The Techno-politics of Rental Housing Financialization: Real Estate Service Companies and Technocratic Expertise in Australia’s Build to Rent Market

IF 7.2 1区经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS

Economic Geography Pub Date : 2022-12-06 DOI:10.1080/00130095.2022.2140038

M. Nethercote

{"title":"The Techno-politics of Rental Housing Financialization: Real Estate Service Companies and Technocratic Expertise in Australia’s Build to Rent Market","authors":"M. Nethercote","doi":"10.1080/00130095.2022.2140038","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article argues private expertise is a driving force behind the global expansion of rental housing financialization and, particularly, the making of build to rent (BTR) assets and markets. It develops this argument by investigating Australia’s underexamined BTR market and global real estate service companies (RESCs) as ubiquitous yet unscrutinized intermediaries in this new financialization frontier. Its analysis heeds calls to attend to assetization, as the process of turning things into assets, deploying science and technology studies-inspired marketization approaches, which understand markets as sociotechnical assemblages, and their prior integration with critical political economy of financialization. This approach is enhanced by engaging with the techno-politics of market-making scholarship, which sensitizes assetization approaches to the politics of expertise. This conceptual move respecifies market devices (i.e., material and discursive assemblages of market making) as knowledge contingent (i.e., that require and assert expert knowledge) and provides conceptual terrain to explore the rule of private experts in assetization. Analysis of interviews, media, and industry reporting reveals how RESCs’ epistemic, discursive, and technical efforts format the emergent market, making BTR assets thinkable, visible, calculable, and transactable. This article repositions rental housing financialization as a techno-political project led in nontrivial ways by private experts who act as financializing champions and as intermediaries connecting global finance and local sites, through advisory, valuation, brokerage, and lobbying. This contributes to understandings of the expanding global geographies of rental housing financialization and project ecologies behind urban production. Underscoring the power of private expertise to reconfigure housing markets recasts concerns surrounding market reliance as urban housing crisis salves.","PeriodicalId":48225,"journal":{"name":"Economic Geography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":7.2000,"publicationDate":"2022-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"3","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Economic Geography","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00130095.2022.2140038","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 3

Abstract

Abstract This article argues private expertise is a driving force behind the global expansion of rental housing financialization and, particularly, the making of build to rent (BTR) assets and markets. It develops this argument by investigating Australia’s underexamined BTR market and global real estate service companies (RESCs) as ubiquitous yet unscrutinized intermediaries in this new financialization frontier. Its analysis heeds calls to attend to assetization, as the process of turning things into assets, deploying science and technology studies-inspired marketization approaches, which understand markets as sociotechnical assemblages, and their prior integration with critical political economy of financialization. This approach is enhanced by engaging with the techno-politics of market-making scholarship, which sensitizes assetization approaches to the politics of expertise. This conceptual move respecifies market devices (i.e., material and discursive assemblages of market making) as knowledge contingent (i.e., that require and assert expert knowledge) and provides conceptual terrain to explore the rule of private experts in assetization. Analysis of interviews, media, and industry reporting reveals how RESCs’ epistemic, discursive, and technical efforts format the emergent market, making BTR assets thinkable, visible, calculable, and transactable. This article repositions rental housing financialization as a techno-political project led in nontrivial ways by private experts who act as financializing champions and as intermediaries connecting global finance and local sites, through advisory, valuation, brokerage, and lobbying. This contributes to understandings of the expanding global geographies of rental housing financialization and project ecologies behind urban production. Underscoring the power of private expertise to reconfigure housing markets recasts concerns surrounding market reliance as urban housing crisis salves.

查看原文本刊更多论文

租赁住房金融化的技术政治:房地产服务公司和技术专家在澳大利亚的建设租赁市场

摘要本文认为，私人专业知识是租赁住房金融化全球扩张背后的推动力量，特别是建造租赁(BTR)资产和市场的形成。本文通过调查澳大利亚未被充分审视的BTR市场和全球房地产服务公司(RESCs)来发展这一论点，这些公司在这个新的金融化前沿无处不在，但却未经审查。它的分析需要关注资产化，作为将事物转化为资产的过程，部署科学和技术研究启发的市场化方法，将市场理解为社会技术的集合，以及它们与金融化的关键政治经济学的先前整合。这种方法通过参与做市学术的技术政治而得到加强，这使资产化方法对专业知识的政治敏感。这一概念举措将市场设备(即做市的材料和话语组合)重新定义为知识偶然(即需要和主张专家知识)，并为探索私人专家在资产化中的规则提供了概念领域。对采访、媒体和行业报告的分析揭示了RESCs在认知、话语和技术方面的努力是如何塑造新兴市场的，使BTR资产变得可想象、可见、可计算和可交易。本文将租赁住房金融化重新定位为一个由私人专家以非凡的方式领导的技术-政治项目，这些专家通过咨询、估值、经纪和游说，充当金融化的拥护者和连接全球金融和当地网站的中介。这有助于理解租赁住房金融化和城市生产背后的项目生态的不断扩大的全球地理。强调私人专业知识在重新配置住房市场方面的力量，重新引发了人们对市场依赖的担忧，因为城市住房危机得到了缓解。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Economic Geography Multiple-

CiteScore

9.70

自引率

2.90%

发文量

期刊介绍： Economic Geography is a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to publishing original research that advances the field of economic geography. Their goal is to publish high-quality studies that are both theoretically robust and grounded in empirical evidence, contributing to our understanding of the geographic factors and consequences of economic processes. It welcome submissions on a wide range of topics that provide primary evidence for significant theoretical interventions, offering key insights into important economic, social, development, and environmental issues. To ensure the highest quality publications, all submissions undergo a rigorous peer-review process with at least three external referees and an editor. Economic Geography has been owned by Clark University since 1925 and plays a central role in supporting the global activities of the field, providing publications and other forms of scholarly support. The journal is published five times a year in January, March, June, August, and November.