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The application of microfinance to the provision, improvement or adaptation of housing—'housing microfinance'—is an increasingly significant area of practice and research interest. Housing microfinance has proliferated, predominantly but not exclusively in the global South. Its proliferation must be understood in the context of financialisation and the concurrently growing importance of financial self-help and private real estate investment. Promoter perspectives emphasise the affordability of microfinance solutions for housing, their appropriateness for incremental housing strategies, and potentially interesting new business models. Critical perspectives emphasise the high costs and continual need for subsidies, risks faced by borrowers and the discipline demanded from them. To advance the debate, we present an analytical typology which maps different housing microfinance approaches in terms of how they connect finance with housing, whether they are credit-led or savings-led, whether the market or the state dominates, whether they are individualistic or community-oriented, and how formal or informal they are. The five articles in this special issue, presenting material from Kenya, Mexico, U.S.A, Thailand and Argentina, collectively advance six avenues of research on housing microfinance: (1) its immediate social impacts; (2) wider impacts in terms of housing affordability, markets and policies; (3) implications for construction and retailing markets; (4) consequences for urban development and societies, (5) the financial work required from participants; (6) and the significance of the ongoing experimentation in housing microfinance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a context of the state withdrawing from housing provision, despite a persistent shortage of affordable housing, housing policies in Buenos Aires, Argentina, have increasingly diversified. This paper contrasts two different credit-based approaches to low-income housing provision which have been implemented since the year 2000 in the City of Buenos Aires: collective mortgage loans for self-managed housing construction and improvement projects, embedded in a logic of 'social production of habitat'; and individual housing microloans, following a logic of financial inclusion for low-income households. We examine a case study of each approach and contrast the institutional shifts that have taken place during their implementation, the learning processes each approach facilitates for participants, and the details of how housing is produced in each approach. We conclude that, although housing microfinance and the social production of habitat may appear to follow contradictory logics, they can also be treated as complementary solutions that could be combined to address each other's shortcomings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Framed by an agenda of financial inclusion, housing for and by the poor has become a field of experimentation. These experiments have included the introduction of small, non-mortgage loans dedicated to the construction and improvement of self-organised housing. This paper provides a close reading of how such housing microfinance schemes have been introduced in Mexico with the support of the World Bank since the early 2000s. We highlight how the roll-out of the new schemes has been facilitated through several loans aimed at structural reforms of the Mexican housing sector. Yet while wrapped in a pro-poor discourse, it ultimately served the goal of expanding housing finance to low and middle-income groups. The ensuing implementation, however, was a complex and protracted process. We argue that it was characterised by experimentation, negotiations, and failures, both within state institutions as well as between state actors, World Bank representatives, and civil society. The conclusion presents Mexico's housing agendas as a field of finance-induced experimentation, in which institutional ruptures resulting from the changes in government rub against the long-term engagement of local housing associations and activists. The latter have played an important role in setting noteworthy limits to financially driven interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 2008 financial crisis, the City of Detroit has faced significant housing challenges: the conventional mortgage market in the city has collapsed; numerous residents are precariously housed; and urban 'blight' and property abandonment are widespread. This paper offers an empirical focus on one experimental approach to governing these problems: the roll-out of new forms of housing-related loans to low- and moderate-income (LMI) Detroit residents. Under the rubric of financial inclusion, private and public actors have promoted these loan programmes as a way to both improve the housing outcomes of financially excluded residents and reboot the city's mortgage market. The paper critically analyses these claims through a political economy lens, asking how, why and with what impacts housing-related financial inclusion programmes have been developed in post-crisis Detroit. The paper argues: (1) that these financial inclusion efforts are the products of an existing orientation toward market-based governance mechanisms and have grown out of a broader political project of property market revival; and (2) that in spite of their rhetorical commitments to improving the housing outcomes of LMI residents, many of the new loan programmes are ill-equipped to deliver on these promises in practice, prioritising market revitalisation over the needs of borrowers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Baan Mankong ('Secure Housing') programme of Thailand has been heralded as a model of participatory slum upgrading. Many scholars have praised its participatory and community-based processes, as well as its success in terms of going to scale. The celebration of the programme emphasises its particular model of housing finance, which includes community savings, housing cooperatives, and collective loans for physical upgrading provided through a government agency. This financial model, along with the collective and participatory processes it employs, form the foundation of the programme's claims to 'empowerment.' In this article, I offer a sympathetic critique of Baan Mankong by analysing how this financial model actually plays out on the ground through an in-depth ethnographic study of the policy and its participants. I conclude that, despite the policy's intentions to empower communities through access to collective finance, many participants find themselves struggling with debt and living under a new form of financialised community that reshapes their social relations with neighbours and burdens them with the responsibility for financing and carrying out development desired by the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between the late 1970s through 2013, state Housing Finance Agencies (HFAs) financed nearly $300 billion in mortgages to low‐ and moderate‐income first‐time homebuyers. Descriptive evidence indicates that HFAs help households retain their homes at higher rates than similar households purchasing homes in the private mortgage market. Using a matched sample of HFA originations between 2005 and 2014, we estimate a multinomial logit model of mortgage default (or foreclosure) and prepayment. We find that HFA borrowers are about 30 percent less likely to default or foreclose on their mortgages than otherwise similar non‐HFA borrowers. We find that 37 percent of this HFA effect can be explained by HFA origination and service delivery practices including direct servicing and homeownership counseling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to investigate the opportunities which accrue from application of PPPs in development of down market urban housing in Kenya, hence attracting private players to partner with the public sector. The provision of down market urban housing in Kenya faces challenges like: application of outdated technologies, inadequate innovation, financing and ineffective strategies. This has led to huge housing supply backlogs, estimated to be 2 million housing units, because the annual demand is 250,000 units, but only 50,000 can be produced. Stakeholders have therefore scouted for alternative strategies, including application of PPPs, to reduce the overreliance on public sector financing of housing. Delphi method was used to gauge the likely opportunities in the application of PPPs. A sampling frame constituting of housing developers, financiers and practitioners was used, out of which a population of 88 persons in three Delphi panels was used. A sample size of 30 persons in housing financiers, 28 developers and 30 housing practitioners was used. Three rounds of Delphi iterations were used. It was found out that PPPs brings opportunities like the leveraging of assets, capacities and strengths of partners, enhanced resource mobilization, technology, effectiveness and innovation in housing delivery. It was concluded that PPPs brings many opportunities which makes private sector attracted to the concept hence assisting in housing development. The conclusion is that owing to the benefits of applying PPPs, the concept can be used for increasing the housing stock in the country, especially for low income urban households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to analyze the efficiency of the policy direction to see if the government's purpose of relocating public institutions was achieved by analyzing the case of the Korea Housing Finance Corporation, which moved to Busan Metropolitan City in 2014. Based on the Korea Housing Finance Corporation's settlement management disclosure and public institution performance evaluation report from 2009 to 2019, efficiency was compared and analyzed using DEA analysis, work efficiency in management performance evaluation report, and financial ratio. The analysis results are as follows. First, in the case of DEA analysis, the difference in efficiency before and after fat transfer was not noticeable. Second, the efficiency analysis using the performance evaluation report and the financial ratio showed that the efficiency decreased after local relocation. Taken together, in the case of the Korea Housing Finance Corporation, efficiency decreased after local relocation, which can be attributed to sluggish business performance and inefficiency related to financial ratios. However, this study has limitations because it conducted an analysis on the Korea Housing Finance Corporation. To compensate for this, it is necessary to diversify the scope of research targeting all fund-managed quasi-governmental institutions in Korea. Nevertheless, this study is the first study to analyze before and after the relocation of fund-managed quasi-governmental institutions, and is expected to provide significant implications for future policies to be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the comparative housing and policy transfer scholarship by analysing marketized-socialist Shenzhen's processes of transferring liberal-interventionist Hong Kong's subsidized housing policy between 1988 and 2020 and by explaining the transfer trajectory and policy outcomes. Data were collected from in-depth interviews, published policy documents and site visits. Applying policy transfer concepts, the study reveals that the transfer evolved from almost wholesale transplant to self-policy development, then lately signs of re-convergence emerged. Overall, Shenzhen utilises more market resources and regulatory tools in subsidy provision but operates a much smaller public housing sector than Hong Kong. The transfer trajectory and policy outcomes are rooted in incompatibility and changes in policy contextual environment, specifically socio-economic functions of housing policy and the cities' jurisdictional and spatial scales; and in policy operational environments: differences in planning governance, tenure policy and housing finance model. Temporality is essential for understanding policy transfer and its efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to housing finance by all income groups is essential for the provision of adequate shelter for all. Thus adequate housing finance is considered the most important factor in housing production since it helps to procure the essential components of housing, namely land, on-site and off-site infrastructure, building materials as well as offsetting construction costs. The study examined the mechanisms for financing incremental housing for the low and moderate income households' housing in Ibadan with a view to providing information that could inform policy towards effective incremental housing delivery in the study area. This was achieved by examining the various Mechanisms for financing incremental housing in the study area and assessing the effectiveness of these financing mechanisms for incremental housing delivery in the study area. Two hypotheses were tested for the study. The first one stated that the mechanisms for financing incremental housing differ significantly across the Local Government Areas in the study area was tested, while the second one stated that sources of incremental housing financing vary with incremental housing process. The results for housing development of the low and moderate income groups occurred in phases with the incremental process taking as much as 8-12 years for construction while improvement of the existing structure took about five and a half years. The practice among the households is that of heavy reliance on savings in financing progressive housing. An estimate of an average amount employed from the different mechanisms for the entire construction process gave an estimated construction value of construction in the study area as N2023416. Chi-square analysis indicated the financing mechanisms for incremental housing construction at the level of foundation, main structure, roofing and internal fixtures vary significantly across the Local Government Areas. Chi square value of 75.659 significant at p<0.01 was obtained and the hypothesis that sources of incremental housing financing vary with incremental housing process was accepted. This finding perhaps set the stage for the next chapter that deals with analysis of factors affecting mechanisms for incremental housing financing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies the perspective of informality to examine the nexus between informal housing finance and housing markets in China. The study explores the causes, formation, influences and consequences of informal housing financing mechanisms in Ordos. It argues that informal housing finance contributes to the local property market boom and becomes an instrument of wealth building through homeownership, but classifies and reinforces social classes based on their gains from the property market. The study discusses the possibilities of institutionalizing informal housing finance and diversifying economic structures, with special consideration of resource-based frontier cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Papers in this special issue offer a wide range of political economy and sociological perspectives to explain the development and impacts of short-term rentals (STRs) in European cities. Empirically, they provide insights regarding STR providers, socio-spatial impacts, and regulation. Authors reveal the professionalization of the sector vis-à-vis the connection between STRs and the wider financialization of housing. STRs are predominantly supplied by professional property managers as well as by middle-class individuals for which renting on digital platforms is their main professional activity. Furthermore, the increasing professionalization of hosts and the intrinsic competition among them is largely stimulated by the business model of digital platforms which has progressively favoured professional operators. Understanding how STRs are shaped by platform capitalism helps to explain the socio-spatial impacts of this market as well as why current regulations have not mitigated such impacts. In terms of impacts, contributions to this special issue document processes of displacement, gentrification, and how the penetration of visitors in neighbourhoods is experienced by residents as a process of loss and dispossession. However, due to the lobbying campaigns of professional operators and industry players, regulation has led to the legitimization of this new market rather than to the limitation of the activity. Therefore, the special issue challenges the use of a 'sharing economy' and 'peer-to-peer platforms' as analytical categories, and, instead, provides evidence of why the STR market should be seen as part of the wider expansion of platform capitalism, consolidating the neoliberal and financialized urban paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often assumed in housing and urban studies scholarship that the roots of Sweden's present housing discontents are to be found in a neoliberal 'system switch' following the early-1990s banking crisis. This paper offers a different account, identifying and expounding how insuperable contradictions in Sweden's complex of housing production, distribution and finance, from the 1970s onward, led to a marked deterioration in its much-lauded housing model. Advancing a historical institutionalist framework, the paper seeks to historically couch the processes and outcomes commonly associated with the contemporary neoliberal era and position them more concretely in relation to actors and their social relations through time. Using a range of data pertaining to housing finance, subsidies, house prices and building output, as part of a mixed-methods analysis, the paper explores how macroeconomic factors, mediated by interactions between the state and sectoral cleavages, influence urban and regional development aspects. The paper's conceptual and methodological relevance to housing and urban studies scholarship thus extends beyond Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on intended use of the Opportunity Zone (OZ) tax incentive and Congress introduced this place-based tax incentive in the Tax Cut Jobs Act of 2017. It mentions OZ tax incentive provides for favorable tax treatment of capital gains that are reinvested into qualified opportunity funds (QOFs). It also mentions low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) program requires the state's housing finance agency (HFA) to develop a qualified allocation plan.

This article explores the impact of social housing financing arrangements for the fragility and resilience of this tenure as evidenced by its propensity to shrink or expand over the long-run. To do so, it examines the cases of Ireland and Denmark and employs and develops the concept of 'financial circuits'. This concept refers to dynamic flows of capital and revenue which move through the built environment in ways which are structured by the different funding streams which make them up, and by their interaction with the wider socio-economic context. The key insight offered here is that the cyclicality, permeability and breadth of financial circuits are key to understanding finance's impact on the size and trajectory of the social housing tenure. The Danish social housing sector has doubled in size since the 1960s partially because it draws on broad financial circuits which consist of many different types of finance, including government, non-profit and financialised private sources. This insulates the sector from reductions in funding from any single source and avoids the boom/bust investment cycles common in Ireland where the sector relies almost entirely on government grants for funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Islamic financing products are modes of finance based on principles of profit and loss sharing, no interest and no remunerative betting or speculation. Islamic home financing is one such mode of financing which is based on ownership sharing or deferred payment arrangement with the bank, hence avoiding chances of interest and speculation. This study examines the factors that affect customers' decision in selecting Islamic home financing services. A quantitative research methodology was adopted to study the dynamics of Islamic home financing by determining the level of key factors in Pakistani consumer market. Using stratified random sampling technique, data was collected from 250 bank customers through five‐point Likert scale questionnaires. Various tests were applied to check the reliability, sampling adequacy and correlation. Multiple regression analysis was applied for hypothesis testing. The findings of the study reveal that the level of knowledge, media advertisement, bank reputation, product choices and Shariah compliance are the key factors for the Pakistani bank customers who selected Islamic home financing. More importantly, we find no significant impact of price and bank services on selection of Islamic home financing. The results of the study enable the Islamic banking professionals and managers to identify the factors that are most valuable to customers for the selection of Islamic home financing over conventional home financing modes. They are suggested to develop strategies and plans to educate people more about Islamic home finance and develop their product portfolio to provide people with more Shariah compliant choices. This study contributes to the Islamic banking literature by extending and identifying the factors of Islamic home financing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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