The social construction of real estate market risk. The case of a financial investments cluster in Mexico City

Abstract

This article contributes to the study of the geographical concentration of financial investments in real estate markets. It demonstrates the social construction process at work in the evolution of real estate market risks. The objective is to highlight the conditions that allow or impede the implementation of ‘opportunistic’ and ‘conservative’ risk strategies. By analyzing the market entry of financial investors in the Cuautitlan industrial real estate market - an ‘emerging’ real estate market in Mexico City - this paper demonstrates that, due to the joint action of land developers, non-financial as well as financial real estate investors, this market moved from being ‘too risky’ to becoming an opportunistic market, and then a conservative one. There were two important phases in the transformation process. First, the contribution of land developers was fundamental to the transformation of the market from being too risky to being opportunistic from the perspective of financial investors. Two different types of land developers are evident: some are not willing to help financial investors’ entry in the market while others developed a business plan designed to facilitate financial investments. In the second phase of the market’s risks transformation, opportunistic financial investors enabled the conditions for the arrival of conservative financial investors, thanks to their presence in emerging markets and the diffusion of information.