# The de-financialization of housing: towards a research agenda (May 2020)

* **The de-financialization of housing: towards a research agenda**
* By Gertjan Wijburg. Published in the Housing Studies journal on 22 May 2020
* <https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2020.1762847>
* **Abstract**:
  * **Housing financialization, or the increased dominance of financial markets in the housing sector, has not stopped in the wake of the crisis**. Rather, it has reinforced and rescaled itself, expanding into new market segments and urban territories.
  * However, while academic scholarship has convincingly exposed the reconfiguration of financialization processes, **it has paid surprisingly little attention to how these processes are also contested from within society and the economy**.
  * 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**.
  * Taking into account these three fields of inquiry, I invite housing scholars to explore how –and if– de-financializing tendencies can become ecologically dominant in post-crisis urban housing markets.&#x20;
* **Keywords**: housing crisis, financialisation, financialization, de-financialisation, de-financialization, investment funds, investment banks, academic research, organised response