Research on housing since the financial crisis of 2008-2012 has largely been thought of in terms of the financialisation of real estate. Many researchers have documented how housing, chunky a and spatially fixed, has been turned into a ’unitized’ and liquid quasi-financial asset through a combination of regulatory and socio-technical changes (Aalbers, 2019).Housing has become a major object of financialization, through rising mortgage debt, mortgage securitization, the financialization of construction and development companies, and the growing grip of finance on the private rental market (Aalbers, 2019 ; Romainville, 2015). Thus, this consequent literature details how the extraction of real estate rent not only represents the source of profit for the real estate industry, but increasingly constitutes large shares of the returns of financial institutions (Aalbers, 2012).,Authors have, however, shown a simultaneous resurgence of ‘landlordism’ or private landlords in rental property ownership in several context (Ronald, Kadi, 2018, Aalbers, 2021 ; Hochstenbach et al., 2021).
These studies, whether they focus on institutional actors or smaller-scale landlords, address the question of “who benefits from rental housing” but actually offer little insight into the formation of this profit. Theories of rent, which allow us to understand how (and not who) profits from rental housing, have been largely neglected by research. However, understanding the process of land rent formation in the urban context remains relevant, in the sense that it feeds the capital invested in the financialisation of real estate (Harvey, 1982 ; Lipietz, 1974 ; Topalov, 1977, 1984). In recent years, there has been renewed interest in using the rent theory to analyse urban dynamics (Haila, 1990, 2016 ; Revington, 2021 ; Ward and Aalbers, 2016).
Furthermore, the geography of the private rental market has been little studied in detail. However, it could be argued that types of actors involved vary spatially as well as the different modalities and magnitude of the rent received. Literature remains scarce on intra-urban geographies according to these parameters.
We aim to contribute to debates regarding persistences and transformations of the private rental market by focusing on the supply side and on landlords. In particular, we will give importance to spatial approaches, giving the opportunity to connect these results to wider processes of urban transformation. We are considering three lines of communication: (1) actors of the residential rental market, (2) creation of rental sub-markets, (3) (non-)regulation/alternatives. This session is organised in association with a special issue of BELGEO, the Belgian Journal of Geography (https://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/56687). Proposers are invited to submit to both but without obligation. Papers may be presented in English or French.

Casier Charlotte (1); Périlleux Hugo (2); Dawance Thomas (3)
(1) ULB-FNRS, (2) ULB, (3) VUB

 
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