Housing Booms in Gateway Cities

HOUSING BOOMS IN GATEWAY CITIES
 
"David Ley examines the development of housing booms, and policies intended to stimulate or limit them. Utilising a comparative approach in five gateway cities, he provides a superb understanding of the politics of booms, lifting the debate beyond narrow housing and real estate studies. This book is required reading for anyone interested in global cities, housing markets, or comparative urbanism."
--Manuel B. Aalbers, Professor of Human Geography, KU Leuven, Belgium
 
"A stellar contribution to housing and its financialisation as central to the capitalist project globally, Housing Booms offers a wonderful window into the ascendancy of the secondary circuit of real estate in Singapore, Hong Kong, Sydney, Vancouver, and London. Critically, through careful, empirically rigorous comparison, an eminent urban social scientist urges us to understand the importance of placing urban housing theoretically."
--Loretta Lees, Director of the Initiative on Cities, Boston University
 
"Mastering a wealth of information and insights from five gateway cities, David Ley provides fresh and inspiring explanation of both common global logics and diverse local trajectories of housing booms in the era of financialisation and asset-based accumulation. A timely and ground-breaking contribution, (re)positioning housing to the centrality pervasively felt in everyday life but largely unacknowledged in mainstream social science."
--George Lin, Chair Professor of Geography, University of Hong Kong
 
In Housing Booms in Gateway Cities, renowned geographer Dr. David Ley delivers a detailed exploration of housing markets in Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney, Vancouver, and London and explains why these gateway cities have seen dramatic increases in residential real estate prices since the 1980s. The author describes how the globalization of real estate has rapidly inflated demand and uncoupled local housing prices from local wages, causing acute problems of affordability, availability, and inequality. The book implicates government policy in massive real estate price inflation, describing a shift from welfare-based to asset-based societies. It also highlights the relatively unique experience in Singapore, where asset-based housing policy has encouraged the dispersion of ownership and accumulation through an increased supply of subsidized leasehold apartments and the regulation of disruptive investment flows.
 
Housing Booms in Gateway Cities is an ideal resource for academics, students and policymakers with an interest in urban geography, sociology, and planning, housing studies, and any of the cities discussed in the book. It is an innovative treatment of housing as a central category in wealth accumulation in urban economies and societies.

List of contents

Series Editors' Preface viii
 
Acknowledgements ix
 
List of Figures xi
 
List of Tables xii
 
1 Introduction: Housing as Asset 1
 
The New Centrality of Housing 2
 
The Volatile Housing Markets of Gateway Cities 5
 
The Globalisation of Residential Markets 7
 
A Narrative of Key Relationships 10
 
Homeownership and Asset-based Welfare 13
 
Corollaries of Homeownership in Asset Society 17
 
Concerning Method 18
 
Notes 21
 
2 Singapore: Housing and Nation Building 23
 
The Busy Life of House and Home in Singapore 24
 
The Property State 30
 
Global Pressures... 36
 
...and National Defences 39
 
Reproducing Labour: Housing Costs and Fertility 45
 
The Immigration Fix 49
 
Tears in the Seamless Society: Housing Affordability 51
 
The 2011 General Election and Since 53
 
Conclusion 56
 
Notes 57
 
3 Housing Divides: Property and Society in Hong Kong 61
 
The Tycoons and the Property Market 63
 
Hong Kong's Land Supply 66
 
Collusion: A Cohesive Growth Coalition 68
 
Housing Prices and Their Causes 73
 
The Response of Government Policy 83
 
Cooling Measures 86
 
Inequality in the Housing Market and Beyond 89
 
Residential Alienation and Its Discontents 95
 
Conclusion 97
 
Notes 98
 
4 Sydney: Investors, Offshore Relations, and the 2013-2017 Residential Boom 102
 
Sydney's House Price Profile 105
 
Consequences of House Price Inflation 108
 
Maurice Daly and the International Drivers of Sydney's Property Market 112
 
From the British Empire to an Asian Hegemon: Australia Pivots 116
 
The Economic Contexts of the 2013-2017 Housing Boom 119
 
Off-shore Residential Investors: Evidence from the Foreign Investment Review Board 121
 
China and the 2013-2017 Real Estate Boom 124
 
Gifted Migrants from China 129
 
From External to Internal Relations: Investor Profiles 131
 
The Domestic Property Investor and Tax-Subsidised Rental Assets 134
 
From Financial Policy to Cooling Measures 137
 
Housing Policy: What Policy? 139
 
Conclusion 141
 
Notes 144
 
5 Vancouver: From Housing Deregulation to Reregulation? 149
 
Vancouver Housing: The Back Story 152
 
Ownership, Assets, Gains 155
 
Spring 2015: An Emerging Counter-Narrative 158
 
The Angus Reid Survey and the Shaking of an Ideology 161
 
Governments and Elections: All Change 164
 
Towards Reregulation? Clipping the Libertarian Wings of the Real Estate Council 166
 
Serious Reregulation? 169
 
Assessment: Reregulation Achieved? 173
 
Conclusion 178
 
Notes 181
 
6 London 2012: The Best of Times, the Worst of Times 184
 
London's House Prices 187
 
The Significance of Prime London 190
 
'The World Capital for Property Investment' 196
 
Opaque Investment and Money Laundering 201
 
Global Property Developers 203
 
The Supply-Demand Imbalance 205
 
Public Policy and the Transformation of Housing Supply 209
 
Austerity: The Metanarrative 213
 
Austerity Vs. Social Housing 215
 
Conclusion 220
 
Notes 223
 
Contents vii
 
7 Conclusion: The Place of Housing 228
 
Intercity Generalisations 229
 
Gateways and Nations 229
 
Housing Booms in Time and Space 230
 
The Globalisation of Residential Markets 232
 
Housing Inequality 235
 
H

About the author

David Ley, PhD, is Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Millionaire Migrants: Trans-Pacific Life Lines and The New Middle Class and the Remaking of the Central City. He has been awarded the Massey Medal of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and the Distinguished Scholarship Award of the Association of American Geographers.

Summary

HOUSING BOOMS IN GATEWAY CITIES

"David Ley examines the development of housing booms, and policies intended to stimulate or limit them. Utilising a comparative approach in five gateway cities, he provides a superb understanding of the politics of booms, lifting the debate beyond narrow housing and real estate studies. This book is required reading for anyone interested in global cities, housing markets, or comparative urbanism."
--Manuel B. Aalbers, Professor of Human Geography, KU Leuven, Belgium

"A stellar contribution to housing and its financialisation as central to the capitalist project globally, Housing Booms offers a wonderful window into the ascendancy of the secondary circuit of real estate in Singapore, Hong Kong, Sydney, Vancouver, and London. Critically, through careful, empirically rigorous comparison, an eminent urban social scientist urges us to understand the importance of placing urban housing theoretically."
--Loretta Lees, Director of the Initiative on Cities, Boston University

"Mastering a wealth of information and insights from five gateway cities, David Ley provides fresh and inspiring explanation of both common global logics and diverse local trajectories of housing booms in the era of financialisation and asset-based accumulation. A timely and ground-breaking contribution, (re)positioning housing to the centrality pervasively felt in everyday life but largely unacknowledged in mainstream social science."
--George Lin, Chair Professor of Geography, University of Hong Kong

In Housing Booms in Gateway Cities, renowned geographer Dr. David Ley delivers a detailed exploration of housing markets in Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney, Vancouver, and London and explains why these gateway cities have seen dramatic increases in residential real estate prices since the 1980s. The author describes how the globalization of real estate has rapidly inflated demand and uncoupled local housing prices from local wages, causing acute problems of affordability, availability, and inequality. The book implicates government policy in massive real estate price inflation, describing a shift from welfare-based to asset-based societies. It also highlights the relatively unique experience in Singapore, where asset-based housing policy has encouraged the dispersion of ownership and accumulation through an increased supply of subsidized leasehold apartments and the regulation of disruptive investment flows.

Housing Booms in Gateway Cities is an ideal resource for academics, students and policymakers with an interest in urban geography, sociology, and planning, housing studies, and any of the cities discussed in the book. It is an innovative treatment of housing as a central category in wealth accumulation in urban economies and societies.

Product details

• Authors: David Ley, David (University of British Columbia Ley
• Publisher: Wiley, John and Sons Ltd
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 20.07.2023
• EAN: 9781119853596
• ISBN: 978-1-119-85359-6
• No. of pages: 336
• Series: Studies in Urban and Social Change; IJURR Studies in Urban and Social Change Book Series
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Geosciences > Geography; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories; Soziologie, Architektur, Geographie, Architecture, Sociology, Geography, Stadtsoziologie, Stadtentwicklung, Urban Development, Stadtgeographie, Urban Sociology, Urban geography