The uncoupling of house prices and mortgage debt: towards wealth-driven housing market dynamics

Hochstenbach, Cody; Aalbers, Manuel B.

doi:10.1080/19491247.2023.2170542

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…The failure of the SSK to increase the proportion of households with a mortgage indicates that the price increases were driven by a minority of households with certain equity and higher income, for whom the SSK presents an opportunity to increase their housing wealth. This resembles the wealth-driven dynamics that Hochstenbach and Aalbers (2023) identified in the Netherlands.…”

Section: Conclusion: the Contradictions Of Domestic-led Growth Throug...supporting

confidence: 68%

The Role of Mortgage Subsidies in the Croatian Economic Growth Strategy: a Political-Economy Approach to the SSK

Fernández¹,

Bežovan²

2023

CHA

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Since 2017, Croatian housing policy has focused on promoting homeownership through the SSK programme – a form of mortgage subsidisation that covers a proportion of housing costs. Although this policy aimed to improve affordability and increase homeownership, a recent economic evaluation has shown that the SSK has in fact contributed to rising house prices and has been ineffective at raising the homeownership rate. While econometric research has identified the impact that the SSK has had on house price volatility and affordability, the underlying factors leading to the implementation of this subsidy, as well as its broader societal impacts, remain under-researched. Through a political-economy lens, this paper analyses the context that led to the inception of the SSK, its core targeting principles, and its impact on the housing market. We ask: How does this subsidy position the Croatian housing market within the national strategy for economic growth and social policy provision? We argue that this policy’s impact on housing markets is twofold. First, the SSK reinforces a shift towards financialised growth through increased asset prices. Second, this subsidy shifts the focus of social policy towards mortgage markets, thereby furthering the privatisation of the welfare state and favouring middle-income groups. This paper’s contribution resides in critically discussing the SSK beyond its stated goals and contextualising it within the broader model of economic growth dependent on private finance. Through interviews with relevant stakeholders, descriptive data indicators, and a review of policy documents, this paper characterises the Croatian growth strategy as a form of small-scale financialisation that relies on aligning social policy with mortgage markets. Finally, we position the SSK within a wider array of finance-led housing policies and suggest the formulation of a comprehensive housing strategy tailored to the broader segments of Croatian society.

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Section: Conclusion: the Contradictions Of Domestic-led Growth Throug...supporting

confidence: 68%

The Role of Mortgage Subsidies in the Croatian Economic Growth Strategy: a Political-Economy Approach to the SSK

Fernández¹,

Bežovan²

2023

CHA

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“…A related general explanation of increased investment potentials is financialisation of real estate, connecting capitalists and landowners (Clark & Pissin 2020, p. 4) and, more particularly, the expansion of mortgage markets (Kallin 2020). However, the extent of housing markets' financialisation depends on a number of social and institutional factors (Bernt 2022, p. 108), and, as we present this below, the assumed universally linear relation between the expansion of mortgage markets and housing price increase (Kallin 2020) is actually more complex (see also Hochstenbach & Aalbers 2023).…”

Section: Multiple Ways Of Creating Rent Gapsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Before 2008, most of the lower-status mortgage takers became primarily owner occupiers and not landlords. Nowadays, owners and speculators relay more on their accumulated family wealth than on financialisation (see also Hochstenbach & Aalbers 2023).…”

Section: Mortgages Gentrification Commodificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Housing Commodification and Increasing Potential Ground Rents in Post‐Socialist Budapest

Olt,

Simonovits,

Bernát

et al. 2023

Tijd voor Econ & Soc Geog

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In post‐socialist Budapest, gentrification has remained modest for decades after the regime change (1989) due to politically controlled economic relations besides marketisation. Political control was transformed but maintained after 2010 in the illiberal Orbán regime. Populist housing privatisation for tenants, insufficient regulation of rental housing, mortgage policy and urban rehabilitations with systemic corruption caused moderate level of housing market commodification. However, gentrification accelerated from 2014. Among other factors, the restriction of mortgage lending and the unplanned expansion of tourism increased the commodification of real estate market. Similar contextual issues were mentioned in the gentrification literature before; however, they remained external modifying effects of the assumed nomothetic political economic mechanisms behind rent gaps under neoliberal governance assumed everywhere. We suggest connecting institutional, social and political factors with dynamics of land rent through the concept of commodification and its effects on potential ground rent to include them within the mechanisms of gentrification.

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“…Does the change of scale witnessed in the volume and depth of data, the monopolistic trends or the enrolment of households into stratifying data regimes (Fourcade & Healy 2024) equal to a change in the nature of housing markets? Are digital experiments precipitating something fundamentally different or 'simply' adding a 'booster' layer to the asset logic that dominates housing markets (Hochstenbach & Aalbers 2023) and predates platforms and algorithms? While racial inequalities constitute the empirical arc of value creation by dispossession, which market is hiding below the institutional rentier's new (digital) clothes: the same one, as theorised and described by post-GFC studies, or a different one?…”

Section: An Unfinished Fourth Momentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Maps, Apps and Race: The Market as a Theoretical Machine

Migozzi

2024

Tijd voor Econ & Soc Geog

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My commentary situates Desiree Fields' lecture within a long‐standing movement that, paying attention to real estate data and techniques of property, turned the housing market into a theoretical machine. I understand her intervention as a fourth and pivotal conceptual moment in the study of housing markets and inequalities for the discipline of geography, for it brings racial capitalism and settler colonialism as theoretical starting points to analyse the political economy of housing in the era of digital property technologies. As such, her lecture opens up a welcome, ambitious, yet also uncertain terrain to advance global urban theory under platform capitalism and stimulate relational approaches in housing studies. Discussing the regularities through which race, technology and property shape housing and wealth inequalities across variegated sites of market‐making provides a conceptual horizontality that acknowledges the United States as a testing ground, rather than a ground truth, for the production of geographical knowledge.

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The uncoupling of house prices and mortgage debt: towards wealth-driven housing market dynamics

Cited by 8 publications

References 69 publications

The Role of Mortgage Subsidies in the Croatian Economic Growth Strategy: a Political-Economy Approach to the SSK

The Role of Mortgage Subsidies in the Croatian Economic Growth Strategy: a Political-Economy Approach to the SSK

Housing Commodification and Increasing Potential Ground Rents in Post‐Socialist Budapest

Maps, Apps and Race: The Market as a Theoretical Machine

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