How and Why U.S. Single-Family Housing Became an Investor Asset Class

Christophers, Brett

doi:10.1177/00961442211029601

Cited by 27 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…More broadly, the valuation of workplace flexibility through investment in platform infrastructure indicates the role of finance in rewriting and restructuring labour (Adkins, 2020), implying an extension of current geographical approaches to assets that have tended to focus more on contained spatial sites such as housing and land (Christophers, 2023; Ouma, 2020). The drive in this workplace geography of platform infrastructure is not primarily to search for spaces that form ‘new asset streams’ (Leyshon & Thrift, 2007, p. 98), but rather to flexibly construct existing space through arrangement and coordination, engaging it in a ‘future‐orientated narrative’ in which it will continue to responsively provide capacities for work to take place (Nadaï & Cointe, 2020, p. 153).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How is the platform a workplace? Moving from sites to infrastructure

Richardson

2023

Trans Inst British Geog

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Platforms indicate a partial but critical shift from the workplace as site to the workplace as infrastructure. Instead of focusing on platforms as mediators of labour, this article asks: how is the platform a workplace? Platforms involve a distinctive geography, creating flexible space that challenges clear distinctions between the inside and outside of the workplace and its action. It is this issue of the location of the structure for action in platformised work that is the problem of infrastructure. Infrastructure, as studies in information work have demonstrated, exists through practices that resolve the tensions between broader structures for activity and specific enactments. The implications of this workplace infrastructure approach have not yet been fully addressed in contemporary social science research on platforms and work. The article begins by outlining how workplaces are not simply sites where work occurs but rather contingently structure work. It then shows how infrastructure names the socio‐technical constitution of this contingent structuring of workplaces, which allows both standardisation and flexibility in information work. These two insights are combined in the infrastructural qualities of platforms that produce workplaces as contingent structures, with the socio‐technical practices of arrangement and coordination as the spatial drivers of workplace flexibility. As infrastructure, the platform workplace is understood as compositor of work; its parameters shape the occurrence of working activity, at the same time as work taking place also alters the parameters of the workplace. This infrastructural approach illuminates other agencies shaping work beyond employer and employee, in turn implying that the study of platform workplaces as infrastructure can shed light on the functioning of contemporary economic activities beyond work.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How is the platform a workplace? Moving from sites to infrastructure

Richardson

2023

Trans Inst British Geog

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“…Before the foreclosure crisis, there were few institutional financial investors in the American rental market. When millions of Americans lost their homes, they were bought by private equity firms, who, in turn, rented those homes to many of those same Americans (Christophers 2023, Mari 2020. With Blackstone at the vanguard, investment firms began to view single-family housing as a new asset class (Christophers 2023, Fields 2018.…”

Section: The Commodification Of Housingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Real estate purchases by foreign nationals and investment firms are regarded as a major source of housing unaffordability and commodification by the American public (Mari 2020, Story andSaul 2015). Capitalizing on the huge price drop on homes in the aftermath of the 2007-2009 financial crisis, investment firms like Blackstone have made the financialization of homes one of their core business strategies (Christophers 2023). Blackstone now owns over 300,000 single family homes in the United States.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Americans Evaluate Fairness in the Housing Market: An Experimental Approach

2023

Preprint

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Homeownership is regarded as a cornerstone of the American Dream. However, housing has become increasingly unaffordable for average Americans as growing numbersof elites and corporations buy houses as financial investments. This article thus investigates Americans’ moral beliefs on who should be able to purchase a house in the United States. Drawing on the morals and markets tradition from economic sociology and the deservingness scholarship from cultural sociology, I use an original conjoint survey experiment on a national sample of Americans (N = 1,983) to answer the question: "What type of buyer do Americans believe is the fairest to sell a house to?" The findings reveal a surprising divergence from market fundamentalism. Americans, regardless of political affiliation, believe it is fairer to sell to fellow citizens intending to use the home as their primary residence over the highest bidder. Open-ended responses find that concerns about investors pricing out ordinary Americans outweigh potential financial gain, highlighting buyer deservingness, previously overlooked bysociologists, as a central component of market fairness. These results identify a stark misalignment between Americans’ moral values and the current reality of the housing market, providing theoretical and empirical insights for scholars studying morals and markets, housing, and inequality.

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“…Hotspots of foreclosed single-family homes in the US Sunbelt gave way to a single-family rental (SFR) market owned largely by institutional investors (Fields, 2018; Immergluck and Law, 2014). Consolidated ownership of these assets has created a “near-oligopolistic control of SFR in some neighborhoods” (Charles, 2020: 17) that has given investors potential pricing power (Christophers, 2021) and the ability to exercise anticompetitive conduct in the form of evictions (Seymour and Akers, 2021). These dynamics now spillover into the multifamily market.…”

Section: Building a Monopolymentioning

confidence: 99%

An antitrust framework for housing

Tapp

Peiser

2022

Environ Plan A

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This article contributes to debates within the financialization literature by examining the rise of monopolies in the US’ rental housing market. Drawing on a dataset of multifamily real estate transactions taken from the poorest census tracts in the US (so-called Opportunity Zones), we develop an antitrust framework and methodology for measuring market structure in housing using the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index. After detailing the geography of these market dynamics, we assess the specific strategies firms use to acquire market power and extract monopoly rents. This analysis reveals three critical aspects of real estate investors’ anticompetitive conduct: integration between housing subsectors, acquisition strategies that rapidly scale up ownership, and corporate forms that promote cooperation. The framework developed in this article and subsequent findings offer three directions policymakers, regulators, and activists can take to reform antitrust law and better ensure affordable housing.

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How and Why U.S. Single-Family Housing Became an Investor Asset Class

Cited by 27 publications

References 8 publications

How is the platform a workplace? Moving from sites to infrastructure

How is the platform a workplace? Moving from sites to infrastructure

How Americans Evaluate Fairness in the Housing Market: An Experimental Approach

An antitrust framework for housing

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