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How real estate became ‘just another asset class’: the financialization of the investment strategies of Dutch institutional investors

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  • Jannes van Loon
  • Manuel B. Aalbers

Abstract

The managers of a growing wall of money are continuously searching for investment opportunities. The financialization literature describes how this mobile capital puts pressure on commodities, debt, public services and economic activities to transform into investable, tradable, financial products. Regarding real estate, these investigations show how opaque, local, non-standardized goods, highly depending on both local legislation and developments, have been transformed into liquid, globally traded financial assets. By analysing the real estate investment strategies of Dutch institutional investors since the 1980s, this paper shows how a quantitative framework increasingly provides the basis for institutional investors’ real estate investment strategies. Direct ownership of properties has been exchanged into shares of properties, that is, fictitious capital, creating an impetus for ‘objectified numbers’ to measure the performance of these indirect investments. As knowledge about real estate has been outsourced, Dutch institutional investors now perceive real estate increasingly as ‘just another asset class’, thereby increasing leverage and volatility. This paper not only shows how finance ‘financialized’ itself by adopting a quantitative investment perspective, but it also offers an empirical account on how investment properties are transformed into financial assets that put pressure on state agencies to mobilize urban planning to deliver more of such assets.

Suggested Citation

  • Jannes van Loon & Manuel B. Aalbers, 2017. "How real estate became ‘just another asset class’: the financialization of the investment strategies of Dutch institutional investors," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(2), pages 221-240, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:eurpls:v:25:y:2017:i:2:p:221-240
    DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2016.1277693
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Antoine Paccoud, 2020. "The top tail of the property wealth distribution and the production of the residential environment," International Journal of Housing Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(1), pages 100-119, January.
    2. Eakin, Hallie & Keele, Svenja & Lueck, Vanessa, 2022. "Uncomfortable knowledge: Mechanisms of urban development in adaptation governance," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    3. Cian O’Callaghan & Pauline McGuirk, 2021. "Situating financialisation in the geographies of neoliberal housing restructuring: reflections from Ireland and Australia," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 53(4), pages 809-827, June.
    4. Natacha Aveline-Dubach, 2022. "Financializing nursing homes? The uneven development of health care REITs in France, the United Kingdom and Japan [Financiariser les maisons de retraite médicalisées ? Le développement inégal des f," Post-Print halshs-03549729, HAL.
    5. Guo, Chong & Jiang, Yalin & Yu, Fang & Wu, Yingyu, 2023. "Does environmental information disclosure promote or prohibit financialization of non-financial firms? Evidence from China," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 200-214.
    6. Cody Hochstenbach & Richard Ronald, 2020. "The unlikely revival of private renting in Amsterdam: Re-regulating a regulated housing market," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(8), pages 1622-1642, November.
    7. Natacha Aveline-Dubach, 2022. "Financializing nursing homes? The uneven development of Health Care REITs in France, the United Kingdom and Japan," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 54(5), pages 984-1004, August.
    8. Callum Ward, 2021. "Contradictions of Financial Capital Switching: Reading the Corporate Leverage Crisis through The Port of Liverpool's Whole Business Securitization," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(2), pages 249-265, March.
    9. Alison Todes & Jennifer Robinson, 2020. "Re-directing developers: New models of rental housing development to re-shape the post-apartheid city?," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(2), pages 297-317, March.
    10. Richard Waldron, 2019. "Financialization, Urban Governance and the Planning System: Utilizing ‘Development Viability’ as a Policy Narrative for the Liberalization of Ireland's Post‐Crash Planning System," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(4), pages 685-704, July.
    11. Frances Brill & Daniel Durrant, 2021. "The emergence of a Build to Rent model: The role of narratives and discourses," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 53(5), pages 1140-1157, August.
    12. Muhammad Adil Rauf & Olaf Weber, 2021. "Urban infrastructure finance and its relationship to land markets, land development, and sustainability: a case study of the city of Islamabad, Pakistan," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 23(4), pages 5016-5034, April.
    13. Mirjam Büdenbender & Manuel B. Aalbers, 2019. "How Subordinate Financialization Shapes Urban Development: The Rise and Fall of Warsaw's Służewiec Business District," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(4), pages 666-684, July.
    14. Yuping Ning & Rohaya Binti Abdul Jalil, 2023. "Private Placement of China-Listed Real Estate Firms: A Conceptual Idea," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 16(12), pages 1-23, December.

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