The Financialization of the Housing Market in Ireland

The paper analyses the increasing role of financialization on European housing markets and its immediate impact on prices and social asymmetries in the Irish case. Financial structures of housing show a disperse picture throughout the European Union, while countries which experienced a boost in financialization such as Ireland were more strongly exposed to house price boom and bust cycles. When comparing institutional settings of economies with diverging experiences with regard to house prices in the past, it turns out that those promoting free market solutions in housing – in combination with the high vulnerability of private households to financial market developments – account for house price bubbles. Taking into account Schwartz’s and Seabrooke’s analysis of the residential housing market the paper argues that the role of the state and its form of housing provision and/or subsidy schemes is not integrated into their analysis satisfactorily. The chapter thus widens their residential capitalism approach by analyzing the institutional setting of housing provision and the structure of national financial systems.