_

Over the last few decades, housing has taken on a central role in the economic architecture of contemporary capitalism. It is not merely a necessity for life or a feature of urban planning; it is the material and financial mechanism that enables us to understand the fundamental transformation of the economic model that emerged after the 1970s crisis and was consolidated under neoliberalism. Housing has transitioned from a mere element of well-being to a preferred asset for global capital, giving rise to new forms of accumulation, inequality, and conflict.

This shift from social right to financial asset is not an isolated phenomenon, but part of a broader historical reconfiguration. Since the end of the 20th century, capitalism has shifted from a productive regime, based on the manufacture of goods and the expansion of industrial jobs, to a rentier regime, whose emerging logic is the appropriation of income derived from asset ownership. Asset appreciation is becoming increasingly influential in the organisation of the economy.

In this new framework, housing enjoys a privileged position. Its apparent stability and ability to generate a steady income have made it the star asset of rentier capitalism. In a context of low economic growth, low interest rates and declining returns in productive markets, real estate investment has established itself as a safe haven for global capital. This explains why, on a global scale, real estate holdings far exceed the combined value of large technology companies, global stock markets and traditional assets such as gold or oil.

Photo_ José María Mateos_ CC BY 2.0

Rentier capitalism does not create new wealth: it redistributes it upwards. It captures income—rents, capital gains, interest—generated by social activity and channels it to owners, funds, and financial institutions. Through renting, households transfer part of their wages to rentiers, fuelling an economy that does not increase production but intensifies extraction.

This article builds on a clear premise [1]:[1] This article is an adapted version of the author’s research: Gil, Javier (2025) De la burbuja inmobiliaria a la generación inquilina: Propiedad, alquiler y rentismo tras la crisis de 2008 [From the housing bubble to the rentier generation: property, renting and rentierism after the 2008 financial crisis]. Papers. Revista de Sociologia, 2025, vol. 110, no 4, p. e3372-e3372. Available here: https://papers.uab.cat/article/download/v110-n4-gil/pdf-es/16764 the housing crisis is an outcome of the consolidation of rentier capitalism. It is not simply a matter of apartment shortages, poorly planned urban development, or a failure of public policy; it is the result of an economic system that has prioritised financial profit over the right to housing. Current tensions cannot be understood independently of this structural realignment.

At stake is not just a market price or a specific urban policy, but the kind of society we want to build. To the extent that housing embodies the fundamental vectors of rentier capitalism—debt, rent, speculation, inequality—it also becomes one of the places from which alternatives capable of reorganising social life beyond rentierism can emerge.

The Financialisation of Housing and the Birth of the Homeowner Society

The financialisation of housing is one of the most decisive economic and political developments of recent decades. It represents the shift whereby housing became a central instrument for capital appreciation and the cornerstone of the new neoliberal social pact. To understand how the property-owning society came into being, it is essential to place it in the context of the crisis of the Fordist-Keynesian regime and of the shift from productive to rentier capitalism.

After World War II, advanced economies experienced a period of sustained growth based on industrial production, stable employment and an expansive welfare state. This Fordist-Keynesian regime ensured that wages grew in line with productivity, allowing mass consumption to fuel a virtuous cycle of accumulation. The state redistributed, trade unions negotiated, and wage labour was the foundation of welfare.

But this model began to fracture in the 1970s. The emergence of new industrial competitors, increased global production capacity, and falling profit margins created a situation of chronic stagnation. Surplus capital that could not find profitability in manufacturing began to shift toward finance and, in particular, the property market. Housing proved to be an ideal asset: stable and government-backed.

For housing to become a mass financial asset, a mechanism was needed to bridge the gap between consumer demand and global markets: mortgage credit. Starting in the 1980s, governments liberalised financial markets, deregulated interest rates and facilitated the expansion of credit. This led to an apparent democratisation of access to property, but in reality it operated as a large-scale household-debt operation.

The key innovation was mortgage securitisation. Until this point, banks had granted mortgages and kept them on their balance sheets for decades. With securitisation, mortgages were bundled and transformed into financial products that could be sold in international markets. This operation multiplied the banks’ lending capacity, while transferring the risk to investors around the world. The result was a massive influx of credit that fuelled demand for housing, drove up prices and turned the property market into a seemingly endless appreciation machine.

The expansion of mortgages not only transformed housing but also the way welfare was organised. Under the Fordist-Keynesian regime, stability was based on employment and redistributive social policies. Under neoliberalism, home ownership became the new foundation of welfare. Security no longer came from the state, but from family assets. This model, described as “asset Keynesianism,” is sustained by debt, secured by the revaluation of assets.

While wages stagnated, the value of housing grew steadily. Families felt their wealth increasing, which stimulated consumption. Mortgage loans, refinanced over and over again, acted as an extension of wages. The state stepped back, and the financial market moved in. This arrangement was politically powerful because it created the illusion that there was no conflict between the interests of the working class and those of financial capital: both seemed to benefit from rising house prices.

The homeowner society was therefore more than an economic phenomenon: it was a deliberate political project. Neoliberalism needed a new consensus that would replace the legitimacy lost after the erosion of the welfare state. The idea that every family could secure its future through property became the cornerstone of that vision. Politically, it meant neutralising the potential for conflict within the labour movement. Culturally, property was associated with individual accountability, autonomy and full citizenship, and was presented as the prerequisite for accessing middle-class lifestyles: those who owned a home were “stable” and “sensible”; those who did not were left out of the path to prosperity.

But this asset-based model of welfare only worked under one fundamental condition: the widespread belief that house prices would never fall. Real estate bubbles became a governance mechanism, a means of sustaining growth without redistribution and maintaining social cohesion without collective rights. For more than two decades, this balancing act worked: prices rose, credit flowed, banks made extraordinary profits, and families felt wealthier. The state reinforced the cycle through tax breaks, market-friendly zoning policies, and the systematic downsizing of public housing stock.

But that order rested on shaky ground. Debt-based accumulation is inherently unsustainable: it depends on perpetual credit expansion and a constant influx of new buyers. From this perspective, the real estate-financial system looked more like a Ponzi scheme than an efficient market: current returns depended on future expectations and the continuous supply of new borrowers. The homeowner society, touted as a model of stability, carried within itself the seeds of its own demise.

The 2008 Crisis and the New Rentier Cycle

The 2008 financial crisis represents much more than the bursting of a property bubble. It marks the historic breakdown of the system that had sustained homeownership and the turning point that ushered in a new regime of accumulation: a rentier capitalism based no longer on the massive expansion of mortgage credit to households, but on the concentrated ownership of real estate assets by large investment funds and global players.

However, the system’s internal rationale was unsustainable. When prices stopped rising and mortgage defaults began, the securitisation chain collapsed. Banks, investment funds and insurance companies were exposed to assets that had suddenly lost their value. What had been presented as sophisticated financial architecture turned out to be a sandcastle built on low-quality debt.

On 15 September 2008, the collapse of Lehman Brothers signalled the end of this fiction. To contain the crash, governments intervened with unprecedented swiftness, mobilising massive amounts of taxpayer money to bail out banks and financial institutions. A decisive aspect of this process is its political nature: governments did not bail out indebted households or evicted families; rather, they bailed out the banking and financial system. Private losses were socialised, whereas profits accumulated in previous years remained in the hands of the entities.

The crisis thus revealed the true nature of rentier capitalism: a system that is structurally dependent on state intervention to sustain asset appreciation. Neoliberal rhetoric about market self-regulation was debunked: when the bubble burst, the state became the ultimate guardian of asset value, ensuring that financial capital survived and regained its dominance.

After the burst, the expansion of mortgage credit to households came to an abrupt end. Mortgage conditions tightened, banks restricted risk, and large segments of the population were shut out of home ownership. What had been a widespread path to prosperity—borrowing to become a homeowner—was no longer widely available. At the same time, the crisis wiped out the wealth of millions of families: mass foreclosures in countries such as the United States and Spain highlighted the fragility of a debt-based model. The dream of universal home ownership was revealed for what it truly was: a pipe dream sustained by a speculative bubble.

From 2008 onwards, the homeowners’ society underwent a structural collapse. This was not only because families could no longer afford to buy property, but also because the economic system no longer needed them to sustain its accumulation mechanics. A new cycle began, one that was more concentration and finance-driven, based on a central player: investment funds. While the 1980–2008 cycle relied on household debt, the post-2008 cycle is based on the massive acquisition of housing by institutional investors. Banks, burdened with devalued real estate assets, sell entire portfolios at discounted prices; opportunistic funds seize the chance to rebuild a new rentier regime.

This shift ushers in a new speculative cycle: homes are no longer purchased to be inhabited but to generate income through rent. Demand no longer comes from households seeking a roof under which to live, but from financial actors seeking profitability. Financialisation no longer operates by putting families into debt, but by turning rent into a systematic mechanism of income extraction.

The consequence is a radical narrowing of the geography of capital: urban markets, already connected to global circuits, become increasingly constrained by international investment flows. Housing behaves like a financial asset whose value depends on capital flows, interest rates, monetary policy, and investor expectations. Companies that manage large rental portfolios standardise contracts and package homes. The property market thus ceases to respond to domestic dynamics, becoming subject to a global logic that is increasingly disconnected from real housing needs.

This new economic and social paradigm is giving rise to the emerging phenomenon that forms the backbone of the rest of this article: the tenant generation.

The Rise of the Tenant Generation

In Spain, this new cycle of rentierism takes on a specific form, marked by its long history in building a society of homeowner. The origins of this model date back to the Franco regime, when the government gradually abandoned rental policies in favour of promoting home ownership as a mechanism for social pacification and integration. The infamous quote by Housing Minister José Luis Arrese—“we don’t want a country of proletarians, but of property owners”—sums up this project: defusing social conflict by turning the welfare state into real estate.

The transition to democracy did not reverse this trend; it reinforced it. Policies such as the 1985 Boyer Decree, which eliminated mandatory lease extensions and liberalised rental prices, further consolidated the shift towards home ownership. The property bubble of 1995–2007 was the largest period of expansion for the homeowner society: more than 80% of the population lived in homes they owned. Housing became a source of economic and emotional stability, but on increasingly flimsy financial grounds.

Photo_ Anabella Salem

The concept of the tenant generation refers to a cohort of young adults whose housing trajectories are structurally predetermined by their exclusion from homeownership. Rather than a transitional stage, renting becomes a prolonged or permanent form of tenure. This situation reflects the profound transformations in housing regimes, driven by the financial and political arrangements that followed the 2008 crisis.

Between 2007 and 2023, the share of households in rented accommodation rose from 13.55% to 18.7%. In the same period, the rental stock grew to around 3.6 million primary dwellings, some 1.3 million more than in 2007: an increase of over 50%. This is not a temporary imbalance but rather a structural reconfiguration.

This process revolves around three core factors: territory, nationality and age. In the Autonomous Community of Madrid and Catalonia, rented households account for 23.7% and 24.9% respectively, reaching 44.1% in the city of Barcelona. By nationality, 71.6% of the non-EU foreign population and 61.3% of the EU population live in rented accommodation, compared to 14% of the Spanish population. By age, 56% of households headed by people aged 16 to 29 live in rented accommodation, compared to 8% of those over 65.

The emergence of the tenant generation did not begin with the financial crisis; it began during the housing bubble, when the progressive rise in housing prices was already making it difficult to become a homeowner. However, after 2008, the process gained momentum. In the 16-29 age group, the share of households in rental accommodation rose from 28.2% in 2006 to 56.6% in 2023. In the 30-44 age group, it grew from 18.1% in 2007 to 34.3% in 2023. Among those aged 45-65, it grew from 8.8% in 2005 to 16.1% in 2023. Only those aged 65 and over remained relatively unaffected: in 2004, 8.1% lived in rented accommodation; in 2023, 7.6%.

Inheritances and intergenerational wealth transfers introduce nuances, but do not reverse this trend. In Madrid, 67% of the tenant generation report not expecting to inherit a home; in Barcelona, that figure rises to 71%. Among those who expect to inherit, in most cases, the inheritance would be shared [2].[2] Pérez, Pablo; Palomera, Jaime e Ill, Marta (2024). De propietarios a inquilinos: Informe sobre la creciente desigualdad en el acceso a la propiedad [From homeowners to renters: A report on the growing inequality in access to property ownership]. Institut de Recerca Urbana de Barcelona. Family wealth thus acts more as a mechanism that perpetuates inequality than as a structural remedy.

The emergence of the tenant generation is occurring in a context in which housing is treated as a liquid asset, a trend favoured by changes implemented after the Great Recession of 2008: the emergence of investment funds, the packaging of rental properties, and the standardisation of management. The rentier logic prevails over the social function of housing; what matters is not its use, but the profitability it generates.

Photo_ Anabella Salem

In this scenario, renting is no longer a secondary form of tenure but has become a central means of income extraction. On this basis, tenants are emerging as a new class.

Tenancy as a New Emerging Class?

In the new rentier cycle, rent has become a central form of exploitation: a monthly transfer of wealth from those who produce value—workers—to those who own real estate assets—landlords, investment funds, and property owners. The difference from industrial capitalism is significant: exploitation is no longer concentrated solely in the workplace, but has colonised the sphere of everyday life. People work not only to pay for food, transport or supplies, but also to sustain the profitability of rentier capital.

This form of exploitation is particularly intense because it affects an essential commodity: housing is all but dispensable. As a result, the tenant generation experiences permanent vulnerabilities: instability, forced mobility, inability to save, dependence on landlords, and the constant threat of price increases. This precariousness has psychological, family, work, and demographic effects. The housing crisis permeates their entire lives.

The tenant generation was also socialised with middle-class expectations—university studies, social mobility, and economic stability. However, it finds itself trapped in an economic regime that prevents it from fulfilling those promises. The gap between the promised meritocratic horizon and a life organised around suffocating rent generates frustration and a sense of structural injustice.

Unlike older generations, the tenant generation does not benefit from rising house prices—it suffers from them. Each increase does not enrich them, but rather impoverishes them, making their lives more expensive and reducing their autonomy. This undermines the fiction that “everyone won” in the real estate appreciation. What was once perceived as a win-win game is now revealed to be a mechanism of permanent transfer: the profits of some are the misery of others.

In this context, tenancy ceases to be a simple descriptive category. It begins to take shape as a new emerging class—a social group defined by its structural position relative to property and rent-extraction mechanisms.

The Political Awakening of the Tenant Generation and the Resurgence of Tenant Unionism

If the homeowners’ society organised the class structure of neoliberalism, the rise of tenantism points to a historic transformation of that social architecture. Tenants are not simply a demographic; they are a structural position within the contemporary regime of accumulation, defined by a material relationship to property and rent extraction. Tenants have no assets; they are subject to permanent material insecurity, brought together by shared vulnerabilities and experiences that facilitate collective organisation, and whose objective interests clash head-on with those of rentier capital.

From this perspective, the tenant generation constitutes a political powerhouse of the first order. Its strength lies not only in its size—in many cities it is already the most common form of housing—but also in the centrality of housing within the contemporary accumulation regime. If housing is the primary vehicle for rent extraction, the subject who bears that extraction is in a strategic position to confront it. Where rent extraction is concentrated, resistance can be concentrated too.

In the last decade, the housing conflict has become a central axis of political dispute. The tenant generation is driving this politicisation by questioning the commodification of housing and challenging the forms of power that govern it: property speculation, the role of the rentier, the financialisation of land and the concentration of assets.

This process of politicisation takes many forms, reflecting a shift from reactive resistance to the proactive construction of alternatives. The tenant generation is not limited to denouncing the effects of the model; it is formulating horizons that involve a profound reorganisation of the economy and social life, displacing profitability as the organising principle of the right to housing. In recent years, this politicisation has begun to crystallise into concrete initiatives that reveal the extent to which the housing conflict has become a central battleground for social and democratic disputes.

A prime example is the historic referendum in Berlin on 26 September 2021. Citizens voted on whether to expropriate the country’s major landlords, those with more than 3,000 properties. The measure could affect some 260,000 homes, making it one of the most ambitious expropriation initiatives in recent history. After years of mobilisation, the campaign “Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen and other prominent real estate companies”, promoted by the Deutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen movement, finally reached the ballot box. Its promoters denounced that Berlin was suffering a profound housing crisis, the result of the transformation of homes into financial assets, and pointed to large real estate corporations as the main culprits. This diagnosis could likely be extended to many other cities worldwide.

What was truly significant was the result: more than 56% of voters supported the expropriation, compared to 39% who opposed it. A clear and resounding difference. The referendum marked a milestone in European urban policy. It showed that housing has become a major axis of contemporary social conflict and that a significant portion of the population is willing to question the foundations of the market in the name of social justice and the right to the city. The fact that the inhabitants of Berlin, the capital of Europe’s leading economic power, voted overwhelmingly in favour of a measure that openly contradicts one of the core principles of contemporary neoliberalism is undoubtedly a political development of immense significance.

Barely two months later, in November 2021, the Madrid Tenants’ Union achieved an unprecedented victory against the Blackstone hedge fund, the largest owner of rental properties in Spain and the world. It all began in 2019, when the fund initiated a systematic policy of abusive rent increases in its Madrid buildings. When the contracts expired, it notified tenants that, to remain in their homes, they had to accept increases that, in many cases, reached 100% of the previous rent.

Faced with this situation, dozens of families decided to organise with the Tenants’ Union and launched the “We’re staying” campaign, one of the movement’s central tactics. Their reasoning was clear: they would reject both the rent increase and eviction from their homes, remaining in their dwellings and paying the original rental price, even if this meant being “off contract.” In doing so, the tenants challenged an unjust law and the landlord’s supposed right to speculate on an essential commodity.

Throughout 2019, a host of buildings in Madrid began to join in with this tactic, giving rise to the “Madrid vs. Blackstone” campaign, which quickly became a central front against the financialisation of housing in Spain. The campaign deployed a wide range of actions: demonstrations, public complaints, social media campaigns, institutional pressure and lawsuits against the fund. In addition, the union gained the support of local councils, parliamentarians, the Ombudsman and international organisations such as the United Nations. All of this contributed to Blackstone’s status as a symbol of global rentier power.

The company responded with threats. It sent letters warning that those linked to the union would not have their contracts renewed and would be evicted. Initially, it refused to negotiate collectively, accepting only individual agreements. Later, under social pressure, it agreed to negotiate on a building-by-building basis, but without recognising union representation. Finally, when the legal proceedings were well underway and evictions appeared imminent, the hedge fund yielded: it agreed to collective bargaining and renewed all contracts without rent increases. Despite having the law on its side, it understood that carrying out the evictions would have caused enormous political and reputational damage. Madrid had beaten Blackstone.

The rise of housing as an asset has led to the emergence of a new generation of tenants’ unions. Although these organisations have existed for more than a century, the current context has renewed their role as a central tool in combating property rentierism. The first major wave of tenant unionisation and mass rent strikes occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in the decades leading up to the First and Second World Wars. At that time, tenant unions were a clear expression of working-class organisation, playing a decisive role in urban social struggles.

Today, tenant organising is making a strong comeback. Unions are forming in multiple cities in the Global North, organising tenants to resist evictions, reject abusive rent increases and defend the right to housing. They also challenge the media narrative, identify those responsible and promote mobilisation. They directly blame the state for turning housing into a financial asset and argue that if the new cycle of speculation was conceived in parliaments, it can also be reversed there. That is why their action has moved beyond the streets and into the institutions, where they are demanding policies to curb speculation and end the housing crisis.

However, despite growing social support, these unions face institutional obstruction. Rentier governance prevents the approval of reforms that would put an end to the exploitation and precariousness of the tenant generation. In this scenario, it seems unfeasible to resolve the housing crisis from within parliaments. There is not enough social momentum to drive legislative change.

Today’s generation of tenants is experiencing a situation similar to that faced by the labour movement during the rise of industrial capitalism. At that time, the working class was stripped of its means of livelihood and turned into a target for exploitation, but through organisation, disobedience and awareness, it managed to transform itself into a political player. The establishment of the labour movement as a counterpower enabled it to conquer rights, improve living conditions and transform the system. Its strength came to represent a real threat to capitalism, raising the prospect of an alternative society.

Today, the struggle for housing can advance only if the tenant generation establishes itself as a political force, organises itself as a power to be reckoned with, and activates mechanisms of class consolidation. Only then will it be possible to challenge capital’s dominance over housing and move toward structural transformation.

The decisive question is whether the tenant generation can become a political force capable of challenging the power of rentier capitalism. The structural conditions for this are not only present, but are intensifying year after year. Among them are a common experience of injustice linked to housing access, an objective conflict with the interests of financial and rentier capital, a daily experience of precariousness acting as a driving force for organising, a growing concentration of the population in the rental system, and an established social movement with the capacity for territorial and ideological articulation.

The transformative potential of tenant activism stems from a central fact: housing is now at the heart of the accumulation regime. If financialisation and rent extraction are at the heart of rentier capitalism, the struggle for housing can become a strategic vector for imagining and building a different economic order. By placing the decommodification of housing at the centre of their demands, the tenant generation challenges not only a specific market, but the foundations of the current economic regime—the idea that private ownership of assets should organise social life.

This challenge holds the potential for tenants to cease being merely a vulnerable group and become the seed of a political movement capable of formulating a historic alternative to rentier capitalism. Housing, which has become the cornerstone of the system of exploitation, is at the same time a strategic bulwark from which to contest the meaning of wealth, well-being and democracy in the 21st century.

·

SHARE THIS: