EEI SEMINAR: "From mortgage securitisation to REITs: Dispossession and financialised housing 2.0 in Spain?"

Title:  "From mortgage securitisation to REITs: Dispossession and financialised housing 2.0 in Spain?"

Speaker: Melissa García-Lamarca, ICTA-UAB

Moderator/Discussant: James Connolly, ICTA-UAB

Date: Wednesday, 18^th October 2017

Time: 12.30 h

Place: Z/023 ICTA-UAB

 

Abstract

This presentation explores the role of Spanish Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs, known as SOCIMIs) in the country’s expanding rental market, honing in on the socio-spatial dynamics of these new corporate structures in the city of Barcelona. Focus is placed on residential SOCIMIs being created by largest global private equity firm, Blackstone, a company whose 2017 corporate objective in Spain is to be the country’s largest landlord. I propose that Blackstone’s SOCIMIs manifest a new housing regime born from dispossession, with this emerging financialised housing 2.0 model built from the ashes of hundreds of thousands of mortgage foreclosures and the public bail out of the previous mortgage securitisation based housing model. Upon outlining the historic and political economic context of Spain’s rental market and the emergence of SOCIMIs, 110 Blackstone rental properties in Barcelona are mapped alongside various socio-economic datasets, and a social media group created by Blackstone tenants provides insight on common problems they face. I will unpack the implications of these findings vis-à-vis the dynamics of fictitious capital, the new geographies of financialised (rental) housing and housing access and affordability in the city more broadly.

Bio

Melissa García-Lamarca is a post-doctoral researcher at ICTA’s Barcelona Laboratory for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability. She has a PhD in Geography from the University of Manchester (2016) and became involved as a researcher-activist with the Platform for Mortgage Affected People (PAH) in Barcelona and Sabadell in 2013 when researching mortgage debt and struggles against indebtedness. Her current research focuses on the financialisation of rental housing, the financial dynamics behind urban greening, as well as the broader processes and implications of green gentrification.