Open research questions in Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism

What the literature leaves open

• Further work is needed to complement the present conceptual framework with empirical and socio-legal investigation, including case studies on the implementation of cohousing arrangements, judicial interpretation of emerging legal categories, and the lived experiences of residents within different regulatory contexts.

  The interplay between private autonomy and social solidarity as the legal dilemma of senior cohousing · 2026 · DOI

• Where references used to rely on phone calls, they are now largely automated through online forms, with a mix of closed and open questions that can be customised by the property manager. Reforms to date have also typically been oriented toward restricting the data collection practices of landlords and property managers, leaving their applicability to PropTech providers an open question. Their real-world impact is not yet fully understood, as many of the AI provisions are yet to come into force. While there has been a rapid expansion of digital platforms, little is known about what data is being collected and how, especially in the social housing sector. Current regulatory frameworks are insufficient to address these emerging challenges. Given that these technologies mediate access to housing—a fundamental right—it is worth conducting further research into whether such services should be publicly funded or provided by private companies. However, as digital systems continue to evolve, the potential for AI-driven decision-making in this space warrants further scrutiny.

  Implications of tenant data collection in housing: protecting Australian renters · 2026 · DOI

• Statistics NZ conducted the survey and calculated sample weights so as to make results nationally representative. However, the study does have limitations. It is possible some respondents selected ‘housing costs too expensive/moved to a cheaper house or flat’ rather than ‘tenancy was ended by landlord’ if their tenancy had been terminated for non-payment of rent, but only 5.9 per cent of respondents selected the ‘housing costs too expensive’ answer and adding them into the models made no meaningful difference to the results. Details of the individual or household were collected at the time of the Survey, which was administered after any move. This is an important limitation to the household demographic data used in our analysis. While few people will have changed their sex, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, other characteristics have the potential to have changed © 2026 The Author Journal Compilation © 2026 PPP People, Place and Policy (2026): 20(1), pp. 90-121 p. 103. Landlord-ended tenancy (eviction) risk in Aotearoa New Zealand private rentals when the respondent moved. In most instances, the potential bias arising from this data gap is towards the null. Risk by age will have been skewed slightly upwards, however the age groups are wide and average length of tenancy short, so the skew will be small. In reporting demographic characteristics as risk factors for landlord-ended tenancy, we recognise that except for single-person households, the risk attaches not (only) to the individual, but also to the person’s household. However, it also means that characteristics of other household members associated with higher forced moves were unable to be measured, potentially underestimating any effect. The inclusion criteria for the study will also have excluded people living in ‘emergency’ or ‘transitional housing’ (Human Rights Commission, 2022) from the analysis, estimated at 2,879 and 2,341 people respectively in June 2018 (Ministry of Social Development, 2018). Although some of these people may have been in employment, and total numbers represent only a small proportion of total unemployed, it is possible that findings for people who were unemployed could have been skewed by those in worst housing deprivation being excluded from the analysis. The 2018 data show a lower likelihood of landlord-ended tenancy than Witten et al.’s 2015 tenant survey (Witten et al., 2017). It is not possible to tell whether the difference is due to changes in property investor sales activity, to different sampling methodologies, or to some other difference between the data sources. It is also important to note that while the Survey sampling resulted in a roughly representative proportion of public and community housing sector tenants (16 per cent of currently renting respondents), at the time of the survey NZ’s central government public housing provider was phasing in a ‘Sustaining Tenancies’ programme, aiming to work with tenants to avoid eviction except in rare circumstances (Mailing, 2022). The subsequent government ended the ‘Sustaining Tenancies’ policy in 2024, adding further tenure insecurity to present-day renters. Other factors identified as risks in other studies, such as job loss, mental illness, hoarding disorder, experience of violence, neighbourhood crime, or substance abuse problems, were not able to be measured in this study.

  Landlord-ended tenancy (eviction) risk in Aotearoa New Zealand private rentals · 2026 · DOI

• https://housingevidence.ac.uk/publications/the-pandemic-arrears-crisis/ ‘eviction the the on of © 2026 The Author Journal Compilation © 2026 PPP People, Place and Policy (2026): 20(1), pp.

  Entry, Exposure and Exit: The private rented sector landlord conveyor · 2026 · DOI

• With a small number of active homes in the UK, little is known about how people find life in these innovative homes and adjust to the combination of technologies that they encompass.

  “I Can’t Imagine Living Anywhere Else”: A Qualitative Longitudinal View of Low Carbon Home Residence · 2025 · DOI

• We consider an important but under-studied example of this "climate-proofing" strategy unfolding today: Residential Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) finance.

  Financing “climate-proof” housing? The premises and pitfalls of PACE finance in Florida · 2023 · DOI

• We discuss how national and international regulations remain insufficient in ensuring that every day and structural maintenance is conducted properly by financialised landlords, leaving tenants stuck with delayed and poor‐quality repair and replacement work as well as insufficient communication, severely affecting their quality of life.

  Flowing <scp>Capital‐Disrupted</scp> Homes: Financialisation and Maintenance of Rental Housing in Sweden · 2023 · DOI

• Our contribution is twofold: firstly, we conceptualize renovation of housing as a commodifying process, within the realm of financialization, most often carried out brutally and contributing to housing inequality; secondly, our contribution is empirical as it covers housing renovation from a relational and contrasting perspective in a field that is still under-studied in the Scandinavian context.

  Predatory commodification and housing renovation · 2022 · DOI

• In response to this gap in the literature, I propose in this contribution a threefold research agenda, calling out for more research on (i) financial market reforms aimed at dismantling finance-led housing accumulation; (ii) policy focused on strengthening the public and affordable housing sector; and (iii) changing modes of urban governance and ‘anti-political’ social movements which can contest housing financialization locally.

  The de-financialization of housing: towards a research agenda · 2020 · DOI

• Also, it was found that under-declaration of income evident in states where there is relaxed verification and lack of data sharing between states and with federal governments, among others, are the root cause of weak compliance to computerised ORS.

  Unravelling the encumbrances in the low-cost housing computerised open registration system in Malaysia's major cities · 2020 · DOI

• These entry points relate to relatively understudied structural transformations of our urban housing systems implicated in the rise of BtR, namely: (1) the diversification of build-to-sell development models; (2) the evolution of the private rental sector; and (3) labour market–housing market realignments.

  Build-to-Rent and the financialization of rental housing: future research directions · 2019 · DOI

• This article sheds light on the role of less visible, less considered relations (beyond intergenerational assistance) that are currently being marshalled by low and middle-income households in Melbourne (Australia) and showcases the under-explored breadth of dependencies that exist between co-resident non-spousal adults.

  Caring Households: The Social Ties that House · 2018 · DOI

• Though SIBs have been the focus of a growing policy and academic literature, little is known about the work of building the SIB market infrastructure, the actors performing this labor, and the challenges and struggles encountered along the way.

  Surveying the SIB economy: Social impact bonds, “local” challenges, and shifting markets in urban social problems · 2018 · DOI

• In this paper, I argue that in order to formulate new federal housing and homeownership policy goals, the underlying vision of property rights that informs such policy needs to be examined and re-oriented to one that recognizes the nature of property (specifically with regards to residences) as an interconnected and contextualized regime.

  The American Dream, Deferred: Contextualizing Property After the Foreclosure Crisis · 2014

• The paper concludes that, while, superficially, HMR may now appear incongruous with the new focus on housing supply, there is insufficient evidence that lasting change in low demand markets has yet been brought about and that consequently the premature scaling back of the programme would be ill-advised.

  Housing Market Renewal in an era of new housing supply · 2007 · DOI

• As Doling (1999) reveals, studies of housing policy of the new industrialised countries in the Asia Pacific region, namely, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, remain relatively lacking in the western literature.

  Fifty Years of Public Housing in Hong Kong: A Golden Jubilee Review and Appraisal · 2005

• Indeed, although the signs are that Part M will be incrementally extended to comprise LTH principles, the paper argues that in their existing form they are insufficient to act as a key component of the government's ‘new agenda for British housing’.

  Regulation and innovation: rethinking ‘inclusive’ housing design · 2004 · DOI

• This article is a direct response to Culpitt (1999: 10), who has recently argued that ‘concepts of risk, particularly of Beck's thesis of risk society and the various meanings associated with it, have not been explored fully in relation to social policy’.

  Housing policy, housing management and tenant power in the ‘risk society’: some critical observations on the welfare politics of ‘radical doubt’ · 2001 · DOI

• The concept of filtering is about one hundred years old, yet much remains to be done to solidify a common understanding of the process and its policy implications-not the least of which is to clearly distinguish filtering's processesfrom its results, and to clarify whether the focus is on households or housing units.

  The Filtering of Households and Housing Units · 1988 · DOI

• While social scientists have rarely investigated the effects of home ownership, they have studied participation in voluntary organizations in great detail (Riger and Lura Kas, 1981; Hyman and Wright, 1971).

  Participation in Voluntary Organizations Among Moderate Income Home Owners and Renters · 1985 · DOI

• As, unlike ‘architect’, the term ‘surveyor’ is not protected and limited to the qualified and registered, it would seem that an adjoining owner, in whose ranks the property manager is presumably to be found, can appoint his sister, cousin, aunt or, if he is determined upon gross nepotism, his grandson, rather than a specialist in the field.

  Party walls for property managers · 1983 · DOI

• ABSTRACT This article discusses the use made of the ‘Austrian’ concept of entrepreneurship in the present British government's policy discussions, and, using an ‘Austrian’ method of argument, demonstrates that there is a deep-seated inconsistency in its policies which suggests that it, along with the administrations of a number of other western democracies including the United States, has not fully understood the implications of the doctrines to which it appears to have committed itself.

  Entrepreneurship and Government Policy: The Case of the Housing Market · 1981 · DOI

• ” ~ ~ 14 “Although the measures so far taken have effected much improvement”, said the Circular, “there is an almost universal agreement that many evils still remain to be remedied. 2OSir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, 18361908; Financial Secretary to War Office 1871-4 and 1880-2; Secretary to the Admiralty 1882-4; Chief Secretary for Ireland 1884-5; Secretary for War 1886 and 1892-5; Prime Minister 1905-8: a little known Prime Minister.

  Towards Exchequer Subsidies for Housing 1906–1914 · 1972 · DOI

• ” 12 The exact distribution of functions between board and staff varies widely in different authorities, and there is little in the way of codified guidelines as to which matters fall under whose province.

  Housing authorities reconsidered · 1969 · DOI

• to speed up the hearing process, 3 Nebraska Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Legislative Processes, September 1956.

  One house for 20 years · 1957 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism

• The Variegated Financialization of Housing · International Journal of Urban and Regional Research · 2017 · 401 citations
• The global urban housing affordability crisis · Urban Studies · 2017 · 376 citations
• Automated landlord: Digital technologies and post-crisis financial accumulation · Environment and Planning A Economy and Space · 2019 · 237 citations
• Pride and Prejudice: Discourses of Normalisation in Public and Private Accounts of Home Ownership · Housing Studies · 1999 · 177 citations
• Low-income Homeownership: American Dream or Delusion? · Urban Studies · 2006 · 173 citations
• Build-to-Rent and the financialization of rental housing: future research directions · Housing Studies · 2019 · 150 citations
• The false promise of homeownership: Homeowner societies in an era of declining access and rising inequality · Urban Studies · 2020 · 145 citations
• ‘Generation rent’ and the emotions of private renting: self-worth, status and insecurity amongst low-income renters · Housing Studies · 2019 · 141 citations
• Racialized geographies of housing financialization · Progress in Human Geography · 2021 · 139 citations
• Mind the rent gap: Blackstone, housing investment and the reordering of urban rent surfaces · Urban Studies · 2021 · 116 citations

Most recent work

• Framing the housing crisis: narratives of housing supply and planning reform · International Journal of Housing Policy · 2026
• Climbing a rickety ladder: asset-based welfare and precarious owner occupation in the UK · New Political Economy · 2026
• Housing opportunities and family reciprocity: intergenerational support for young people and the role of housing and welfare policy in Hong Kong · Journal of Social Policy · 2026
• Hyperreal Paradise Lost and Rebuilt · New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids · 2026
• A Century of Housing Policy in Portugal and Italy: A Comparative Process-Tracing Analysis · Housing Theory and Society · 2026
• Housing provision: A comparative study of housing availability, accessibility, and adequacy in EU member states · Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy · 2026
• The Stigmatized Homeowner: Variegated Debt Moralities, Credit-Score Governance, and the Making of UK Mortgage Prisoners · Housing, Theory and Society · 2026
• The Financialization of European Social Care: A Descriptive Network Analysis · Governance · 2026
• ‘It’s a matter of politics’: selective knowledge use in Danish housing policy · International Journal of Housing Policy · 2026
• The political aspects of “full housing”: What if paying landlords to house people doesn’t work? · Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space · 2026

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