The financialisation of rental housing: A comparative analysis of New York City and Berlin

TLDR

Comparative studies of financialisation reveal geographically disparate yet similar exposures, informing a critical urban politics of finance that transcends space, sector, and scale. The study compares how recent private‑equity real‑estate investment waves have reshaped rental housing markets in New York and Berlin. The authors conduct a secondary analysis of separate primary research projects to examine financialisation’s impact on tenants, neighbourhoods, and urban space. Financialisation intensified housing affordability and stability inequalities, reshaped abandoned and gentrified spaces, and, aided by weakened rental protections, converted affordable housing into a global asset class, while its adaptability to market shifts drives ongoing uneven development.

Abstract

This paper compares how recent waves of private equity real estate investment have reshaped the rental housing markets in New York and Berlin. Through secondary analysis of separate primary research projects, we explore financialisation’s impact on tenants, neighbourhoods, and urban space. Despite their contrasting market contexts and investor strategies, financialisation heightened existing inequalities in housing affordability and stability, and rearranged spaces of abandonment and gentrification in both cities. Conversely cities themselves also shaped the process of financialisation, with weakened rental protections providing an opening to transform affordable housing into a new global asset class. We also show how financialisation’s adaptability in the face of changing market conditions entails ongoing, but shifting processes of uneven development. Comparative studies of financialisation can help highlight geographically disparate, but similar exposures to this global process, thus contributing to a critical urban politics of finance that crosses boundaries of space, sector and scale.