Post-socialist housing meets transnational finance: Foreign banks, mortgage lending, and the privatization of welfare in Hungary and Estonia

Böhle, Dorothee

doi:10.1080/09692290.2013.801022

Cited by 114 publications

(84 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…A very liberal financial environment and strong competition among banks fueled increasingly risky lending practices (Banai et al 2011;Józon 2015). Despite the fact that the Hungarian National Bank, the Financial Supervisory Authority, and the IMF issued warnings about the foreign currency exposure, Hungarian politicians remained passive on the issue (Bohle 2014).…”

Section: Mortgage Booms In Hungary and Latviamentioning

confidence: 99%

Mortgaging Europe's Periphery

Böhle

2017

SSRN Journal

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This paper asks why peripheral European countries have been particularly vulnerable to housing and mortgage booms in recent decades; how these booms have shaped their exposure to the global financial crisis (GFC), and how the GFC has affected peripheral housing finance. To answer these questions, it explores the interaction between European processes of financial integration and domestic housing (finance) policies in four peripheral countries. It argues that the EU framework for free movement of capital and financial service provision as well as the availability of cheap credit has induced a trajectory of housing financialization, which has taken two forms: funding from wholesale markets and direct penetration of foreign financial institutions. These two forms attest to a core-periphery relationship in housing financialization, whose hierarchical character came to the fore in the crisis. Peripheral European countries experienced sudden stops and reversals of capital flows, which badly affected their banking systems. Unable to solve the looming banking crises on their own, they had to turn to creditors to gain access to much needed capital. A combination of international conditionality and domestic policy responses, and the original level of mortgage debt result in different trajectories in housing finance after the crisis.

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Section: Mortgage Booms In Hungary and Latviamentioning

confidence: 99%

Mortgaging Europe's Periphery

Böhle

2017

SSRN Journal

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“…In Central and Eastern Europe the liberalization of financial markets and the process of adhesion to the EU opened the door for investment from Western Eu-ropean financial institutions (Hudson and Hadjimichalis, 2014), which actively started entering the market of individual mortgages in the region (Bohle, 2013) . Consequently, mortgages became a crucial driving force behind the functioning of the housing market and a financialized housing regime unfolded.…”

Section: Spread-out and Reconcentration On The European Scalementioning

confidence: 99%

Crisis and the Reproduction of Core-Periphery Relations on the Hungarian Housing Market

Pósfai

Nagy

2018

ESR&P

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Housing markets can be understood as indicators of the spatial pattern of capital investment under contemporary financial capitalism. We take this point of entry in order to analyze core-periphery relations around the turning point of the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 on the Hungarian housing market. The instance of crisis sheds light on patterns of homogenization and differentiation; the effects of which can be understood by exploring housing market activity on various scales from the European to the local/regional. We argue that these two patterns of uneven development are inextricably linked and result in deepening sociospatial polarization.

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“…Both the Hungarian and Romanian housing mortgage boom fit into a regional wave of foreign lending (Bohle 2014;Raviv 2008) fueled by the dynamics of the worldeconomic phenomenon of ''financialization of housing'' (Aalbers 2008). Within that process, the financialization of housing in CEE had a specific position.…”

Section: Mortgage Boom the 2008 Crisis And The Financialization Of Hmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although both countries were severely hit by the financial crisis, its impact was different: Hungary experienced a severe mortgage crisis, with increasing housing debts followed by evictions profiting the banks and lenders (Bohle 2014), while Romania experienced severe cuts in wages, social benefits, and employment, leading to increased housing costs burden and overcrowding, followed by evictions profiting (especially foreign) real estate investors and developers. The financial crisis exacerbated previous social inequalities in both countries, affecting especially poor rural areas in Hungary, poor areas at the edge of larger cities, and poor rural areas in Romania.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Field of Contention: Evidence from Housing Struggles in Bucharest and Budapest

2018

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The article offers a study of housing movements in Budapest and Bucharest, with the main focus on the developments since the financial crisis of 2008, stressing the role that both structural and contingent factors play in shaping the dynamics of this ''field of contention.'' It is argued that a structural view is enlightening for understanding the factors that form the interactive field between activists, such as differences in social positionality as well as ideological conflicts. Moreover, conceiving of a structurally produced field of contention can help explain the differences in housing contention in the two cities. The analysis situates housing movements and their allied, parallel, or opposing actors within the long-term processes of urbanization and global dynamics of commodification, including housing financialization. It demonstrates that to understand how structural and political factors interact in a complex field of contention, attention to processes beyond short-term local movements is necessary.

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Post-socialist housing meets transnational finance: Foreign banks, mortgage lending, and the privatization of welfare in Hungary and Estonia

Cited by 114 publications

References 22 publications

Mortgaging Europe's Periphery

Mortgaging Europe's Periphery

Crisis and the Reproduction of Core-Periphery Relations on the Hungarian Housing Market

A Field of Contention: Evidence from Housing Struggles in Bucharest and Budapest

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