Real Estate Speculation Research Articles

Urban placemaking and the commercial property investor/developer

AbstractReal estate investment companies direct substantial capital flows into built environments and are significant urban place‐makers. Geographers have long been interested in the ‘urbanisation of capital’ but more recently attention has been directed towards the activities of specific property actors. Employing a firm‐level analysis, this paper presents a case study of Kiwi Property, a large‐scale property company with an investment portfolio exceeding $3 billion. The study charts its corporate and financial dynamics and examines examples of its speculative real estate developments. Employing a firm‐level analysis offers insights into complex and contingent investment processes shaping urban placemaking.

Norita is the first of many self-managed community neighbourhoods to come: A conversation with organizers and residents of Barrio Norita Cortiñas in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area (Part II)

These two conversations with organizers and residents of Barrio Norita Cortiñas in Buenos Aires reflect the ongoing struggle for housing rights in Argentina. The discussions detail the development of the self-managed community, which emerged from land occupations in Guernica during the COVID-19 pandemic. The participants highlight the collective efforts to secure land through self-organization and assembly-based decision-making, ultimately purchasing land to establish a neighbourhood for 62 families. The conversations explore the obstacles faced, including government repression, real estate speculation, and economic challenges, while also emphasizing the critical role of feminist leadership and multisectoral collaboration in their fight for land and housing rights. Additionally, the residents connect their local struggle to broader national and international movements for land reclamation and workers' rights. This underscores the urgency of solidarity and collective action in confronting neoliberal policies and housing precarity.

Norita is the first of many self-managed community neighbourhoods to come: A conversation with organizers and residents of Barrio Norita Cortiñas in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area (Part II)

These two conversations with organizers and residents of Barrio Norita Cortiñas in Buenos Aires reflect the ongoing struggle for housing rights in Argentina. The discussions detail the development of the self-managed community, which emerged from land occupations in Guernica during the COVID-19 pandemic. The participants highlight the collective efforts to secure land through self-organization and assembly-based decision-making, ultimately purchasing land to establish a neighbourhood for 62 families. The conversations explore the obstacles faced, including government repression, real estate speculation, and economic challenges, while also emphasizing the critical role of feminist leadership and multisectoral collaboration in their fight for land and housing rights. Additionally, the residents connect their local struggle to broader national and international movements for land reclamation and workers' rights. This underscores the urgency of solidarity and collective action in confronting neoliberal policies and housing precarity.

The Impact of Airbnb Expansion on Real Estate Speculation in Marseille’s Tourist Areas

This paper investigates the impact of Airbnb’s expansion on real estate speculation in Marseille’s tourist areas, particularly focusing on the Old Port and Le Panier districts. By analyzing the correlation between the growth of short-term rental platforms and the increase in property values, the study explores how Airbnb has transformed the housing market, contributing to speculative investment and gentrification. The research examines the reduction in long-term rental housing, the rising cost of property, and the displacement of local residents as key outcomes of Airbnb’s proliferation. Through comparisons with similar European cities such as Paris and Madrid, the paper highlights the socio-economic consequences of Airbnb-driven real estate speculation, including shifts in neighborhood demographics and the loss of affordable housing for low- and middle-income residents. The findings emphasize the need for policy interventions to mitigate the negative effects of short-term rentals on the local housing market, balancing tourism-driven economic growth with the preservation of community stability and housing accessibility.

Living with, or despite, organized abandonment: social reproduction and real estate speculation on Chicago’s Large Lots

ABSTRACT Between 2014 and 2020, the city of Chicago sold hundreds of city-owned lots for a dollar to property owners across its South and West Side neighborhoods through the Large Lots program. An expedient way of returning city land to tax rolls and offsetting its holding costs, the city cast Large Lots as an effort to empower residents and turn vacant lots into vibrant neighborhoods. This article examines the labor of making vibrant neighborhoods. Against its erasure by the dominant planning imagination, I situate this labor as an important dimension of life's work under regimes of organized abandonment and their attendant economies of real estate speculation. Through interviews and participant-observation with lot owners, I demonstrate that Large Lots has reconfigured relations of responsibility and obligation around vacant land in ways that enroll residents’ social reproductive labor of land care into the production of investable landscapes. Through a property records analysis, I then show that this labor unfolds in tension with renewed channels for speculation established by Large Lots in program neighborhoods. These findings situate social reproduction as a generative vantage point for politically capacious understandings of real estate speculation and the uneven geographies of life-making it engenders.

Transhumance Urbanism as an Urban Otherwise: Inhabiting Agrarian Incompletion at the Intersections of Extended Urbanisation‐Extended Ruralisation

AbstractAmid the ongoing transformation of agrarian territories in peripheral geographies across the world through extended urbanisation, this paper delves into the persistence of peasant and pastoral strategies amidst the closing down effects of land enclosure and fragmentation. Based on ethnographic research conducted with transhumant pastoralists in Delhi National Capital Region, this paper finds that instead of diminishing under agrarian‐urban transformation, pastoralists reassign use value to the fallows, wastelands, and surpluses of real estate speculation, thereby crafting a transhumance urbanism beyond the sedentary ontology of land and property. Understood as an urban otherwise, this urbanism remakes the fragments of material incompletion inherent within the agrarian‐urban transformation, offering socio‐ecological alternatives beyond the current impasse. The paper discusses the tentative, unsettled, and transient nature of this urbanism, which is always inter‐mixed with its non‐urban other. Contributing further to the scholarship emerging at the interstices of urban and agrarian studies, this paper calls for further comparative research on the territorial adaptation of peasant and pastoral populations routinely excluded from capitalist urbanisation processes unfolding in peripheral regions where sizeable itinerant populations coexist with extreme pressures of land enclosure.

The Value of Sustainable Property Management in Real Estate: Evidence From Hong Kong

This study investigates whether sustainability in property management is valued by property buyers. Using a sample of 312,474 property transactions in Hong Kong from 2007 to 2021 and based on a hedonic pricing model, we find that the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance of property management companies is positively associated with housing prices, and that housing prices drop if property management companies experience ESG-related risk incidents. The results are robust when the sample is restricted to repeat-sales transactions and when using a location-based matching approach and an instrumental variable approach. Further analysis shows that housing prices increase with the social and governance performance of property management companies but not with their environmental performance. The negative effect of ESG incidents on housing prices increases if the incidents are reported by high-reach media. Homebuyers and nonlocal buyers are more willing to pay a premium for sustainability in property management than are real estate speculators and local buyers. Additional evidence suggests that ESG practices play a more significant role in affecting property value through lower risk or a higher rental income growth rate than through higher gross rents. Overall, this study provides evidence of the value of sustainable property management in real estate.

중개 실무자 관점에서 본 부동산 실거래 신고 제도의 문제점과 개선방안

The real estate transaction reporting system is designed to prevent real estate speculation and tax evasion due to double contracts, false or untruth reports, etc., and to ensure transparency in real estate transactions The Act on Reporting Real Estate Transactions was fully revised and went into effect on January 1, 2006. Due to the regulations of the real estate transaction reporting system, real estate speculation and tax evasion due to double contract writing and false/false reporting can be seen to have decreased to some extent, but cases of false reporting that differs from the actual transaction price have not disappeared. According to the Act on Real Estate Transaction Reporting, etc., if a real estate transaction is not reported or a false report is made, a fine is imposed. However, I know from experience in brokerage practice that the problem of real estate transaction reporting cannot be solved with the punishment standards alone. This study sought to find ways to improve the effectiveness of the real estate transaction reporting system by examining the problems of the real estate transaction reporting system from the perspective of brokerage practitioners and suggesting any shortcomings or areas for improvement in the system. Specifically, in this study, in relation to the problems and improvement measures of the actual real estate transaction reporting system, report manipulation due to false or false reports, proposals for unification of the reporting system and the establishment of a real estate exchange, controversy over those required to report, and cases of reporting of lease and monthly rent transactions. Major issues included clarification of reporting obligations and contract conclusion date standards. In addition, we hope that the real estate transaction reporting system will not be perceived as a regulation on real estate transactions, but will be reborn as a system that protects people’s property rights, ensures order and transparency in transactions in the real estate market, and provides various benefits related to real estate to the people.

Neighborhood renewal at stake: feedback on speculative redevelopment in setif, algeria

Introduction: This paper examines a type of real estate speculation that plays a key role in urban redevelopment, characterized by densification and unaffordability. Purpose of the study: The study aims to analyze how pericentral housing in the form of a garden city is being subjected to incremental renewal in the historic core of Setif, Algeria. It reflects on UN Sustainable Development Goal #11, Sustainable Cities and Communities, in terms of relationships between housing densification, loss of green spaces, and socio-economic implications. Methods: We used a survey strategy based on observation and a sustainability indicator questionnaire as quantitative sources as well as semi-structured interviews and focus groups as qualitative sources. Results: Our study revealed that the typological shift from single-family houses to multi-family apartment buildings is not driven by changing housing preferences, but rather by a profit-oriented land-use strategy. This shift has led to affordability issues and gentrification, which in turn challenge socioeconomic cohesion. The process of densification and apartmentization causes the erosion of the architectural character of buildings and the physical characteristics of the neighborhood. The study emphasizes the importance of proactive, participatory, and inclusive methods in urban planning and management for a bottom-up approach to counteract speculative neighborhood renewal driven by liberal policies. It proposes a densification toolkit to promote the principles expressed in the sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Shelter in Place

In this article, we interrogate the representation and construction of public park space in a settler colonial city: Toronto/Tkaronto. First, we draw on the relationship between urban neoliberalism and prudentialism to demonstrate the way public health authorities in Toronto/Tkaronto promoted a neoliberal ideology of prudentialism that emphasized individual action (e.g., social distancing, personal hygiene, sheltering in place) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, we consider the extent to which this response congealed and combined with broader anxieties that were used to manage more than the virus. We focus specifically on the way these anxieties took hold in public park space, and in particular the response to encampment communities. We theorize prudentialism, as an instrument of the white settler state, to interrogate the twin processes of organized abandonment and organized violence (Gilmore 2022), which were made visible in the treatment of unhoused people amidst the pandemic in an affluent and seemingly progressive city in a nation now known as Canada. Recognizing that COVID-19 has afflicted global cities marred by real estate speculation and the continual reliance on the commodification of Indigenous Land, which has made homelessness and urban displacement a lived condition for some, we argue that public health crises result not from—and thereby cannot be solved by—prudential responsibilization, but from the willful ignorance of the neoliberal, capitalist white settler [real estate] state (Stein 2019).

How much did pandemic uncertainty affect real-estate speculation? Evidence from on-market valuation of for-sale versus rental properties

ABSTRACT We exploit a panel of Zillow Inc. property valuations to estimate the excess real-estate price growth observed in three California cities that is attributable to speculation triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our research design leverages the counterfactual comparison of properties listed for sale to properties listed for rent, with the latter property class being available for habitation – just not for purchase – and thus neutral to price speculation. We implement a pre/post-2020 difference-in-difference estimation, which utilizes unit-level matching of otherwise similar sale and rental properties within a 1/2-mile radius of each other to compare differences in (a) 1-month valuation changes and (b) spot valuation uncertainties. Results indicate post-2020 property valuations in Merced and San Jose featured an excess annual price estimate growth of 22% and 14.8% points, respectively, whereas the Fresno market does not feature statistically significant excess growth.

Taxes on real estate- an effective economic management tool in many countries worldwide and lessons for Vietnam

The state budget is a crucial political task for governments, with taxes being a significant source of revenue. In developed nations, property taxes constitute the primary source in total tax revenue and local budgets. Vietnam currently does not levy property taxes on real estate but only imposes taxes on agricultural land use and non-agricultural land use based on very low predetermined land values. Introducing property taxes not only generates a substantial and sustainable source of revenue for the budget but also helps curb speculation in land and real estate, promoting transparency in asset ownership. Due to a lack of comprehensive and standardized legal, technical, and economic statistics, and the rapidly changing market prices for land and real estate, formulating property tax laws in Vietnam has been challenging. Despite significant differences in conditions compared to other countries, property taxes are deemed essential in the near future. Researching theoretical foundations and the experiences of other nations in real estate tax laws, especially those undergoing economic transitions like Vietnam, is crucial. It is known that this tax has been under thorough examination to gradually develop, enact, and implement it in line with practical needs and, most importantly, to garner public and societal consensus.

Turismo comunitário, territorialidades e resistências: o caso do território quilombola do Cumbe (Aracati-Ceará-Brasil)

Tourism has gained increasing prominence in the context of globalised society. In Brazil, and with a strong emphasis on the coastal area of the Northeast region, there is a massive intensification of tourism services. Traditional communities located in the coastal zone of Ceará are affected by processes of real estate speculation, land expropriation, and their activities are also impacted by large-scale mass tourism projects. However, there is another form of tourism that preserves the environment, territorial identity, and promotes environmental justice - community tourism. The objective of this article is to present the results of an extension project carried out in the Quilombola community of Cumbe (Aracati-CE) focusing on community tourism. The methodology used was based on participatory research, where community members participated interactively in the project’s development. The results contributed to the organisation of local community tourism through capacity-building activities (courses), workshops, meetings, and the creation of a brochure on the paths of Community Tourism in Cumbe (Aracati-CE).

Auroville, the city of Nature's Yoga: material, spiritual and sustainable architecture and urbanism

This article aims to reflect on ongoing research that investigates cosmopolitical and spiritual practices in Auroville, an urban experience in southern India that emerged from the teachings of Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950), creator of Integral Yoga, philosopher, yogi, poet and icon of the nationalist struggle. This city adopts sustainable urban planning and architecture techniques that seek to be an example for the creation of a new human being integrated into the cosmos, living a collective life centered on the Yoga of Nature. Auroville aims to be "the city the world needs" and to inspire other cities towards sustainable practices, enabling a transformation in the world. The city center is a temple dedicated to concentration and meditation, but not linked to any religion. Ecological and spiritual practices act as guidelines for a more balanced and natural collective life, enabling an integration of material-spiritual architecture and urbanism with nature. The methodology used included in-depth interviews and participant observation during the field visit. The one-month experience in Auroville showed that, despite its many positive aspects, the contradictions inherent in such an experience are inevitable. The concentration of national and international resources, the recovery of the soil and forest, the solutions to guarantee drinking water supplies, roads, paths and infrastructure in general have changed the entire region. Spiritual tourism and commercial migration have contributed to a process of micro-regional real estate speculation. An internal conflict over the direction of the city and its surroundings, over the very integration of city-nature, is worrying Aurovillians today.

The expansion of the urban perimeter of Londrina-Pr combined with the peripheral construction of housing complexes: in search of a sustainable development

Under the dominance of the capitalist system, cities follow the logic of the market, since the interests of the most varied agents, such as land and real estate producers, with the consent of the State, determine the social production of urban space, a reality that can be found in the city of Londrina-PR. In this context, the objective of this article was to present what is - and if it exists - sustainability in the expansion of the urban perimeter of the city of Londrina-PR, having as a parameter the construction of housing complexes in peripheral areas of the city. To achieve this objective, the dialectic was used as a guiding paradigm, based on the document analysis method. It is concluded that despite being considered a relatively young city, Londrina-Pr was - and continues to be - the stage of an accelerated and disorderly territorial and population growth, where the construction of housing complexes contributed to the increase of the city's territorial area, placing in motion real estate speculation due to the emergence of large urban voids. This reality contributes to the perpetuation of a segregationist logic, where a large part of the population does not have access to basic infrastructure, demonstrating that the city does not have a sustainable development aimed at the quality of life of the population. There is an urgent need to change this reality.

Research on Influencing Factors of the Real Estate Market in Beijing

As a large-scale real estate industry, the real estate industry plays an important role in regulating the world economy. As a pillar industry in my countrys development, it plays an important role in promoting my country's GDP growth. Consumption and investment demand for real estate also have a significant impact on overall consumer demand. Many scholars at home and abroad have conducted relevant research on real estate demand factors. This article uses annual data from the China Bureau of Statistics and Beijing, selects Beijings GDP, per capita disposable income of all residents, etc. as explanatory variables, and uses the commercial housing sales area sarea as the explained variable. A multiple regression model was established to analyze the influencing factors of Beijing's real estate market demand. The results show that policy, income, population and housing price factors have a significant impact on demand. Among them, GDP, population change, and policy dummy variable factors have a positive impact, while housing prices and per capita income have a negative impact. Based on the conclusion, this article puts forward suggestions for narrowing the income gap, further curbing real estate speculation, maintaining a balance between supply and demand, paying attention to policy regulation, and using precise and powerful policies to regulate the entire industry, which has served as a reference for the development of the real estate industry.

부동산 허위 매물 계약취소의 개선 방안에 관한 연구

The timing of real estate transaction reporting is a critical factor in enhancing the transparency and stability of transactions. Currently, the reporting period for real estate transactions is kept short, within 30 days from the contract date, with the aim of providing quick information on real estate prices and reducing the distortion of prices. However, this policy has side effects due to false transactions and price issues.
 False transactions refer to trading houses or real estate at prices significantly different from their actual value. False transactions can affect phenomena such as real estate speculation and price agitation, making it difficult to grasp the actual market prices, and allowing some speculators to take unfair advantage of the price confusion caused by false transactions.
 Options for adjusting the timing of real estate transaction reports include reporting based on the final payment date or the registration date. Reporting based on the final payment date can prevent false transactions as it is reported after the transaction is completed, and reporting based on the registration date can prevent false transactions as it is reported after the transaction is legally completed.
 Adjusting the period for reporting real estate transactions is an effective solution to resolve issues of false transactions and pricing problems, and to enhance the stability of real estate transactions. Therefore, the government should actively review and implement adjustments to the reporting period for real estate transactions.

Urban Modeling in the Global South and Sustainable Socio-Territorial Development: Case of Puebla-San Andrés Cholula Urban Binomial, Mexico

To understand urbanization across the Global South, it is indispensable to consider situated heterogeneous urban situations shaped by global and local forces and their intersections. In the case of Mexico, the political and economic desire for globalization has extended beyond the great metropolis of Mexico City to mid-size cities triggering the formulation of their own urban strategies to become global. This paper explores the connections between neoliberal public policy, globalization, urban modeling, and socio-territorial sustainability in the territorial binomial of the city of Puebla and the municipality of San Andrés Cholula in the period of 2011–2017 and its current consequences, addressed by the local planning route map, and informed by the Orange Economy-guide of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), using relevant bibliographical sources, mapping, interviews of stakeholders, and fieldwork. The ultimate purpose of the research project described herein is to provide a multi-dimensional analysis of the development of the territorial situation of the Puebla-San Andrés Cholula-urban binomial, and of its current and potential future consequences, offering supporting information for its urban planning. The research results exposed here reveal urban modeling processes informed by the Global North urban globalization theory, development of global cities in the Global South, local socio-territorial dynamics characterized by economic and political interests imprinted in the public policy, and socio-territorial patterns inherited from the colonial past, resulting in socio-economic and racial discrimination, population displacements, real estate speculation, and risking ecological and environmental sustainability.

Discontinuous Urban Growth: A Discussion from the Perspective of Sustainability

Objective: The study analyzes the phenomenon of discontinuity in the growth of the urban fabric directly related to planning, urbanization and the sustainability of municipal management. The analyzes presented are directed to the case study of Vitória da Conquista, in the State of Bahia, Brazil. Theoretical framework: The study brings theoretical reflections on the issue of discontinuity in the city's urban fabric, correlating it to spatial segregation; public policy; optimization of installed infrastructure; the urban voids generated by real estate speculation, the actions of space transforming agents. Method: The Geographic Information System was used as a methodological instrument, with geoprocessing resources, using orbital data in raster format (satellite images) obtained from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), and vector cartographic bases available at IBGE. Results and conclusion: The growth of the city of Vitória da Conquista over the years resulted in a morphology with the creation of urban voids, with speculative purposes, where residual spaces were created with discontinuous growth, in a logic that restructures spaces in the urban area. Implications of the research: Access to urban rights or the right to the city of an indivisible nature, guaranteed by the 1988 constitution to all inhabitants of the city, of present and future generations. The equity of living, enjoying and participating in the production of fair, inclusive and sustainable cities. Originality/value: This research has academic value, as it supports public policies and urban planning, with the originality of the discussions presented.

Staging the New City: Urban spectacles and the ecological origins of Nayib Bukele's authoritarian populism

AbstractThis paper analyzes the connections between real estate speculation and authoritarian populism in El Salvador. Focusing on president Nayib Bukele's term as mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán (2012–2015), I examine the role speculative urbanism played in the crafting of his profile as a promising politician in the early years of his career. I trace how Bukele instrumentalized the ecosystem of Nuevo Cuscatlán's coffee forest as a means to fund a personalistic populist strategy whose main project called for the construction of a “New City.” This project involved the lifting of barriers to real estate investment to raise funds for social programs and municipal infrastructure. Its flipside was an aggressive process of deforestation and displacement of rural populations. Drawing on urban political ecology and critical agrarian studies, I argue that Bukele's New City project constituted a type of urban spectacle. This urban spectacle was rooted in two socio‐ecological dynamics: (1) The use of land as a revenue‐raising token of exchange; and (2) The fetishization of urban water infrastructure in the context of water scarcity. The paper concludes with various considerations about the destructive force of the link between authoritarian populism and urban extractivism in rural environments.