly dominated by a handful of large corporations known as Big Pharma. In our empirical analysis of the financial accounts of 27 of the largest global pharmaceutical corporations for the years 2000–2018, we find evidence of a shift in Big Pharma’s business model from one focused on productive capacity (reflected by fixed capital and R&D) to one focused on intangible assets (reflected by patents, brands and goodwill). The modus operandi of Big Pharma is one that increasingly resembles that of a private equity fund that generates returns for shareholders that are supported by monopolized knowledge through intellectual property rights, capitalized future earnings potential and rising debt burdens. Our framework facilitates the study of the different elements of financialization and how they do (or do not) co-evolve over time, within and between industries, and between countries or global regions. 

Keywords: monopoly, Thorstein Veblen, intangible assets, shareholder value, corporate finance

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14036096.2020.1846610 The private rental sector (PRS) is making a surprising comeback. A central argument in our paper is that we see the rise of PRS and the associated stagnation of... more
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14036096.2020.1846610
The private rental sector (PRS) is making a surprising comeback. A central argument in our paper is that we see the rise of PRS and the associated stagnation of homeownership as springing from the contradictions inherent to financialized homeowner societies. Rather than a feature of either mature or late homeowner societies, contradictions of the promotion of homeownership through the expansion of mortgage markets paved the way for a revival of the PRS. Our case is the Netherlands, but our argument has a wider remit. We sketch the dominant trends in Dutch housing policy and present an overview of the rise of PRS and Buy-To-Let in Dutch cities. We identify how housing policies and realities have driven a shift from a debt-driven to a wealth-driven model of financialization, in which the demand for PRS as an investment class and as a place to live has become central. Ultimately, the revival of private landlordism may amount to property wealth concentration, deepening social divides.
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... more
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, i.e. 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, 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.
Key words: financialization, pension funds, institutional investors, real estate, fictitious capital, investment strategies
Research Interests:
Real Estate, Asset Pricing, Land and Property Development, Property, Property Portfolio Management, and 37 more
The emerging literature on the globalization of real estate has addressed how internationally circulating capital has increasingly found its ways into housing markets of the "Global South". With relatively underdeveloped financial and... more
The emerging literature on the globalization of real estate has addressed how internationally circulating capital has increasingly found its ways into housing markets of the "Global South". With relatively underdeveloped financial and real estate markets, these countries have discursively and materially been rebranded as emerging markets, that is, they have been shaped into frontiers in the global urbanization of capital. In this paper we scrutinize the trans-national real estate networks that shape and reshape the Cuban housing market. First, we reconstruct how, following the 2011 legalization of housing prices set between buyers and sellers, Cuban migrants and a few foreign investors, in cooperation with Cubans residing in Cuba, are buying properties in Cuba's cities, beach resorts and other towns. Second, we explore the economic and extra-economic motives behind such transnational property transactions, highlighting how residential properties are bought and converted into private restaurants or hotels. Central to our analysis is that the present development is not simply shaped by local or national demand and processes but also by international investment. We contend that a pattern of economic globalization unfolds where transnational remittances, rather than institutional investments or mortgage finance, steer Cuba's emerging property market, along with local investments among Cuban citizens.
The financialization of housing in the Global South (GS) and peripheries of the Global North (GN) develops in different ways than in the GN because the mechanisms underlying and pushing financialization are fundamentally different. We... more
The financialization of housing in the Global South (GS) and peripheries of the Global North (GN) develops in different ways than in the GN because the mechanisms underlying and pushing financialization are fundamentally different. We argue that subordinated financialization in the GS is the contemporary form of uneven and combined development, shaped by the financialization of the GN. The recycling of GN excess liquidity in countries lower in the global money hierarchy has contributed to the growth of mortgage lending in the GS and peripheries of GN. With the macro-comparative perspective in our paper we provide a framework to rethink the relations between GN and GS in shaping distinct patterns of uneven and combined financialization, but also to rethink the varieties of capitalism and residential capitalism approaches. In the GS we can distinguish between at least two additional types: 'state-led market economies' (Nolke et al, 2015) and 'less-financialized market economies'.
The idea of asset-based welfare (ABW) has been widely discussed since the 1990s. This paper presents a policy developed in Brazil in the 1960s that could also be perceived as an ABW policy. The Fundo de Garantia do Tempo de Serviço (FGTS)... more
The idea of asset-based welfare (ABW) has been widely discussed since the 1990s. This paper presents a policy developed in Brazil in the 1960s that could also be perceived as an ABW policy. The Fundo de Garantia do Tempo de Serviço (FGTS) is a compulsory savings scheme, managed by the state and financed through monthly deposits made by employers on behalf of their employees. The FGTS resembles a personalized public pension, but the balance of an individual FGTS account can also be used to facilitate access to homeownership. We do not argue that this is an inclusionary and redistributive policy, but we do argue that the FGTS acts as a facilitator of asset-building for those included in the formal labour market. Contrary to ABW practices in the Global North, in Brazil, the introduction of ABW policies represents the expansion rather than the retrenchment or readjustment of the welfare state.

Keywords: asset-based welfare, Brazil, homeownership, pension funds, social security, welfare policies

Published paper: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02673037.2017.1364712
Research Interests:
A economia política do pós-guerra não tem, de um modo geral, atribuído um papel importante ao tema da "habitação". A habitação enquanto política tem sido um exclusivo da análise das políticas sociais e do domínio crescente dos estudos da... more
A economia política do pós-guerra não tem, de um modo geral, atribuído um papel importante ao tema da "habitação". A habitação enquanto política tem sido um exclusivo da análise das políticas sociais e do domínio crescente dos estudos da habitação. A habitação enquanto mercado tem estado confinada à economia ortodoxa. Este artigo insiste no facto de a análise da economia política não poder permanecer relativamente indiferente à questão da habitação, já que esta está envolvida na economia política capitalista contemporânea através de uma série de aspectos críticos, interligados e muitas vezes contraditórios. O artigo conceptualiza esta implicação, identificando os múltiplos papéis da habitação quando o "capital"-a "matéria-prima" essencial da economia política-é considerado a partir da perspectiva de cada uma das suas formas primárias e mutuamente constitutivas: como processo de circulação, como relação social e como ideologia. Ao mobilizar estas três ópticas com vista a facultar uma perspectiva geral crítica da habitação-na-economia-política (mais do que uma economia política da habitação), reunimos e conjugamos os vários contributos fundamentais da pesquisa sobre a habitação para o nosso entendimento progressivo do capitalismo. Palavras-chave: habitação, economia política, capital, circulação, ideologia, relações sociais, substituição do capital.
1 manuel.aalbers@ees.kuleuven.be
2 brett.christophers@ibf.uu.se
3 Este artigo foi publicado originalmente em 2014, na revista Housing, Theory and Society, com a. A revista CIDADES, Comunidades e Territórios reserva os direitos sobre a tradução para português, a cargo de Mariana Leite Braga (DINÂMIA'CET-IUL, mariana.braga@iscte-iul.pt).
Sugestões para Estudantes de Pós-graduação (Mestrado/Doutorado) As 22 dicas do professor Manuel B. Aalbers para pesquisadores [Suggestions for PhD Students, artigo de Manuel B. Aalbers, disponibilizado em seu perfil no Academia.edu. O... more
Sugestões para Estudantes de Pós-graduação (Mestrado/Doutorado)
As 22 dicas do professor Manuel B. Aalbers para pesquisadores

[Suggestions for PhD Students, artigo de Manuel B. Aalbers, disponibilizado em seu perfil no Academia.edu. O texto é inspirado em Matthew Pratt Guterl.)
https://revistacapitu.com.br/sugestões-para-estudantes-de-pós-graduação-mestrado-doutorado-293a326ae622
Research Interests:
1. Know your audience. 2. Always explain your choices. 3. Learn to develop an argument and defend it. 4. Teaching matters more than people say. 5. References are not an afterthought. 6. There are three types of comments that require two... more
1. Know your audience.
2. Always explain your choices.
3. Learn to develop an argument and defend it.
4. Teaching matters more than people say.
5. References are not an afterthought.
6. There are three types of comments that require two types of responses.
7. Prepare but do not over-prepare for presentations.
8. Dare to be different.
9. Check the facts.
10. Apologies first, excuses second.
11. Be generous.
12. Promote your own work as well as that of others.
13. Be a good colleague, inside your department and outside of it.
14. Doing a PhD is not a regular job, but things need to get done and sometimes you are asked to do things that may not be your priority.
15. Update your planning regularly.
16. Sleep on it.
17. Reference letters.
18. Layout matters.
19. Don’t be lazy.
20. Makes notes—always and everywhere.
21. Stick up for yourself but don’t forget to stick up for others as well, especially if they are in a weaker position than you.
Research Interests:
When, in 1999, this journal changed its name from Scandinavian Housing and Planning Research to Housing, Theory and Society (HTS), it explicitly put theory in the centre of the academic field of housing studies. The comma between... more
When, in 1999, this journal changed its name from Scandinavian Housing and Planning Research to Housing, Theory and Society (HTS), it explicitly put theory in the centre of the academic field of housing studies. The comma between “housing” and “theory” is also telling: the editors’ goal, from the start on, was not so much to develop a theory of housing, but to provide space for social theories applied to the field of housing. Now, in respective Focus articles in the journal’s 20th year of publication, a past and the current editor of HTS revisit the debate on the need for a theory of/about/from and one could add in and for housing. Clapham chiefly picks up on Kemeny’s plea for theoretically-based and – he adds – policy-relevant research. In the second Focus article, Ruonavaara discusses different relations between theory and housing research and concludes that a general theory of housing is not possible, but that we should strengthen our efforts in constructing theory about housing and making sure this feeds back into the different disciplines whose theories we “borrow”, so we can pay back with interest, to use a housing metaphor. Basically, both papers revolve around the question: what kind of theory for what kind of housing research? As both authors acknowledge, it is hard to define “theory” as there are many possible conceptualizations of theory. I would add that not only one’s preference for and use of theory is influenced by an ontological and epistemological position, but that, indeed, one’s conceptualization or definition of what constitutes theory depends on an ontological and epistemological position. However, even within a single philosophy of science, for instance the positivist tradition, it is possible to find many different conceptualizations of theory. For some positivists it is a mathematical model, for others it is simply a generalized outcome of previous research, although the latter should really be labelled “empiricism” rather than “positivism”. In economics, these generalizations are often referred to as “stylised facts” – a concept that I like, despite my general discomfort with mainstream economics. For economists, the stylized facts can be refined or falsified, but the assumptions underlying them are rarely up for grabs. Yet, it is this set of assumptions that forms the core of mainstream economics, that most economists unfortunately take for granted – that is, outside of the debate – while it is here that neoclassical economic theory is really at work, often affecting those beyond the confines of neoclassical economics.

Social scientists like Clapham and Ruonavaara, whose work would not suggest a positivist ontology or epistemology, define theory as “collections of concepts about the real world that facilitate explaining, predicting or intervening” (Clapham, This issue, p. 172); and social theory as “a discourse that consists of a set of linked (a) concepts and (b) propositions to be used for hypothetical (i) re-description, (ii) explanation and (iii) interpretation of all or some subset of social entities, relations and processes” (Ruonavaara,  This issue, p. 181, my emphasis). What strikes me in both definitions is a positivist undertone and the lack of attention to “understanding” in the Weberian meaning of verstehen. Weber’s verstehen was explicitly stated as a rejection of sociological positivism and economic determinism. Verstehen instead focuses on understanding the meaning of action from the actor’s point of view. To Weber, the trick was to combine explanation and understanding. Bourdieu (1993) even argued that comprendre (understanding) is a necessary condition for explanation. Both were sceptical of testing hypotheses or using theories to predict or intervene. Yet, Bourdieu in particular was not necessarily sceptical of empirical work and of the great social theorists of the twentieth century he was arguably the one who was most invested in empirical research.

Clapham and Ruonavaara both appear to be choosing definitions of theory that are open to different traditions, but in their efforts to be inclusive they appear to be excluding more interpretative conceptualizations in favour of positivist-inspired ones. Perhaps the “positivist paradigm” is more common in the social sciences than Clapham leads us believe. Whereas positivists tend to work from a model of social science where research is linear and cumulative, and therefore, results in ever-greater knowledge of the social world, other philosophies of science deny the very possibility of ever getting close to knowing everything about the social world. What Ruonavaara calls a (grand) theory of housing, for Clapham is desirable and possibly even attainable.

I beg to differ, not simply because this is “questionable”, as Ruonavaara argues, but because I don’t believe that there is a finite amount of knowledge (a typical positivist assumption). I believe the more we know, the less we know we know.  More empirical research does not lead to getting closer to finite knowledge, nor is it useless, but it contributes to showing how we now know a little more about an even bigger unknown social world, even if this does not always result in turning unknown knowns into known knowns but rather into discovering new unknown knowns where previously these were unknown unknowns.
Research Interests:
Has the postwar managerial approach to urban governance in the Netherlands and Flanders been replaced by more entrepreneurial and financialized forms? In this paper, we study the transformation of urban governance in the Low Countries... more
Has the postwar managerial approach to urban governance in the Netherlands and Flanders been replaced by more entrepreneurial and financialized forms? In this paper, we study the transformation of urban governance in the Low Countries through city case studies of Apeldoorn (Netherlands) and Antwerp (Belgium). We show how Dutch urban governance financialized by connecting local public finance with financialized real estate markets, through municipal land banks. However, inter-municipal financial solidarity and ring-fencing municipalities from financial markets create specific, continental European processes of financialization. Flemish municipalities, in contrast, have shifted from a model of laissez-faire urban development (embedded in a system of large municipal autonomy) towards entrepreneurial urban growth regimes, in which technocratic public and private actors have increased access to public financial resources, used to create large urban renewal projects. In Belgium, autonomous municipal real estate corporations are a crucial instrument for connecting municipal finance to the real estate market.
Research Interests:
Real Estate, Urban Geography, Urban Politics, Urban Planning, Regional and Local Governance, and 72 more
This paper studies the development of Warsaw’s Służewiec neighbourhood, Poland’s largest business district, as a case of real estate financialization. We argue that the neighbourhood’s chaotic ‘de-contextualised’ growth was shaped by... more
This paper studies the development of Warsaw’s Służewiec neighbourhood, Poland’s largest business district, as a case of real estate financialization. We argue that the neighbourhood’s chaotic ‘de-contextualised’ growth was shaped by Poland’s semi-peripheral position in the global economy on the one hand—enabling a process of subordinate financialization—and legacies of state socialism on the other. In so doing, we mobilise research on peripheral financialization and global economic hierarchies as well as studies of post-socialism to enhance debates about real estate financialization. Commercial real estate—and office development in particular—is a crucial domain in which contemporary core-periphery structures are produced and negotiated. A key function of subordinate financialization is to absorb globally mobile capital—the product of financialization in the core. The case of Służewiec shows that only by considering the interplay of global hierarchies (Poland’s position as capital absorbent), local dynamics (fragmented urban development, which was characterised by competition amongst these unequal municipalities, with local growth coalitions in some municipalities, but not in others) and specific historical legacies (Warsaw’s socialist-time functional organisation and its transformation, which weakened the city) we can fully understand the specific dynamics that shape real estate financialization in different places.
This entry explains the rising popularity of the concept of financialization, despite it being considered a vague and chaotic concept. It also summarizes the wide-ranging multidisciplinary literature on financialization and makes a... more
This entry explains the rising popularity of the concept of financialization, despite it being considered a vague and chaotic concept. It also summarizes the wide-ranging multidisciplinary literature on financialization and makes a distinction between seven dimensions, or elements, of financialization, upon which a new definition of financialization is put forward that suggests that the power of the financialization literature lies in how it tries to understand the increasing dominance of financial actors, markets, practices, measurements, and narratives at various scales, resulting in a structural transformation of economies, firms (including financial institutions), states, and households. In discussing the different elements of financialization, the entry focuses on the financialization of the economy, nonfinancial firms, the state and households, but also on the processes of banking disintermediation and assetization. Finally, some avenues for future research are suggested.   
   
Keywords: assets, contemporary capitalism, corporate financialization, economic geography, financial geography, financial markets, global financial crisis, housing, globalization, lobbying, neoliberalism, political economy, real estate, state   
   
Definition of financialization: the increasing dominance of financial actors, markets, practices, measurements and narratives, at various scales, resulting in a structural transformation of economies, firms (including financial institutions), states and
households.
Research Interests:
Economic Geography, Political Economy, Crisis Management, International Political Economy, Workplace Studies, and 36 more
Neighborhoods can be defined in many different ways, for example by their urban morphological, economic or social characteristics, but even if one were to agree on which combination of characteristics defines a neighborhood, there would... more
Neighborhoods can be defined in many different ways, for example by their urban morphological, economic or social characteristics, but even if one were to agree on which combination of characteristics defines a neighborhood, there would still be the questions of context, scale, emotional attachment and change. Furthermore, the concept of neighborhood is often confused with the concept of community or local community—this entry is not about community. Rather than viewing neighborhood change as a natural process, this entry emphasizes the power of agents/actors, linking the structure of the real estate industry to the development of the neighborhood. Landlords and banks are not merely automata of the price mechanism that steer the natural operation of the market, but should be seen as producing, or contributing to, processes of neighborhood change.
Research Interests:
This paper departs from the observation that a systematic review of the available theories, concepts, and methods and techniques for researching lobbying is lacking. Lobbying is a relational geography of power. And although economic and... more
This paper departs from the observation that a systematic review of the available theories, concepts, and methods and techniques for researching lobbying is lacking. Lobbying is a relational geography of power. And although economic and political geographers study a range of practices that could be considered constitutive to lobbying, they have hitherto largely ignored the spaces of lobbying. We conceptualize lobbying as a practice of three flows between spaces of lobbying: the flows of people between organizations, the flows of ideas between these people and the flows of resources between organizations. Lobbying is fundamental to understanding the execution of power by firms towards a range of state actors, and understood as the directed actions of individuals and groups to alter, influence or hamper the decision-making process of governments; these actions consist of the mobilization of resources that activate power and enable access to spaces of lobbying. Access to different spaces of lobbying will influence the effectiveness of lobbying practices. Geographers are in a unique position to look at the mobilization of power through access to spaces of lobbying and its resources. We discuss how lobbying is supported by material and immaterial resources for the re/production of spaces of lobbying. Finally, we present different methods and techniques to research lobbying. 
Keywords: firms, state, power, space, lobbying, economic geography, political geography
Research Interests:
Discourse Analysis, Economic Sociology, Economic Geography, Game Theory, Political Economy, and 66 more
The problem with the label “deregulation” is that it implies less regulation and that deregulation is commonly framed as something that frees markets from government intervention, suggestive of neoliberalization. In reality, state... more
The problem with the label “deregulation” is that it implies less regulation and that deregulation is commonly framed as something that frees markets from government intervention, suggestive of neoliberalization. In reality, state intervention is a necessary condition for markets to thrive. In this chapters, I discuss three very different cases of what I label regulated deregulation: the electric power industry in New York State, local bus services in Great Britain and Sweden and mortgage securitization in the US and UK. All three cases are commonly labeled as deregulation, but I have tried to show how these cases all have elements of deregulation-as-liberalization but not of deregulation as defined by a reduced role of law and the state. If anything, the liberalization has been enabled, managed and controlled by re/setting rules and re/establishing “an enforcement mechanism designed to control the operation of the system’s constituent institutions, instruments and markets” (Spotton 1999: 971). Neoliberalism is not simply the roll-back of the state. Neoliberalization may involve the roll-back of the welfare state, but at the same time neoliberalism leads to a regulatory explosion (Levi-Faur 2005), indicative of the state widening its net (Cohen 1985), embedding market principles more deeply in the fabric of society (Panitch and Konings 2009). The concept of regulated deregulation enables us to see how liberalization of selective economic agents was only made possible by introducing a new regulatory system that replaced or amended the existing regulatory system. Regulated deregulation allows for the combination of competition and economic incentives on the one hand, and coordination and the regulation authority-led making and shaping of different economic sectors and industries – i.e., regulated deregulation negates the ostensibly contradiction between liberalization and state control. Under regulated deregulation some economic agents are given greater freedom from state control, but the market framework itself is regulated. By problematizing the dominant narrative of deregulation-as-neoliberalization, the concept of regulated deregulation stresses that regulation is not anathema to actually existing neoliberalism. By actively mobilizing regulation, neoliberal agents are creating the conditions of neoliberalization through the state.
Research Interests:
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... more
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.
Keywords: offshore financial centre, taxation, tax avoidance, tax evasion, tax haven, economic geography, political geography
Research Interests:
Human Geography, Economic Geography, Taxation, Critical Criminology, Transfer Pricing, and 44 more
This is an expanded version of: - Aalbers MB (2018b) Financial geography II: Financial geographies of housing and real estate. Progress in Human Geography DOI:10.1177/0309132518819503. - Aalbers MB (2019a) Financial geography III: The... more
This is an expanded version of:
- Aalbers MB (2018b) Financial geography II: Financial geographies of housing and real estate. Progress in Human Geography DOI:10.1177/0309132518819503.
- Aalbers MB (2019a) Financial geography III: The financialization of the city. Progress in Human Geography, in press.

Financial geography is often understood as the geographies of money and finance, but this paper takes a different understand in which financial geography is a lens that can be applied to a range of topics (Aalbers, 2018a). This approach follows my historiography of financial geography, which suggests that financial geography is not simply a sub-sub-discipline embedded in economic geography; the field of financial geography is equally rooted in the sub-disciplines of political and urban geography (Aalbers, 2015a) and in this literature review I will look at a frontier of financial geography, that is, the intersection of economic and urban geography.

My goal here is not to foreground ‘the city’ or ‘the urban’ as the privileged site of applying a financial geography lens, but rather a pragmatic choice to demonstrate how a financial lens can help to enrich different fields of geographical research. My conceptualization of the city is equally pragmatic: for the purpose of the literature review in this paper, I use it primarily as a container term to include studies of urban governance, housing, real estate and the built environment. This review is not the place to discuss the nature of ‘the urban’. It is also worth pointing out what I have not included here: studies of financial centres, such as the City of London, Wall Street, Raffles Place or Bandra Kurla. Research of financial centres and districts is, in a way, the recognized core of geographies of money and finance, not the frontier I want to prioritise here.

In the following sections, I will first discuss financial geographies of housing, with a focus on mortgage debt, securitization and the rise of corporate landlords, but also the financialization of construction firms and social housing non-profits. Subsequent sections zoom in on financial geographies of 1) commercial real estate and large urban projects; and 2) the local state and (semi-)public sector. Finally, I draw some conclusions based on the cumulation of findings, diversity of perspectives, and spatialities and temporalities of financialization. In this literature review I have tried to include literature from non-English speaking countries where possible.
While population losses have accompanied urban development since the emergence of the first cities, it has only been quite recently that "shrinkage" has become a field of research in its own rights. Critical scholarly research stands in a... more
While population losses have accompanied urban development since the emergence of the first cities, it has only been quite recently that "shrinkage" has become a field of research in its own rights. Critical scholarly research stands in a somewhat difficult relation to this situation. On the one hand, there are numerous contributions calling for a general "acceptance" of shrinkage and more "openness" towards planning for a reduced population size. On the other hand, one can find contributions that criticize the limits of existing rightsizing policies, describing smart shrinkage as an exclusionary project, or set it into a context of the current austerity moment. The evaluation of this new round of urban policies is thus controversial. The common denominator of the papers in this special issue is a call for both widening the perspective on rightsizing policies by embedding them into a wider context of neoliberal urbanization and a demand for more attention towards context-specific pathways, dynamics and outcomes. At the same time, we want to highlight not only the local specificities but also provide a comparative political economy perspective on shrinking cities.
Research Interests:
Urban Geography, Political Economy, Urban Politics, Political Coalitions, Urban Planning, and 59 more
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... more
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 financialization 1.0 to financialization 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 privatized mainstream of capital accumulation. With the advent of the financialization 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.

Keywords: financialization, gentrification, Germany, primitive accumulation, private equity and hedge funds, rental housing
Research Interests:
While many European countries experienced a global housing boom in the early/mid 2000s, house prices and mortgage debt in Germany stagnated. Therefore, the German housing system is considered to be operating outside financialized... more
While many European countries experienced a global housing boom in the early/mid 2000s, house prices and mortgage debt in Germany stagnated. Therefore, the German housing system is considered to be operating outside financialized capitalism. Despite Germany’s apparent stability, we argue that an alternative trajectory of financialization in the German housing market can be observed. This trajectory has followed three stages or ‘waves’. The first wave started around the time of German unification and is characterized by the failed attempt of West German banks to marketise and liberalise German housing finance. The second wave started in the late 1990s and is characterized by the ‘financialized privatization’ of many public housing associations and the speculative investments of private equity firms and hedge funds. The third wave started during the global financial crisis and is characterized by booming housing prices and the market entry of listed real estate companies. 
KEY WORDS: Germany, financialization, privatization, political economy, private equity and hedge funds, listed real estate firms
Research Interests:
Real Estate, German Studies, Political Economy, International Political Economy, Comparative Political Economy, and 47 more
This article examines the effects of implementing the proposals of the European Commission to institute a Capital Market Union (CMU) on the diverse landscape of residential capitalism in Europe. The CMU will bypass existing national... more
This article examines the effects of implementing the proposals of the European Commission to institute a Capital Market Union (CMU) on the diverse landscape of residential capitalism in Europe. The CMU will bypass existing national institutional blockades that left core countries of the Eurozone, namely Germany, France and Italy, largely untouched by the housing-centred financialization that developed in countries like Spain, Ireland, the UK and the Netherlands. It is widely acknowledged that the rise in securitized mortgage debt contributed to the global financial crisis. As part of the CMU, the new European Commission is promoting mortgage securitization throughout the EU and thereby rescaling the political economy of housing finance that was hitherto rooted in national, institutional models. We argue that countries which 'missed' the previous housing boom will not be able to prevent future housing-centred financialization. CMU thus signifies a spatial expansion of the debt-led accumulation model.
Research Interests:
In the last two decades, critical urban studies has paid a great deal of attention to contemporary “neoliberal urbanism”, but very little to its historical and urban roots. This chapter discusses the use of neighbourhood typologies and... more
In the last two decades, critical urban studies has paid a great deal of attention to contemporary “neoliberal urbanism”, but very little to its historical and urban roots. This chapter discusses the use of neighbourhood typologies and mapping in the United States by looking at government redlining maps from the 1930s until the 1970s, and “planned shrinkage”, “urban triage” and “benign neglect” in late 1960s and 1970s New York City as well as in early 2000s New Orleans and Cleveland. A map or ranking indicating declining or shrinking neighbourhoods may lead to the withholding of not only city services, but also mortgage loans. The ranking and mapping of neighbourhoods excludes and impoverishes those places deemed racially infiltrated, declining, and dying. It could be argued that this is a form of “neoliberal urbanism”, but these policies had a pre-cursor in the ideas of the Chicago School of Sociology, Babcock, Hoyt, the HOLC and the FHA in the 1920s and 1930s, and Hoover and Vernon, Downs sr. and jr., Starr and Moynihan in the post-war years. The “old urban right” had already won several significant victories in the war of ideologies, hinting at a neoliberalism avant la lettre.
Research Interests:
In this paper we analyze the historical roots of neoliberal housing policies, mottos and principles in Italy and Spain, two countries with a Mediterranean welfare regime, showing how they are embedded in the twentieth century... more
In this paper we analyze the historical roots of neoliberal housing policies, mottos and principles in Italy and Spain, two countries with a Mediterranean welfare regime, showing how they are embedded in the twentieth century fascist-dictatorial regimes of Mussolini and Franco. To stimulate economic growth in a situation of autarchy, both regimes saw the construction sector and the promotion of homeownership as keys to fuel the accumulation process while believing this guaranteed social order. After acknowledging these long-standing roots, we show how the current phase of neoliberalism, characterized by severe austerity policies, relies on similar principles, the main reforms approved in both countries proceeding mainly towards cuts to service provisions and resources, while the promotion of homeownership remains unchallenged.
Keywords: neoliberalism; housing policy; austerity policies; Mediterranean welfare regime; Italy; Spain
Research Interests:
Italian Studies, Welfare State, Fascism, Housing Policy, Housing, and 39 more
Housing is a key object of financialization. There is a small but growing literature on the financialization of housing that has demonstrated how housing is a central aspect of financialization. Despite the varied analyses of the... more
Housing is a key object of financialization. There is a small but growing literature on the financialization of housing that has demonstrated 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 so much a specific from of financialization, as it transcends several of the different forms of financialization. Housing systems, in particular, differ 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 in this Symposium contribute to the literature on the financialization of housing. Housing has entered a post-Fordist, neoliberal and financialized regime. Both mortgaged homeownership and subsidized rental housing increasingly 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 a de-financialization of housing. There are common trajectories within uneven and variegated financialization rather than radically different and completely unrelated forms of housing financialization.
Key words: housing, financialization, mortgage markets, rental housing, home ownership, state and public sector
Research Interests:
Welfare State, Securitization, Urban Studies, Housing Policy, Housing, and 56 more
Why does a social housing provider bet on interest rate fluctuations? This paper presents a case study of the financialization of both housing and the state. Social housing in the Netherlands is provided by non-profit housing associations... more
Why does a social housing provider bet on interest rate fluctuations? This paper presents a case study of the financialization of both housing and the state. Social housing in the Netherlands is provided by non-profit housing associations that since 1989 have been placed at a distance from the state. Many associations started developing housing for profit, borrowing on global capital markets or buying derivatives. Whereas other semi-public institutions moved into the world of finance due to financial constraints, housing associations moved in to capitalize on the possibilities offered by their asset-rich portfolios. Vestia, the largest of them all, is an extreme—but not an exceptional—case of what can happen when public goals need to be realized by under-supervised and poorly managed private organizations. As a result of gambling with derivatives, Vestia had to be bailed out for over €2 billion. To make up for the losses, housing was sold off and rents were raised. Almost half of the housing associations used derivatives but most of them refrained from using them in a purely speculative way. The changes in the housing sector that led to its financialization cannot be separated from the wider financialization of the state. 

Key words: housing, financialization, derivatives, social housing, housing associations, the Netherlands
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The paper "Capital, housing and inequality in 21st century" raises critical questions for housing researchers by introducing debates from economics into the field of housing studies. The authors conclude “it is time to debate housing... more
The paper "Capital, housing and inequality in 21st century" raises critical questions for housing researchers by introducing debates from economics into the field of housing studies. The authors conclude “it is time to debate housing capital in the century ahead” and stress “there is an urgent need for a renewed political economy of housing policies”. We agree that housing studies would not only benefit from a re-engagement with political economy, but also that “a wider understanding of housing systems is required to make sense of how global capitalism has developed since the 1980s.” However, whereas Duncan Maclennan and Julie Miao quickly reduce housing researchers to housing economists and political economy to political-economy-within-economics, we would like to acknowledge the fundamentally interdisciplinary nature of both housing studies and political economy. To us, the focus of Maclennan and Miao—debating the mechanics of Piketty and its relevance to housing economics—is too narrow. We argue that one should take Piketty’s Capital to the next level and present the broader range of issues and conceptual debates that need to be included in an examination of housing, capital and inequality in the 21st century. In particular, we feel that the rich tradition in geography, urban studies and political economy to study the effects of overaccumulation on real estate and the built environment needs to be included in a political economy of housing. 

If we want to contemplate about the long-term outlook of capital and housing, we need to think about the dialectics of the toxic nature of housing centred financialization. The urbanization of capital (à la Lefebvre and Harvey), or the metamorphosis of capital (à la Piketty), is simply not a stable set of social relations. While Piketty’s arithmetic underlying growing inequality may be a correct assessment of actually existing trends, the long-term durability of real estate as store-of-value is not as straightforward as suggested. Housing studies should not be reduced to housing economics, and political economy should not be reduced to a political economy approach within economics in which politics plays the second fiddle to so-called economic laws. We need to understand the role of real estate in the political economy as real world phenomenon rather than as the outcome of a universalistic deduction that exists separate from time and space. Housing as carrier of practices of capital accumulation is variegated in space, across national manifestations of capitalism and is shaped by historical trajectories, culture and institutions. The rise of housing as carrier of wealth needs to be understood as part of larger political economic developments, in which the twin phenomena of neoliberalization and financialization are key to understand the shifting power relation, the ‘regulated deregulation’ (Aalbers 2016b) of both housing and mortgage markets, and the return of the rentier class. Although ‘real world economic’ aspects of housing are introduced at the end of Maclennan and Miao’s paper, we believe they need to be at the core of how we perceive the future of capitalism and inequality. Housing is central to the variegated political economy of contemporary societies and therefore key to understanding actually existing capitalism and inequality.
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Real Estate, Political Economy, Geopolitics, Global cities, International Political Economy, and 38 more
This paper investigates the internationalization of the commercial real estate markets of France and Germany, markets typically ignored in comparative political economy. Although both markets are embedded in Continental European... more
This paper investigates the internationalization of the commercial real estate markets of France and Germany, markets typically ignored in comparative political economy. Although both markets are embedded in Continental European capitalism, their trajectories of internationalization are variegated. After exploring how processes of internationalization are processed within each country, we show how these processes have played-out in the commercial real estate markets of France and Germany. The French state played a key role in guiding processes of internationalization: the introduction of new tax regimes allowed French property companies to raise capital at the stock exchange. The case of Germany demonstrates the continued importance of the banking sector for real estate investment markets. Although the typical characteristics of the French and German political economies are strengthened in this process, agents also feel the need to respond to the interests of international investors by creating REIT-like systems to absorb domestic and foreign capital.
Keywords: Internationalization, financialization, liberalization, commercial real estate, coordinated market economies, France, Germany.
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There is a long history in social science that connects urbanization to capitalism. This entry discusses how the work of Manuel Castells and in particular David Harvey informs our understanding of the urbanization of financial crises in... more
There is a long history in social science that connects urbanization to capitalism. This entry discusses how the work of Manuel Castells and in particular David Harvey informs our understanding of the urbanization of financial crises in the United States and elsewhere. The concepts of capital switching and financialization are central to the argument presented here. The entry also includes a discussion of the management of the crisis, focusing on both the failed institutional response to the financial crisis and the global/local grassroots response to the financial crisis.
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The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977 was part of the US government’s response to bank redlining. In the wake of the social rights movement in general and the community reinvestment movement in particular, redlining returned to the... more
The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977 was part of the US government’s response to bank redlining. In the wake of the social rights movement in general and the community reinvestment movement in particular, redlining returned to the political and research agendas in the late 1960s and 1970s. Community-based organizations and others claimed that lenders were redlining large parts of inner cities. Redlining became heavily associated with racial discrimination. In 1968, discrimination in housing and mortgage lending became prohibited through the Fair Housing Act. In addition, the federal government responded by implementing the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) in 1975, and the CRA in 1977. Today, few would deny the evidence of redlining in the 1930s and 1970s-1980s, but recent evidence of redlining is scarce. Mortgage lenders have found ways to by-pass suspicion of redlining by granting mortgage loans in the “good” part of a Census tract and withholding it from the “bad” part (cherry-picking behavior). Although some changes have increased the effectiveness of the CRA, other changes have made it easier for banks to get away with lending behavior that is not CRA compliant. More importantly, the updates to the CRA were unable to keep with changes in the structure of the US mortgage market. During the subprime mortgage and foreclosure crisis that started in 2007 the CRA got heavily criticized for enabling subprime lending and therefore being at the root of the global financial crisis. It is argued that the CRA forced lenders to grant loans to low-income borrowers who should not have been given a loan under “normal” conditions. This entry discusses five reasons why the CRA should not be blamed for promoting unsound lending. The CRA was designed to promote fair lending to all borrowers. Subprime lending, on the other hand, was designed by lenders to make money by selling risky and overpriced loans, often to people who did not need these loans or could have applied for cheaper ones. CRA loans and subprime loans are simply two different things. There are many factors that play a significant part in unleashing the subprime mortgage crisis, but if the CRA is to be blamed for anything, it is only for not having been allowed to keep up with changes in the mortgage market. One of the future challenges is to adapt the CRA to cover all mortgage lenders: the rules need to be applied to both banks and non-bank lenders. The CRA should be updated to account for the structural changes in the mortgage market and strengthened to promote sound, inclusionary lending.
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Mounting concerns exist that small private investors exacerbate the urban housing crisis, by purchasing dwellings to rent out – so-called “buy-to-let” purchases. By buying up property, they may drive up house prices and exclude regular... more
Mounting concerns exist that small private investors exacerbate the urban housing crisis, by purchasing dwellings to rent out – so-called “buy-to-let” purchases. By buying up property, they may drive up house prices and exclude regular house-seekers. In this paper, we show that buy-to-let purchases constitute an increasing share of all purchases on the Dutch housing market, and especially so in larger cities and university cities. We argue these local trends do not emerge out of thin air and are not a ‘natural’ market process but should be considered the product of both global economic developments and national policies supporting these changes. Global developments include the increased mobility and ample availability of capital, exemplified by a prolonged low interest environment and a growing scarcity of high quality collateral and investment opportunities, making housing attractive for storing capital. Dutch housing policies have increasingly restricted access to social rent to low-income groups, while blowing up house prices fuelled with mortgage debts. As a consequence, a growing number of households falls in-between these two tenures: they have to resort to private rent. Private investors respond to and accommodate this demand through buy-to-let investments. Furthermore, the Dutch national government has made steps to relax regulation on the private-rental market and weakened tenant rights. In so doing, it sets the scene for amplifying social and spatial inequalities between the property rich and the property poor.
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'The death and life of great American cities' van Jane Jacobs is een ware klassieker in de planologie. Helaas wordt de tweede helft van het boek vaak genegeerd. In dit artikel nemen we u mee in een herlezing van het vergeten hoofdstuk... more
'The death and life of great American cities' van Jane Jacobs is een ware klassieker in de planologie. Helaas wordt de tweede helft van het boek vaak genegeerd. In dit artikel nemen we u mee in een herlezing van het vergeten hoofdstuk 'Gradual money and cataclysmic money' en kijken we hoe we Jacobs' ideeën kunnen gebruiken voor een herinterpretatie van eenentwintigste-eeuwse stedelijke ontwikkeling. The death and life of great American cities (Jacobs, 1961) is wellicht het meest gelezen boek onder planologen. Gezien het boek nog voor de internationale stadsrevoluties van 1968 werd geschreven, is het opmerkelijk hoe populair het boek nog steeds is. Misschien kunnen we stellen dat Jacobs de stadsrevolutie reeds aanvoelde of haar boek er mede vorm aan heeft gegeven. Jacobs' ideeën over menging van functies, het belang van de openbare ruimte en dichtheid behoren al enkele tientallen jaren tot de kernideeën van onze discipline. Toch vinden niet alle ideeën uit The death and life gretig aftrek. Het zijn vooral deel 1 en 2 uit het boek die veel worden gelezen en toegepast. In deel 1 (The peculiar nature of cities) rept Jacobs over het gebruik van stoepen, kleine parken en buurten; en in deel 2 (The conditions for city diversity) over de behoefte aan gemengde functies, kleine stadsblokken, oude gebouwen en concentratie. Veel planologen kunnen deze hoofdstukken dromen. Deel 3 (Forces of decline and regeneration) en 4 (Different tactics) ontbreken vaak in planologiereaders. In deel 3 wordt beschreven waarom buurten veranderen en deel 4 gaat vooral over beleid en bestuur. Onze stelling is dat deze delen minstens zo belangrijk zijn en dat veel van de beperkingen van de
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And 58 more

A global wall of money is looking for High-Quality Collateral (HQC) investments, and housing is one of the few asset classes considered HQC. This explains why housing is increasingly becoming financialized, but it does not explain the... more
A global wall of money is looking for High-Quality Collateral (HQC) investments, and housing is one of the few asset classes considered HQC. This explains why housing is increasingly becoming financialized, but it does not explain the timing, politics and geography. The need for HQC, supported by a neoliberal ideology, discursive tenure practices that favour homeownership, and government policies pushing the financial sector as a key engine of economic growth, have internationally—but far from globally—inflated mortgage finance bubbles. 
 
The state is far from absent in the process of creating variegated patterns of housing financialization: it is directly implicated in each step that the wall of money takes towards securing HQC in local and national housing market sectors. The state actively—but not always consciously—creates the conditions for the financialization of housing and other assets, sectors and markets, often through a process I called “regulated deregulation” (Aalbers, 2016). The term indicates that the state is not withdrawing but rather being restructured (increasingly also through finance) in a way that favours the interest of some, often financialized corporations, and at the expense of others. Regulation is not being repealed to make the market mechanism function more smoothly; it is introduced to create new markets that end up looking nothing like the level playing field utopias espoused by neoliberal economists, think tanks, lobbyists and politicians. Of course the state could do other things, and luckily some arms of the state continue to, or start to, do other things—a theme we will revisit in the second half of this chapter.
 
Colin Crouch describes the situation that governments have created as “privatized Keynesianism”, which occurred initially by chance, but gradually became a crucial matter for public policy. Instead of governments taking on debt to stimulate the economy, individuals and families did so, including some rather poor ones. (...) Once privatized Keynesianism had become a model of general economic importance, it became a kind of bizarre collective good, however nested in private actions it was. (...) that very irresponsibility became a collective good. (Crouch, 2011: 114)
In this book I analysed how privatized Keynesianism was introduced in the years following the Great Moderation, a period that economists think of as one of stable growth and convergence, but which, in fact, was the beginning of the Great Excess, in which income and wealth inequality in many countries increased rapidly (Piketty, 2014). The lack of real income growth was matched with a rapid rise in household debt, and in particular, mortgage debt for the middle and to some extent lower classes. 
 
Privatized Keynesianism, the Great Moderation, neoliberalization and financialization have transformed the nature of homeownership and rental housing, and in turn also the social relations of housing. We arrive here a fundamental point of contention between Marxist and Weberian housing scholars. As covered in Chapter 2, Marxists maintained that one’s position in the housing market is a result of one’s position in the labour market, i.e. social class determines housing position; while Weberians argued that one’s position in the housing market determines social class. Kemeny (1992), for example, argued that housing forms the basis for a new explanation of social inequality.
This doc contains the first pages of the book. If you want to read the entire book, you could order it in hardback or kindle from the publisher or amazon (but amazon currently charges more than Routledge). Since the hardback is very... more
This doc contains the first pages of the book. If you want to read the entire book, you could order it in hardback or kindle from the publisher or amazon (but amazon currently charges more than Routledge). Since the hardback is very expensive, I am also offering paperback copies (currently not available on Routledge or Amazon) for €35 (incl. postage). Please e-mail me at manuel.aalbers@kuleuven.be if you are interested. If so, I can send you my payment details.

Due to the financialization of housing in today’s market, housing risks are increas ingly becoming financial risks. Financialization refers to the increasing dominance of financial actors, markets, practices, measurements and narratives.
It also refers to the resulting structural transformation of economies, firms, states and households. This book asserts the centrality of housing to the contemporary capitalist political economy and places housing at the centre of the financialization debate.
A global wall of money is looking for High-Quality Collateral (HQC) investments, and housing is one of the few asset classes considered HQC. This explains why housing is increasingly becoming financialized, but it does not explain its timing, politics and geography. Presenting a diverse range of case studies from the US, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Spain, the chapters in this book include coverage of the role of the state as the driver of financialization processes, and the part played by local and national histories and institutions. This cutting edge volume will pave the way for future research in the area.
Where housing used to be something “local” or “national”, the wo-way coupling of housing to finance has been one crucial element in the recent crisis. It is time to reconsider the financialization of both homeownership and social housing. This book will be of interest to those who study international economics, housing systems, economic geography and financialization.
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Just as in society, the mortgage market may exclude people on the basis of place, as well as race. Place-based exclusion in the mortgage market often takes the form of “redlining,” a tacit agreement among lending institutions to delineate... more
Just as in society, the mortgage market may exclude people on the basis of place, as well as race. Place-based exclusion in the mortgage market often takes the form of “redlining,” a tacit agreement among lending institutions to delineate sections of cities into areas where no home mortgages are to be issued. Place, Exclusion, and Mortgage Markets presents an in-depth examination of the practice of redlining and the broader implications of contemporary urban exclusion processes. Through a careful balance of comparative research and literature reviews, author Manuel B. Aalbers reveals how redlining, which is most visible at the urban level, is also constituted at the interaction of several spatial scales: neighborhood, urban, regional, national, and global. By utilizing several research strategies and presenting documented evidence from various urban sectors in the United States, Italy, and the Netherlands, this book offers fresh insights and much needed analytical clarity to shape our understanding of redlining and other urban exclusion processes.
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During historic times of turmoil and change, social scientists of various stripes are often called upon to shape our understanding of ways mortgage markets function. The question is asked; just how did we get here? Subprime Cities: The... more
During historic times of turmoil and change, social scientists of various stripes are often called upon to shape our understanding of ways mortgage markets function. The question is asked; just how did we get here?  Subprime Cities: The Political Economy of Mortgage Markets presents a collection of works from social scientists that offer important insights into what is happening in today’s mortgage market including the causes, effects, and aftermath of the ‘subprime’ mortgage crisis. In addition to shedding light on how the current housing crisis has spread to other sectors of the economy, readings address the mortgage market itself and how problems have spread throughout mortgage and housing markets. Various chapters address changes that have resulted in the subprime mortgage crisis; others focus on the structural changes in the mortgage market, rather than on the crisis itself. Documentation of the geographical, social, and institutional inequalities associated with the crisis reveal how the recent mortgage boom created ‘subprime cities’, and how the victims of the crisis are the product of deep structural inequalities.  This book is a provocative wake-up call for us to reconsider the structures of housing finance and housing policy if we are to avoid another crisis.
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Finance, Political Economy, International Political Economy, Comparative Political Economy, Securitization, and 30 more
define / definition / definitions / glossary : ABS, Agency Debt, Agency RMBS, Alt-A loan, ARM, CDO, CDS, Conforming loan, Credit scoring, Derivative, Disparate impact, Disparate treatment, Equity withdrawal, Fannie Mae, Flipping, Freddie... more
define / definition / definitions / glossary : ABS, Agency Debt, Agency RMBS, Alt-A loan, ARM, CDO, CDS, Conforming loan, Credit scoring, Derivative, Disparate impact, Disparate treatment, Equity withdrawal, Fannie Mae, Flipping, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae, Greenlining, GSE, Home loan, Interest rate cap, LIBOR, Mortgage deficient area, Mortgage insurance, Negative equity, OCC, Originator, OTS, Pre-emption, Predatory lending, Primary mortgage market, Private-label securitization, Rate-spread loan, Redlining, Risk-based pricing, RMBS, Savings and Loans Institution (thrift), Secondary mortgage market, Securitization, SIV, SPV, Subprime loan
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Competitive cycling has always been particularly popular in the Benelux, France and Italy, but has spread first continetally and then globally in recent decades. But how global is actually competitive cycling today? In this article we... more
Competitive cycling has always been particularly popular in the Benelux, France and Italy, but has spread first continetally and then globally in recent decades. But how global is actually competitive cycling today? In this article we analyze the globalization of road cycling for men. 
 
Wielrennen is van oudsher vooral populair in de Benelux, Frankrijk en Italië. Vanuit deze landen verspreidde de wielersport zich over de wereld. Maar hoe mondiaal is de wielersport vandaag de dag eigenlijk? In dit artikel analyseren wij de mondialisering van het wegwielrennen voor mannen.
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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... more
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 focussing attention on the agency of the wealth elite and their investment and legal networks rather than on property developers, housing associations or institutional investors.
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De omvang van de particuliere huursector nam in Nederland decennialang af. Momenteel is er sprake van een kentering van die trend: tussen 2012 en 2017 groeide de particuliere huursector met maar liefst 23,4%. In grote steden als Den Haag... more
De omvang van de particuliere huursector nam in Nederland decennialang af. Momenteel is er sprake van een kentering van die trend: tussen 2012 en 2017 groeide de particuliere huursector met maar liefst 23,4%. In grote steden als Den Haag en Utrecht, maar ook in studentensteden als Groningen, Eindhoven, Tilburg en Wageningen lag de toename boven de 30%.

Een belangrijke component in de uitbreiding komt doordat koopwoningen worden opgekocht door kleine verhuurders, het zogenaamde buy-to-let. Tussen 2006 en 2016 is buy-to-let met 75% toegenomen. Het gaat dan om de aankoop van woningen voor andere doeleinden dan eigen bewoning. In zowel de drie grote steden als Groningen en Maastricht wordt inmiddels 10 à 15 procent van de koopwoningen, en dertig procent van de woningen van minder dan 50 vierkante meter opgekocht door verhuurders. Deze nieuwe spelers op de koopmarkt verdringen potentiële eigenaar-bewoners.

Het regeringsbeleid van de afgelopen jaren heeft een belangrijke rol gespeeld in de groei van de particuliere huurwoningvoorraad in het algemeen en buy-to-let in het bijzonder. De prijzen van koopwoningen zijn gestegen omdat te laat en te gematigd is ingegrepen in de hypotheekrenteaftrek en de loan-to-value (LTV) van hypotheken. Bovendien heeft beleid ingezet op een vermindering van het aantal sociale huurwoningen en het beperken van toegang tot deze woningen. Deze ontwikkelingen zetten zowel de betaalbaarheid als toegankelijkheid van wonen onder druk, zeker in de populaire steden. Er is sprake van een nieuwe periode van woningnood.

De toename van het aantal particuliere huurwoningen is een reactie op de grote vraag van groepen die zelf geen koop- of sociale huurwoning kunnen bemachtigen. De revival hangt samen met een herstructurering van gereguleerde naar geliberaliseerde huur, waardoor zowel kleinschalige verhuurders als grote beleggingsfondsen meer interesse in de sector tonen. Dit is een internationale trend. In Duitsland zijn inmiddels enkele miljoenen huurwoningen opgekocht door ‘fiscale beleggingsinstellingen’; de grootste bezit 355.000 woningen en is op zoek naar uitbreidingsmogelijkheden over de grens.
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