Professional and global actors in platform real estate: The planetary rise of the corporate host in the short-term rental market and its impact on housing and places

Abstract der Sitzung

Platform capitalism is transforming housing markets worldwide. The platform real estate industry has grown in size, number of actors as well as in financial dimension. In fact, it already consists of more than 600 privately held companies with a market valuation of at least one billion U.S. dollar. The short-term rental (STR) market illustrates the descripted transformation. While being an informal activity early on, STR has transitioned to a consolidated industry. Beyond platforms such as Airbnb, the sector is now formed by a myriad of market actors, and this professionalization is evident in the large ecosystem of companies that have developed around the industry. STR companies mainly are property managers that are supported by start-ups offering software and digital innovation to manage large portfolios and secure high occupancy rates. Professionalization has implied two interlinked phenomena.

1)The first one is the attractiveness of the sector to institutional investors. While in the early stages, hosts were predominantly individual owners, more and more corporate landlords are active in this market. The professionalization of management and the availability of market data to predict future revenues make STRs a feasible product for institutional investors to diversify their portfolio. For instance, there are cases of built-to-rent on the STR market; and commentators have noted that in the face of the current multiple crisis, investors are waiting for housing prices to deflate to acquire large portfolios of STR supply.

2)Second, it is interesting to see how the STR have globalized. To start with, several management companies have become transnational firms as they have been backed by venture capital to expand. The rise of on-demand software and, in particular, Property Management Systems (PMS), makes it increasingly easy for global companies to land in different places and expand geographically.

These phenomena have not been explored in detail so far and we believe they are crucial in terms of understanding glocal inequalities, housing market dynamics, and regulation. We invite authors to discuss how the professionalization will impact housing markets in city regions and rural areas in different places.

In this panel we welcome contributions that provide new theoretical approaches, methodological insights and empirical analyses that help to understand the above processes and their economic, social, and political impacts by addressing questions such as:

• How do intermediaries shape STR markets and labour conditions?
• How can the professionalization of service providers and the entry of financial investors into the short-term rental market be conceptualized and practically captured?
• What methods help critical researchers to address their sense of self in relation to the emerging field of research and to take an active role in the argument about the just city?

It is our intention to produce a special issue in a journal out of this panel