This paper presents a study about studentification in the medium-sized university town of Goettingen, Germany. While many studentification studies focus on the transformation of owner-occupied houses into houses of multiple occupation, this study is about displacement in the rental housing market. I argue that within this context, the displacement of marginalised social groups takes place through rental prices and private landlords’ preferences for students of higher education. Hence, I focus on how landlords extract high rents from their property without making serious investments and investigate landlords’ strategies for increasing their return on investment via higher education student tenants. I explain their strategies, grounding this research in semi-structured interviews with landlords, property managers and real estate agents, complemented by statistical data. I show that different rental strategies landlords apply lead to the separation of different social groups. Hence, this paper argues that the strategies of landlords have an important impact on urban segregation and urban development in cities. Therefore, a deeper investigation of these strategies would help us achieve a better understanding of how the process of studentification proceeds and how displacement takes place.
Der Aufsatz legt am Beispiel von Göttingen dar, dass in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland im Zuge der neoliberalen Reformpolitik zunehmend steigende Mietpreise nicht nur in Ballungszentren zu verzeichnen sind, sondern auch in kleineren Großstädten. Bezugnehmend auf die Analysen der kritischen Stadtforschung und der Regulationstheorie wird in diesem Aufsatz der Frage nachgegangen, was die jüngsten Mietpreissteigerungen in der „B-Lagen-Stadt“ Göttingen verursacht haben. Dabei zeigt sich, dass die Mechanismen, die mit der marktförmigen Organisation der Wohnraumversorgung einhergehen, auch in Göttingen in erheblichem Maße die lokale Entwicklung bestimmen. Hinzukommt, dass nach und nach institutionelle Investor_innen auf dem Göttinger Wohnungsmarkt aktiv werden. Dieser Teil der Finanzialisierung des lokalen Wohnungsmarktes sorgt für eine zusätzliche Steigerung der Mietpreise.
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