From tenants to subscribers: Digital experiments in residential rent extraction

Abstract

Rent relations from landed property are increasingly being leveraged for experimentation with new forms of value capture via digital technologies. Inspired by platform corporations, real estate actors are constantly trialling innovations for deepening and extending residential rent extraction. This paper sheds light on these mounting experiments using the case of co-living, a real estate sector with a strong elective affinity to corporate capitalist technology. First, it documents attempts to optimise the rent-generating potential of real estate assets themselves via spatial surveillance and dynamic pricing. Second, it highlights efforts to establish forms of techno-economic enclosure beyond the limits of buildings via housing memberships and subscriptions. In so doing, the paper contributes to an emerging body of literature on the intersection between digital and residential rentierism.