The internationalization of commercial real estate markets in France and Germany

Abstract

This paper investigates the internationalization of the commercial real estate markets of France and Germany, markets typically ignored in comparative political economy. Although both markets are embedded in Continental European capitalism, their trajectories of internationalization are variegated. After exploring how processes of internationalization are processed within each country, we show how these processes have played out in the commercial real estate markets of France and Germany. The French state played a key role in guiding processes of internationalization: the introduction of new tax regimes allowed French property companies to raise capital at the stock exchange. The case of Germany demonstrates the continued importance of the banking sector for real estate investment markets. Although the typical characteristics of the French and German political economies are strengthened in this process, agents also feel the need to respond to the interests of international investors by creating Real Estate Investment Trust-like systems to absorb domestic and foreign capital.

Neoliberal Europeanisation, Variegated Financialisation: Common but Divergent Economic Trajectories in the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Germany

“…By contrast, in Germany financial assets and liabilities of households remained low – although there is some evidence suggesting increasing household reliance on finance (Wijburg & Aalbers ). This trend is likely to be consolidated as large parts of the social housing sector have been privatised and rental levels in large German cities have increased alongside a need for housing as a form of asset‐based welfare (Wijburg & Aalbers ; see Ronald 2015) while market‐based banking begins to penetrate the country’s domestic banking industry (Wijburg & Aalbers ).…”

The Variegated Financialization of Housing

“…The increasing financialization of non‐financial firms has been noted across a wide range of industries, for example the car industry (Froud et al ., ; ), the so‐called ‘new economy’ (Feng et al ., ), retail (Baud and Durand, ), computing (Froud et al ., ), pharmaceuticals (Gleade et al ., ), insurance (Wissoker, ), aviation (Muellerleile, ), infrastructure (Torrance, ; Allen and Pryke, ; O'Neill, ; Ashton et al ., ) and real estate (Smart and Lee, ; Guironnet et al ., ; Wijburg and Aalbers, ). Many of the articles in this symposium provide further evidence for the financialization of traditionally non‐financial firms.…”

Transformation of the real estate and construction industry: empirical findings from Germany

“…The ways in which individual change processes affect the real estate industry and individual players are commonly part of real estate industry research. Several studies have examined the effects of urbanisation (Zhang 2001;Bart 2010;Deng et al 2015), globalisation (Currit and Easterling 2009;Falkenbach and Toivonen 2010;Vongpraseuth and Choi 2015;Wijburg and Aalbers 2017) and demographic change (Brounen and Eichholtz 2004;Kroll and Haase 2010;Just 2013Just , 2017Deschermeier and Voigtländer 2017). Toivonen and Viitanen (2016) have already noted that, although these studies provide valuable information about individual change processes, the lack of an overall context means that there is a paucity of research on the combined effects of the various change processes in the real estate industry.…”