Search

Having historically been avoided by institutional financial investors, U.S. single-family housing-that is, free-standing residential property-received large investment inflows after the global financial crisis of 2007-2009 to rapidly become a substantial asset class. Why? And why then? The materialization of an unprecedented investment opportunity-large stocks of cheap, favorably located urban housing-was certainly pivotal. But the attractiveness of that opportunity was enhanced by a series of parallel and (for investors) propitious historical shifts in four key realms: technology, finance, housing supply, and ideas. In short, the investment transformation that occurred was "overdetermined." The article develops this argument with a focus on investment by the firm that led the way: the Blackstone Group.

With the cost of solar and wind technologies having declined, governments are scaling back the subsidies and guarantees that have historically supported the development of renewable power. The renewables sector is struggling to stand commercially on its own feet, however: without state support, it is often difficult for developers to secure project funding. This article examines both this growing challenge to the energy transition and a key mechanism to which developers are turning to try to resolve it-the corporate power-purchase agreement (PPA). Under renewables PPAs, corporations such as technology firms contract to buy electricity for periods of up to 15-20 years. Often pivotal in unlocking development finance, PPAs have been hailed as re-energising a faltering energy transition. But to rely on the purchasing habits of the likes of Amazon and Google to maintain the shift into renewables is to raise important political, economic and ecological questions., The 2021 Antipode RGS-IBG Lecture

Recent years have seen a burst of new writing on the opening and closing of urban rent gaps. Such studies generally consider individual cases. Rarely does the opportunity arise to readily compare and contrast rent gaps across multiple cities and territories, least of all within the context of a single developer or investor portfolio. Such an opportunity has arisen in the past decade, however, as the US investment firm Blackstone has pursued a multi-territory housing-investment strategy specifically of identifying and closing rent gaps, which it styles 'buy it, fix it, sell it'. This article examines that strategy and the varying nature of its implementation in Danish, German, Swedish and US cities. It argues that the rent gap is a paradoxical phenomenon: vast gaps, promising vast profits, frequently open up and frequently remain open for long periods before being closed - if they are closed at all. A primary reason is that successful and profitable closure requires not just favourable local political-economic conditions but a singularly well-funded, determined and aggressive investor - an investor, that is, such as Blackstone.

Getting renewable energies to a position of price competitiveness with fossil fuels has long been seen as a key challenge to the counter-carbon energy transition. Less discussed, but more significant to future investment trajectories in the capitalist global economy, is the relative profitability of fossil-fuel and renewable-energy production. Having recently pledged over the next few decades to decrease hydrocarbon production and increase renewable-energy generation, Europe's three oil and gas majors - BP, Shell and Total - now institutionally straddle the two energy worlds and their respective economic dynamics. This article takes stock of the companies' announcements and of the existing investment and profit landscape to assess the prospects for their own corporate energy transitions and thus for the global energy transition more broadly.

After 2007, many US households suffered significant financial losses when their mortgages were foreclosed upon and homes repossessed. Much of this lost value ended up in the hands of institutional investors who bought repossessed homes at the bottom of the market. Using the case of the biggest such investor, Blackstone, as an exemplar, this article argues that the state was implicated in this value transfer in several crucial ways: its failure to better assist distressed borrowers ensured the availability of large numbers of homes for investors to buy; it privileged such investors over other categories of potential buyer; and its taking of action to support recovery of the housing market coincided with such investors beginning to buy at scale. The article draws on the critical macro-finance literature to conceptualise the state's role in terms of the "de-risking" of financial markets that are increasingly integral to contemporary social and economic governance.