Platform—driven housing commodification, financialisation and gentrification in Athens

Abstract

The emergence and expansion of the digitally mediated, short-term rental (STR) market in Athens underplayed a key role in the rising inaccessibility to affordable housing, interrelating with broader transformations of the housing landscape, including i) the translation of the economic crisis into a housing one, ii) the unfolding of touristification processes in central Athenian districts and iii) the increased involvement of international investors and funds in the real estate market. In this paper, we bring out the role of STRs in the commodification and financialisation of housing and the unfolding of touristification processes in central Athens. We delineate the aforementioned developments as a series of successive waves, arguing that the STR market initially enabled the commodification of housing through its disassociation from the sphere of households’ social reproduction and its assetisation, facilitating the engagement of domestic and foreign investors and the association of the housing landscape with financial flows.