Abstract

The private rental sector is making a surprising comeback in many countries. Both institutional investors and affluent individuals have turned to real estate as an appealing asset class to invest in. In this presentation, Cody Hochstenbach will unravel the liberal politics driving private-rental growth. While mainly drawing on the Dutch case, his arguments have wider remit. Decades of promoting homeownership through the expansion of mortgage markets paved the way for a revival of private landlordism (“buy-to-let”). Recent housing policies have further enhanced investors’ appetite for real estate as an asset class, among other thing by strengthening landlord power over tenants. The revival of private landlordism results in the concentration of property and wealth. Taken to its extreme, the end result would be the formation of a class of rentiers and renters – the property-rich and the property-poor. This has important implications for various inequalities, in terms of housing affordability and accessibility (who gets what?), in terms of wealth accumulation potential and spatial segregation.

Cody Hochstenbach (www.codyhochstenbach.com) is a postdoctoral researcher in urban geography at the University of Amsterdam. In 2017 he defended his PhD thesis Inequality in the gentrifying European city (Cum laude) at the same university. His research focuses on spatial inequality (segregation, gentrification), housing politics and housing inequality. In 2019 he received a three year VENI grant from the Dutch Research Council for his project Investing in inequality: how the increase in private housing investors shapes social divides. Cody is a regular contributor to the Dutch public debate, among other things by writing a bi-weekly column for television broadcaster RTL. He has published, among others, in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Urban Studies, Political Geography, Urban Geography, Environment and Planning A and Housing Studies.