After the crisis is before the crisis: Reading property market shifts through Amsterdam’s changing landscape of property investors

Abstract

Shifts in property markets are closely tied to changes in investment actors’ relations, shaped by wider economic and regulatory processes. However, the existing literature generally neglects the role of actors’ behaviour and agency within property market shifts, and how market shifts affect cities. In response, we establish a framework that systematically unpacks the role, characteristics and behaviour of property investors in investment market shifts within urban development. We consider market shifts as modifications to established economic and regulatory processes and argue that a multidimensional approach is required to understand property investors and their role within property investment markets that shapes the urban built environment. Our main contribution is a novel approach and methodology to read changing property investor landscapes by linking wider economic and regulatory changes to investment actors and their investment strategies. Empirically, we focus on Amsterdam’s changing investor landscape over the last 15 years. We investigate how crises, represented by far-reaching institutional disruptions of economic and regulatory systems, relate to Amsterdam’s landscape of property investors. Correspondingly, we define three distinct periods of analysis, based on transaction volumes and regulatory interventions at national and local levels: the pre-global financial crisis (GFC) period from 2005 to 2008, the post-GFC recovery period from 2009 to 2013, and the pre-Covid19 boom period from 2014 to 2020. We reveal how Amsterdam’s investor landscape changed over the course of these periods through a mixed methods analysis, including quantitative investment transaction analysis, mapping, and in-depth interviews with investors. We ultimately suggest that reading property market shifts through multidimensional characteristics would enable more targeted policy solutions, moving away from empirically ill-supported stereotypes of property actor behaviours.

Anticipating demand shocks: Patient capital and the supply of housing

“…What also remains under-addressed is what happens when market conditions change, in this case challenging the assumed strength of demand, and how this reveals faults more broadly in this system of governing housing from a supply-side perspective. There has been little consideration in idealised policy narratives of what would happen if this demand-driven model of supply-incentive based governance was threatened, especially given the established link between crises and housing investment (see Tasan-Kok et al, 2021 this issue). The perceived and actual threats to demand associated the COVID-19 pandemic across all types of urban residential markets represents a significant test for such an approach and the latest manifestation of the ways in which market tensions impact on the objectives of both public and private sectors (Batty, 2020).…”

Introduction to special issue on the governance of residential investment

“…In this Theme Issue, Taşan-Kok et al (2021) reveal the changing landscapes of investment in Amsterdam, demonstrating how new actors find their space within existing systems. This sets the scene for focusing on a longitudinal shift and attending to investment patterns as something in flux but with periods of significant change that reflect wider crises, a theme that emerges in the work of Brill et al (2022) in this issue on the pandemic-induced responses from particular types of finance (patient capital).…”

“…For example, in Amsterdam and London we see how the same form of investment is shaped by the very particular and path-dependent policy agendas at a national and local level. In this, we took inspiration from the ‘What is Governed’ network from which two of the papers come (Brill et al, 2022; Taşan-Kok et al, 2021).…”

From homes to assets: Transcalar territorial networks and the financialization of build to rent in Greater Manchester

“…TTN frameworks have been used to explore how the conversion of BTR housing into an investment asset is mediated by actors such as developers, producing outcomes that are not purely definable by cyclical market demand (see also Weber, 2016). This includes the role of housing crisis narratives about ‘undersupply’ in advancing policy support for the BTR tenure (Brill and Durrant, 2021), the ‘relational’ channelling of investment by developers (Ballard and Butcher, 2020; Taşan-Kok et al, 2021), and the role of developers, political networks and community consultations in mitigating development risk across multiple international sites (Brill and Özogul, 2021; Brill and Robin, 2020). A TTN approach is therefore attractive because it foregrounds the agency of real estate and local state actors within the process of financialization, as well as how corporate landlords reconfigure networks around housing at the point of market creation (Brill and Özogul, 2021).…”