New Geographies of Residential Capitalism: Financialization of the Turkish Housing Market Since the Early 2000s

The post‐2001 financial crisis era in Turkey gave rise to twin booms in housing construction and credit markets, both of which suffered from the subsequent debt crisis. The financial transformation of the economy in conjunction with state‐led urban legislation reform had significant effects on the housing market in terms of commodification of housing, countrywide construction activities and substantial increases in household debt and construction company loans. The changing role and function of the state as a direct provider of housing can be regarded as actually existing neoliberalism providing favourable conditions for financialization, as it ushered in the commodification of housing. The Turkish government, together with the government‐backed housing agency, metropolitan municipalities and publicly owned real‐estate investment company, has been active in nationwide housing construction and urban regeneration projects. This article argues that there is a lack of synchrony between the commodification of housing and the financialization of the household sector owing to the institutional setting of the mortgage system and structural macroeconomic problems. Rather, housing commodification has been accompanied by the financialization of the corporate sector through a steep rise in the external debt burden of construction companies.     

The Financialization of Housing Production in Brussels

This article focuses on the financialization of housing production in the Brussels‐Capital Region, examining the increased presence and use of financial capital in housing production. Information collected by local administrations when granting building permits is used to undertake a large‐scale examination of companies involved in housing provision in Brussels in the 2000s in order to identify the origins of capital invested in housing development projects and to assess to what extent it can be considered as ‘financialized’. The use of this data set allows me to estimate the ‘market share’ of financial capital in housing production and to analyse the geography of these investments in the built environment. This spatial analysis also provides some insights for a discussion about the possible social consequences of this influx of financial capital into the urban space. The task of empirically ‘measuring’ financialization raises numerous methodological questions. A choice has to be made between a wide range of definitions, both for financial activities and the financialization process. Moreover, for the purpose of quantifying the phenomenon, these concepts are made operational and turned into indicators. In addition to providing information about the investment of financial capital in housing production and the concrete forms it may take in a city such as Brussels, I venture to suggest that this article also contributes to the methodological ‘toolbox’ available to researchers in the field of financialization.     

Late Neoliberalism: The Financialization of Homeownership and Housing Rights

Over the last few decades we have witnessed a global U‐turn in prevailing housing and urban policy agendas, spread around the world by the driving forces of globalization and neoliberalism. The new paradigm was mainly based on the withdrawal of states from the housing sector and the implementation of policies designed to create stronger and larger market‐based housing finance models. The commodification of housing, together with the increased use of housing as an investment asset within a globalized financial market, has profoundly affected the enjoyment of the right to adequate housing. Taking the World Bank's 1993 manifesto as a starting point and the subprime crisis as its first great international flashpoint, this essay traces some key elements of the neoliberal approach to housing and its impact on the enjoyment of the right to housing in different contexts and times. The reform of housing policy — with all its components of homeownership, private property and binding financial commitments — has been central to the political and ideological strategies through which the dominance of neoliberalism is maintained. Conversely, the crisis (and its origins in the housing market) reflects the inability of market mechanisms to provide adequate and affordable housing for all.     

The Variegated Financialization of Housing

There is a small but growing literature on the financialization of housing that demonstrates how housing is a central aspect of financialization. Despite the varied analyses of the financialization of housing and the importance of housing to financialization, the relations between housing and financialization remain under‐researched and under‐theorized. The financialization of housing is not really a specific form of financialization, transcending as it does a number of different forms of financialization. Housing systems, in particular, vary widely across the globe, which implies that housing financialization will be inherently variegated, path‐dependent and uneven. In this introduction to the symposium, I will discuss how the articles to follow contribute to the literature on the financialization of housing. Housing has entered a post‐Fordist, neoliberal and financialized regime. Increasingly, both mortgaged homeownership and subsidized rental housing are there to keep financial markets going, rather than being facilitated by those markets. There is little evidence that the global financial crisis has resulted in any de‐financialization of housing. There are common trajectories within uneven and variegated financialization, rather than radically different and completely unrelated forms of housing financialization.     

The Financialization of A Social Housing Provider

Why does a social housing provider bet on interest rate fluctuations? This article 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 have since 1989 been set apart 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 did so to capitalize on the possibilities offered by their asset‐rich portfolios. Vestia, the largest of them all, is an extreme––but not exceptional––case of what can happen when public goals are left to be realized by inadequately supervised and poorly managed private organizations. As a result of gambling on derivatives, Vestia had to be bailed out to the tune of over 2 billion euros. To recoup the losses, housing was sold off and rents were raised. Almost half of Dutch housing associations used derivatives, although most refrained from using them purely speculatively. The changes in the housing sector that led to its financialization cannot be separated from the wider financialization of the state.     

Unwilling Subjects of Financialization

This article seeks to advance debates about the financialization of housing by focusing on the emergence of rental housing as a frontier for financialization, a dynamic that is increasingly relevant since the global financial crisis. Situated in New York City, the research focuses on an aggressive wave of investment in affordable rent‐stabilized properties by private equity firms, their efforts to release value from these properties, and the implications of the 2008 financial crisis for their investment strategies and thus for tenants’ experience of home. Through detailed empirical analysis tracing the connections between how rental housing has been constituted as a new site for private equity investment globally, the local conditions facilitating this process in New York and how it reshaped everyday life for tenants, the article theorizes tenants as unwilling subjects of financialization. Yet unwillingness does not necessarily translate into being overtaken; it also connotes reluctance and indeed struggle. This novel conceptualization highlights the ways in which financialization meets with dissent, and its necessarily contingent and incomplete nature. The article therefore develops the wider intellectual project of understanding financialization not as a monolithic and inevitable process, but as one characterized by resistance from without and contradiction from within.     

Informal Housing in the United States

Research on informal housing tends to focus overwhelmingly on less developed countries, downplaying or ignoring entirely the presence of informality in United States housing markets. In actuality, a longstanding and widespread tradition of informal housing exists in the United States but is typically disregarded by scholars. In this article we draw on three definitions of informality—as non‐compliant, non‐enforced, or deregulated economic activity—to characterize examples of informality in US housing markets, focusing in particular on five institutions that govern housing market activity in this country: property rights law, property transfer law, land‐use and zoning, subdivision regulations, and building codes. The cases presented here challenge the notion that informality is absent from US housing markets and highlight the unique nature of informal housing, US style—namely, that informal housing in the US is geographically uneven, largely hidden and typically interwoven within formal markets. We conclude with a discussion of how research on informal housing in the US can inform research in the global South.     

住宅房地产市场系统的协同演化模型

住宅房地产市场的本质表明,住宅房地产市场系统为一个开放的经济系统,其内部因素存在着各种外在和内在的关系,本文建立住宅房地产市场的协同演化方程,并得出住宅房地产市场投资额为住宅房地产市场系统的序参量,在自组织理论应用上具有一定的创新意义;再者,借鉴国内外住宅房地产市场的研究角度和方法,建立了南京住宅房地产市场系统的演化仿真模型,取得了很好的仿真效果。     

房地产开发企业如何创造股东价值

上市筹集资金是房地产企业发展的趋势,为了赢得更多的投资,房地产企业必须以股东价值最大化为管理目标。介绍了一种股东价值模型,从竞争优势缺口和竞争优势期间两方面,来说明专业化经营和品牌化战略是房地产企业增加股东价值的必要手段。     

How Did Finance Capital Infiltrate the World of the Urban Poor? Homeownership and Social Fragmentation in a Spanish Neighborhood

When working‐class localities in developed countries are in question, social fragmentation is often analyzed along ethnic lines. Instead, this article claims that it is more critically fruitful to explore fragmentation in terms of people's relations with the state and different forms of capital. It does this by considering housing in Spain as a key resource that connects state policies both with the forms of reproduction and (dis)organization of the disadvantaged, and with the development of real estate and finance capital. First, it unfolds the historical formation of the Spanish ‘homeownership culture’ and the construction–finance complex. Second, starting from an in‐depth ethnography of a peripheral neighborhood in Barcelona, it emphasizes the embeddedness of recent financialization in the livelihood strategies of poor households. Finally, it shows how the process led to a commodification and erosion of those social relations on which it partially depended, thereby exposing problems for class reproduction and fracture lines among the urban poor.     

政策调整对我国房价的冲击效应研究——基于小波多分辨率分析与干预分析模型

借鉴货币最优政策模型,从机理上分析了房地产市场的变动规律,发现推动房价正常上涨的本质在于成本推动以及人口迁移下对住房的刚性需求,其他政策虽然短期内可调节房价波动,但长期过度使用会导致房价不可逆转的畸形。进一步基于小波多分辨率分析与干预分析模型讨论了我国政策冲击下的房地产市场发现:房价波动短期内会影响房地产销售,但长期内房地产销售不受房价波动影响,房价上涨与销售额增长均具有自身内在的推动力;政策调整对房价调控的冲击出现逆效性,短期内可以抑制房价上涨,长期内则会造成房价的更大波动。     

中国金融货币政策调整对房价的影响

针对2008由房产次贷危机所引发的金融海啸以及随即而来的连续三年的房价上涨,本文探讨了我国金融货币政策对房价的调整效应和影响作用。     

Canada's Housing Bubble Story: Mortgage Securitization,the State,and the Global Financial Crisis

Canada's experience during and after the financial crisis appears to distinguish it from its international peers. Canadian real estate sales and values experienced record increases since the global financial crisis emerged in 2008, rather than declines, and Canada did not witness any bank failures. The dominant trope concerning Canada's financial and housing markets is that they are sound, prudent, appropriately regulated and ‘boring but effective’. It is widely assumed that Canadian banks did not need, nor receive, a ‘bailout’, that mortgage lending standards remained high, and that the securitization of mortgages was not widespread. The truth, however, does not accord with this mainstream view. In fact, the Canadian financial and housing markets reveal marked similarities with their international peers. Canada's banks needed, and received, a substantial ‘bailout’, while federal policies before and after the financial crisis resulted in the massive growth of mortgage securitization and record household indebtedness. This article documents the growth of Canada's housing bubble, the history of mortgage securitization, and of government policies implemented before and after the crisis. Instead of making the Canadian financial and housing sectors more resilient and sustainable, the outcomes of state responses are best understood as regressively redistributive.     

对我国商业银行个人住房贷款风险及防范的思考

本文通过对我国商业银行个人住房贷款的借款人违约行为进行实证分析,揭示出个人住房贷款存在的风险,并就如何建立标准化、集约化操作模式,防范借款人理性违约风险以及房产资产的证券化三个方面提出化解风险的措施。     

Neoliberalization,Housing Institutions and Variegated Gentrification: How the ‘Third Wave’ Broke in Amsterdam

Neil Smith argues that in the last two decades gentrification has become a generalized global urban phenomenon. His theory is at a high level of abstraction, as it links urban gentrification to globalization, financial capitalism and neoliberalization. With these global processes, all cities have experienced ‘third wave’ gentrification. The theory, however, leaves little room for variegations of gentrification, apart from characterizing geographical differences as idiosyncrasies or as minor variations. This downplays the role of intervening mechanisms that impinge upon the pursuit and social outcomes of gentrification. This article aims to amend abstract theory by looking at Amsterdam from a historical institutional perspective. In Amsterdam, gentrification was particularly made possible by a process of neoliberalization within the housing system. However, as institutional change is incremental and based on layering and conversion, many older institutional arrangements remain in place. These arrangements tend to slow gentrification and assuage social consequences. Nevertheless, neoliberal modifications to the housing system have been accelerating the pursuit of gentrification. Current policies will very likely lead to exclusionary displacement.     

后金融危机条件下我国房地产证券化研究\n——基于美国房地产证券化实践的启示

我国房地产市场发展过程中现存问题的背后是房地产金融市场风险.美国的房地产资产证券化历程从正反两方面都给中国寻找有效控制和分散风险的方法及中国房地产金融创新等提供了很好的借鉴和启示.我国房地产金融市场建设总体上应遵循"长短结合,疏堵并举"的原则.短期有"堵"有"疏";长期以"疏"为主.     

地价与房价关系探析

在对房地产市场结构、运行模式分析的基础上,分析并阐述地价与房价之间的关系。为了清楚揭示这二者之间的关系,首先对“地价是否是房价的决定因素”这个问题进行了探讨,并在此基础上从市场角度出发,沿着市场→房价→地价这条主线,揭示在市场作用下受供求关系的影响房价不断攀升,而且有力推动地价上涨。接着,继续研究地价、房价的变动对房地产市场所产生的影响,揭示了当前地价、房价的上涨不但没有降低需求热度,反而使开发商和购房者的购买欲更旺,市场的供求差距进一步拉大,以此形成一个循环正反馈链。最后,针对房价上涨,对中央政府和地方政府的协调行为提出了几点建议。     

试论我国房地产金融市场的发展

房地产业是一个资金密集型产业,与金融业存在着很大的关联度,因此必须促进房地产金融市场的发展。文章将分析我国房地产金融市场的发展现状及存在的主要问题,并提出发展与繁荣我国房地产金融市场的有关对策建议。     

从紧货币政策下的房地产金融风险防范

文中首先提出了从紧货币政策下房地产金融风险可能出现的问题,然后分析了房地产金融风险的形成机理,最后从健全金融法律法规、建立全方位的监管体系、发展和完善房地产贷款担保和保险制度等几个方面提出了完善房地产金融风险的制度建设重点。     

保障房建设在房地产及经济发展中的作用

在我国房地产供应市场化的过程中,市场主体的不断增强导致了房地产资源的分配出现了严重不均的状态,于是,国家对房地产业进行了数次调控。当前的保障房建设规模的迅速扩大是国家对房地产业宏观调控取得的重要成果之一。在保障房建设过程中,一方面应实现保障房建设自身的有序发展,另一方面亦应关注商品房建设的健康发展,最终使房地产资源的配置得到优化和国家整体经济的健康平稳发展。