On the eve of the financial crisis, the USA was inhabited by almost 70 percent homeowning households, in comparison to about 45 percent in Germany. Homeownership, Renting and Society presents new evidence showing that this homeownership gap already existed between American and German cities around 1900. Existing explanations based on culture, government housing policy or typical socio-economic factors have difficulties in accounting for these long-term cross-country differences. Using historical case studies on Germany and the USA, the book identifies three institutional domains on the supply-side of the housing market – urban land, housing finance and construction – that set countries on different housing trajectories and subsequently established differences that were hard to reverse in later periods. Further chapters generalize the argument across other OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries and extend the explanation to cover historical differences in homeownership ideology and horizontal property institutions. This enlightening volume also puts forward path-dependence theories in housing studies, connects housing with vast urban-history and political-economy literature and offers comprehensive insights about the case of a tenant’s country which contradicts the tendency towards universal homeownership. Providing an all-new historic-institutionalist explanation of the German–American homeownership gap, this title will be of interest to postgraduate students and scholars interested in fields including: Housing Studies, Sociology, Urban History, Political Economy, Social Policy and Geography. It may also be of interest to those working in housing field organizations and ministries.

This volume provides a comprehensive analysis of how politics shape housing markets and vice-versa. It demonstrates how housing impacts a variety of social and political phenomenon including populist politics, generational divides, wealth inequality, monetary policy, and the welfare state. Housing and housing markets have important implications for economic stability, public policy, domestic politics and wealth inequality in Europe and beyond. Yet despite its importance, housing has received relatively little attention in comparative politics scholarship. The contributions within this volume push the scholarship of housing into fresh, innovative directions. The chapters focus on housing’s contribution to wealth inequality, how housing constrains governments’ policy choices in welfare state reform and how it can strengthen governments’ hands in financial regulation. Other contributions reveal the impact of housing on central bankers’ motivations for implementing monetary expansion, highlight the generational divide in gaining access to home-ownership, demonstrate how housing-driven wealth inequality steers voters political preferences towards right-wing populism, and explain how housing gradually shifted from being a social right to an object of investment in Europe, even within its most egalitarian states. These contributions cover a diversity of cases in Western and Eastern Europe and theoretical paradigms that will appeal to scholars and policy makers alike. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of West European Politics.

In light of demographic change and the growing problems of traditional old-age security systems, this book discusses two essential instruments in connection with privately providing for old-age security: (1) savings in private pension schemes and (2) building up equity for home-ownership. Further, it assesses the relationship between the two instruments and offers a unique overview of the latest market developments. In order to represent the profound differences between the individual member states of the EU, this book features six country-specific studies – covering Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom – that provide detailed insights into the complexity of local private pension schemes, mortgage markets, and housing markets. Lastly, the book discusses public policies and fiscal incentives intended to better integrate residential property with private pensions. It will appeal to both, private households seeking to build up old-age security, as well as policy makers interested in providing secure pension schemes.

This dynamic Research Handbook explores key perspectives, topics and methodologies used to understand housing, the home and society. Pairing social theory with a broad range of case studies from the Global North and South, it offers a unique insight into the field.

This cross-national comparative study analyzes the relationship between social inequality and the attainment of home ownership over the life course in 12 countries.

German economic crises from the past two hundred years have provoked diverse responses from journalists, politicians, scholars, and fiction writers. Among their responses, storylines have developed as proposals for reducing unemployment, improving workplace conditions, and increasing profitability when stock markets tumble, accompanied by inflation, deflation, and overwhelming debt. The contributors to Invested Narratives assess German-language economic crisis narratives from the interdisciplinary perspectives of finance, economics, political science, sociology, history, literature, and cultural studies. They interpret the ways German society has tried to comprehend, recover from, and avoid economic crises and in doing so widen our understanding of German economic debates and their influence on German society and the European Union.

Over the last decade, Spain has become an emblem of the contradictory relationship between capitalism and housing. During the house-price boom of the 2000s, Spain built homes on an unprecedented scale, with output levels that overshadowed those of every major European economy. Nevertheless, when the fortunes of real estate markets turned, a wave of repossessions ensued, and a massive number of households were thrown out into the street as a sizeable portion of the housing stock was lying vacant. In turn, the implosion of Spanish residential capitalism triggered an intense wave of unrest that has come to shape a decade of political turmoil. This book uses the Spanish case to bring to light, and theorise, the workings of residential capitalism. The author traces the evolution of residential provision from the nineteenth century to the present, situating the transformation of the housing market in a context of ongoing social change and conflict. The book shows how the present needs to be understood by looking at the historical process through which residential provision became subsumed under the logic of capitalist accumulation but also at a long genealogy of struggles around urbanisation and housing, the outcomes of which remain crystallised in Spain’s urban institutions. The author reveals how both residential capitalist development and urban social conflict have constituted each another, casting light on the historical relationship between housing crises, urban unrest, and the evolution of real estate markets. The book develops a historicist framework to understand residential capitalism, an important contribution for an age in which real estate markets have come to determine the rhythms of global capital. Addressing key issues and debates in the field, including the financialisation of housing, the politics of scale and urban entrepreneurialism, the political economy of the Eurozone, and the history of capitalist development, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of political economy, as well as those engaged in crossover fields such as housing studies, urban geography, or financial geography.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach this book provides a cutting-edge, in-depth account of social policy research today, how we got here, and where future research should be headed. It defines the core research agenda for the future covering multiple social policy fields, including care, family, health, and housing policy as well as gender equality, labour market policy, and welfare attitudes.

The private rental housing market plays an important and growing role in the advanced economies. Providing accommodation for a wider range of households than before the global financial crisis, rental housing is also a key asset class for private individuals and companies, while the rise of Airbnb lettings has pushed up rents and reduced the number of homes available to residents. This edited collection by leading experts in the field analyses recent changes in the private rental market, using case studies from the UK, Europe, Australia and the USA, and assesses the initial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Offers information by linking developments on home ownership with developments in the financial and labor markets in the context of globalization. This book is the conclusion of a body of research that started with a workshop held at the University of York in October 2000, and which resulted in the book Globalisation and Home Ownership.