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Speculating on London's Housing Future City analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action ISSN: 1360-4813 (Print) 1470-3629 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccit20 Speculating on London's housing future Joe Beswick, Georgia Alexandri, Michael Byrne, Sònia Vives-Miró, Desiree Fields, Stuart Hodkinson & Michael Janoschka To cite this article: Joe Beswick, Georgia Alexandri, Michael Byrne, Sònia Vives-Miró, Desiree Fields, Stuart Hodkinson & Michael Janoschka (2016) Speculating on London's housing future, City, 20:2, 321-341, DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2016.1145946 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2016.1145946 Published online: 06 Apr 2016. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 654 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ccit20 Download by: [177.19.33.140] Date: 15 April 2016, At: 11:04 CITY, 2016 VOL. 20, NO. 2, 321–341, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2016.1145946 Speculating on London’s housing future The rise of global corporate landlords in ‘post-crisis’ urban landscapes Joe Beswick, Georgia Alexandri, Michael Byrne, So`nia Vives-Miro´, Desiree Fields, Stuart Hodkinson and Michael Janoschka London’s housing crisis is rooted in a neo-liberal urban project to recommodify and finan- cialise housing and land in a global city. But where exactly is the crisis heading? What future is being prepared for London’s urban dwellers? How can we learn from other country and city contexts to usefully speculate about London’s housing future? In this paper, we bring together recent evidence and insights from the rise of what we call ‘global corporate land- lords’ (GCLs) in ‘post-crisis’ urban landscapes in North America and Europe to argue that London’s housing crisis—and the policies and processes impelling and intervening in it— could represent a key moment in shaping the city’s long-term housing future. We trace the variegated ways in which private equity firms and institutional investors have exploited distressed housing markets and the new profitable opportunities created by states and supra- national bodies in coming to the rescue of capitalism in the USA, Spain, Ireland and Greece in response to the global financial crisis of 2007–2008. We then apply that analysis to emer- ging developments in the political economy of London’s housing system, arguing that despite having a very low presence in the London residential property market and facing major entry barriers, GCLs are starting to position themselves in preparation for potential entry points such as the new privatisation threat to public and social rented housing. Downloaded by [177.19.33.140] at 11:04 15 April 2016 Key words: private equity, housing crisis, dispossession, global corporate landlords, London Introduction is dominated by evidence and platitudes over rising property prices and plunging s this Special Feature makes clear, affordability, and for good reason: London London, more than anywhere else in is now the unrivalled king of the global prop- Athe UK, is experiencing an acute, per- erty league for the super-rich, with prime vasive and socially explosive housing crisis so property values rising faster than any major severe and polarising that it has become the city in the last decade (Knight Frank 2015). city’s number one political issue. The crisis Ordinary Londoners meanwhile wilt under # 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group 322 CITY VOL. 20, NO.2 average house prices of £500,000 (in October suddenness and severity of the global finan- 2015)—more than double the country cial crisis conjured illusions that the neo- average (Land Registry 2015)—and by far liberal game was up, in reality, the co-consti- the highest average private sector rents in tutive relationship between finance and urban the UK (Anderson 2015), with landlords space so central to neo-liberalisation has con- increasingly empowered to choose their tinued to develop with new asset classes tenants and a growing willingness to engage emerging and new financial and investment them in rental price bidding wars (Lunn strategies being pursued. This paper focuses 2014). No wonder evictions and homeless- on one such post-crisis development—the ness are on the rise. The London housing vulture-like move by private equity firms crisis does not stand uncontested from and other institutional investors to accumu- below and is generating an embryonic late wealth from the dispossession experi- ‘urban social movement’ (Castells 1983) enced by millions of people through pushing at the political space opened up by foreclosures (repossessions) of distressed the recent election as Labour Party Leader residential real estate and mortgages. These of a leading anti-privatisation voice in the corporate vultures precisely target crisis con- shape of Jeremy Corbyn. But with the crisis texts, exploiting household precarity, home worsening all the time, looming around the loss, state programmes to recapitalise banks corner is a palpable sense that once the Con- through buying up and selling on toxic servative Government’s current Housing and debts and assets, and the wider structural Planning Bill (House of Commons 2016) reverse from home ownership to renting becomes law, its intended radical assault on that was kick-started by the global financial the remaining public housing stock and the crisis. security of tenure and affordability it once This paper tracks the rise of GCLs in four guaranteed will accelerate the class cleansing of the worst-hit national housing markets of London begun under the Coalition Gov- during the 2007–2008 financial crisis—the ernment (2010–15) (Hodkinson and USA, Spain, Ireland and Greece—and exam- Robbins 2013). ines what this might tell us about the possible If this is the today and tomorrow of the future trajectory of the London housing London housing crisis that authors elsewhere system. A first section draws out what we in this Special Feature examine, our focus call the ‘Blackstone Connection’ between here is on its longer-term repercussions. our four post-crisis urban contexts, showing Drawing speculatively on the initial findings how GCLs like Blackstone—one of the Downloaded by [177.19.33.140] at 11:04 15 April 2016 of an ongoing international research project world’s largest private equity firms—are investigating the growing transnationalisa- taking over and profiting in these landscapes. tion of housing systems,1 this paper suggests We then analyse the finance-led real estate that the rise of private equity firms as boom and bust in the countries mentioned nascent ‘global corporate landlords’ (GCLs) above, subsequent state action to restore in the ‘post-crisis’ urban landscapes across this mode of accumulation and the nature of the USA, Spain, Ireland and Greece might the re-emerging real estate–finance link be a harbinger of London’s housing future. with respect to the fundamental aspects of By post-crisis we are referring not to the GCLs’ role in the restructuring of the post- definitive end of crisis but rather to the crisis housing markets. The analysis is built immediate aftermath of the extreme struc- on a comparative methodology that traces tural conditions and uncertainties that similar trends and processes over the boom, characterised the dramatic crisis events of bust and post-crisis periods in each national 2007–2008 and which can now be seen as housing system using both official data and facilitating new rounds of ‘accumulation by an interpretative account of how state pol- dispossession’ (Harvey 2003). While the icies, regulatory structures and investor BESWICK ET AL.: SPECULATING ON LONDON’S HOUSING FUTURE 323 activities are transforming and reorganising that 25% of its housing in any city is afford- the relationship between finance and urban able to people on low incomes (Right to the space. We then apply that analysis to emer- City Alliance 2015). But Blackstone has also ging developments in the political economy become a symbolic nemesis for housing cam- of London’s housing system, arguing that paigners, an example of how the ongoing despite the present (low) exposure of decline in home ownership rates, constrained London residential property to GCLs and mortgage credit and a post-crisis surge in major entry barriers, the picture is beginning rental demand are enabling global investment to change in ways analogous to these other companies to become private landlords with countries, reinforced by the concerted unprecedented power over their tenants, efforts of the state and a league of real who have in turn faced the loss of rent subsi- estate–financial complex intermediaries to dies, unwarranted eviction notices, and exor- rapidly make markets, and create new asset bitant rent increases and additional charges classes. While acknowledging that none of (Call, Powell, and Heck 2014; Dowsett the comparators represent cases directly ana- 2014; Garcia 2015; Ingliss 2015; Van der logous to London, and that we are employing Voo 2015). Facilitated by enabling states highly variegated and diverse national and and available private finance, GCLs like urban contexts to comment on a single city, Blackstone are targeting severely underva- we nevertheless discern clear lessons for lued property markets, where large-scale London from a comparative analysis of acquisition of (distressed) residential these national case studies. We conclude by assets—ideally high volume portfolio pur- arguing that a key task for activism in pre- chases—can be executed rapidly, before the venting London’s housing crisis from becom- housing market ‘normalises’. The devaluation ing a future corporate dystopia is to block off of the targeted housing markets, the potential the main entry point to global corporate for impressive capital gains later and the landlordism in London, namely, the current opportunity to use residential assets as the government’s privatisation assault on public basis for financial instruments means they and social rented housing.
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