Foreign Real Estate Investments: Agents, Networks and Strategies ‘Unreal Estate? Rethinking Housing, Class and Identity’, ISA - RC43 Housing and the Built Environment Conference, 18-21 June 2017, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Panel organisers: Sin Yee Koh, Universiti Brunei Darussalam (
[email protected]) Dallas Rogers, Western Sydney University (
[email protected]) The phenomenon of real estate investments by foreign investor-buyers in major global cities has been well reported in mainstream mass media. In London, there is increasing academic and policy attention on the impacts of absentee super-rich and middle-class foreign real estate investments on housing inequality and urban social life. In New York, prominent luxury real estate developments have been linked to illicit foreign capital flows. In Sydney, the influx of Mainland Chinese real estate investor-migrants, especially from China, has sparked local (racist) protests and contestations – a reminder of similar discussions in Vancouver two decades earlier. On the other hand, real estate is widely recognised as a sound investment product in an increasingly neoliberal world where individuals shoulder the burden of their own financial wellbeing. Clearly, foreign real estate investments is an issue of individual and collective concern. In this context, investor-buyers have been at the receiving end of local discontent about housing, class and identity. However, this tendency to blame foreign real estate investor-buyers – whether they are super-rich or middle-class – diverts attention away from the task of engaging with broader forces at play. What, for example, are the roles of structural forces constituting urban political economies that enable and facilitate foreign real estate investments? Who are the other agents who are equally complicit in this process? What are the networks and strategies that assist foreign real estate investments? This panel addresses these questions by examining the agents, networks and strategies constituting the global and local landscapes of foreign real estate investments. This proposed panel will consist of 4-5 papers. Papers would possibly examine themes such as: Discourse: Racism, neoliberalism Policies: Housing, foreign investments, immigration Agents: State and non-state institutions, intermediaries, mass media Networks: Investment clubs, social media groups Strategies: Knowledge production and dissemination, investment products and tools Consequences: Inequalities, access to housing Solutions: Alternatives, contestations If you are interested in presenting in this proposed panel, please send the following to
[email protected] and
[email protected] by 18 December 2016. Title of paper Paper abstract (up to 300 words) Your full name, email address, title/position, and institutional affiliation
