The aim of this paper is to examine the increasing use of the home as a workplace and establish its significance for housing studies. Firstly, the article sketches its historical growth founded in technological and business model changes. Using cross-country datasets, it identifies variations across the EU in the scale and characteristics of home working, which by 2015 was the practice for about 1 in 6 EU workers, a ratio that has been greatly boosted by responses to the coronavirus pandemic. Secondly, the article considers the implications of increasing home working for housing studies. This is illustrated through a consideration of influences on our understanding of housing demand, particularly in terms of housing form and location. Further, we consider consequences for other areas of theory on the meaning of home, boundaries between public and private realms, and gender perspectives on the division of domestic work and space.

Contradictions and crises are emerging at a number of levels and for a number of different agencies in the home ownership process, notably for government, as the proponent of rapid increase in home ownership and for the building societies as the main agents of that increase. The promotion of home ownership and especially council house sales had proved a major electoral success; the proceeds of sales could be used to reduce the need for local authority borrowing and as a source of Exchequer revenue; and in the longer term, the switch from renting to home ownership was seen as reducing government's role, responsibility and hence expenditure on housing. The biggest contradiction in the government's approach to housing policy must be its attempt to increase home ownership rapidly and profoundly at a time when its economic policy accepts, if not creates, large-scale unemployment.

This paper examines the role of secondary property ownership (SPO) in Europe (EU). Focusing predominantly on residential properties used as rental-investments, it explores their role in the political economy of housing and welfare, contributing to respectively newer and older literatures about housing wealth and asset-based welfare and the 'really big trade-off' between outright homeownership and generous pensions. Both have hitherto largely been viewed as related to ownership of the primary residence. The empirical part of this paper is based on the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS), carried out by the European Central Bank in 2014, and providing information about property ownership by samples of households in 20 member states of the EU. The results show that the total wealth held in the form of SPO is considerable while also varying considerably from country to country. SPO held as an investment in the form of landlordism is most prevalent in countries characterised as corporatist-conservative or liberal welfare regimes. In the corporatist-conservative countries, SPO can be seen as a since long established proactive asset-based welfare strategy that compensates for the limitations of their fragmented pension systems, especially for the self-employed. In liberal welfare states, the recent upswing of buy-to-let landlordism is a manifestation of the concentration of housing wealth and limited access to homeownership for starters, which makes SPO an ever more attractive investment.

Historically, the main focus of the study of housing in advanced economies has been on houses that meet the accommodation needs of households: houses as the main residence of families. In recent decades there has been the growth in the numbers of houses used for purposes other than as a main residence, for example in the forms of the recent global spread of Airbnb and of foreign engagement in housing as an investment tool; alongside a set of ‘for housing’ houses (FHH) another, overlapping, set of ‘not for housing’ houses (NFHH) is emerging. The present paper begins by identifying four types of NFHH, and considers the significance of their growth. It argues that while the NFHH sector is relatively small it has large impacts, and these are such that they challenge housing researchers and policy makers to develop additional ways of looking at housing systems.

With continued economic growth and expanding mortgage markets, until recently the pattern across advanced economies was of growing homeownership sectors. The Great Financial Crisis (GFC) has however, undercut this growth resulting in the contraction of homeownership access in many countries and the revival of private renting. This paper argues that these tenure changes are not solely a consequence of the GFC, and therefore, reversible once long-term growth returns. Rather, they are the consequences of more fundamental changes especially in labour markets. The very financialisation that fuelled the growth of homeownership has also led to a hollowing out of well-paid, secure jobs-exactly those that fit best with the taking of housing loans. We examine longer-term declines in labour market security across Europe from before the GFC, identifying an underlying correlation between deteriorated labour market conditions and homeownership access for young adults. While variations exist across European countries, there is evidence of common trends. We argue that the GFC both accelerated pre-existing labour insecurity dynamics and brought an end to offsetting such dynamics through the expansion of credit access with the likelihood of a return to an era of widespread homeownership growth starkly decreased.

In numerous statements, successive governments of Malaysia have recognized housing as both a basic human need and an important component of the country’s economy. Underlying this, the primary, formal objective of Malaysia’s housing policy has been to ensure that all citizens, particularly low-income groups, have access to adequate and decent shelter (Wan et al., 2011). In addition to ensuring an adequate supply of housing, another ostensible objective has been to promote a safe, healthy, convenient and beautiful living environment. Essentially, housing has been perceived as a vehicle for achieving human settlements that not only meet the physical need for shelter but also the particular national need for social, cultural and ethnic integration.

Notwithstanding detailed differences in housing policies, as well as the development gap between the southerly and most eastern regions, the major East Asian economies can be seen as sharing a common housing model, distinct from those of western economies. In East Asia, housing interventions historically focused on the high volume production of apartments for working, male breadwinner households. Rates of housing output have been phenomenal in most cases, with the rapid expansion of construction programmes reflecting the abilities of development-orientated East Asian governments to appropriate land and mobilize the resources of public agencies and private corporations in the supply of new housing. The main priority was to sustain the express pace of modernization, urbanization and economic expansion. State plans sought to clear slum housing, increase land values and promote high-speed growth. Individual housing needs were not irrelevant, although political and economic logic usually dictated that economically productive households were prioritized rather than the poor or vulnerable. Approaches thus reflected the features of both developmental states (see Johnson, 1982; Wade 1998) and productivist welfare regimes (Holliday, 2000; Kwon, 2005; Kwon and Holliday, 2007). For reasons explored throughout this book, home ownership became strongly embedded in this East Asian model.

The paper provides a review of the literature that links housing, housing finance, and economic development. The housing sector may support poverty reduction and inclusive growth in two general ways. First, housing construction contributes to economic output, creates employment, and generates a demand for materials and related services. Second, improved housing raises the standard of living of occupants. At the same time, housing purchases are costly for individuals, constituting the most valuable asset owned by most households and often requiring housing finance (mortgages) to allow for purchase. These links—between housing and the economy and between housing and housing finance—are explored in this review paper. It finds that the benefits of housing for individuals accrue in large part indirectly through better health, based on improved water and sanitation. Housing also generates large multiplier effects in terms of employment and output. Employment is created for both skilled and poorer, unskilled workers. The evidence also suggests that there is a symbiotic relationship between housing finance and financial sector development. Housing finance helps to develop the financial sector (contributing to economic growth) and is also helped by financial sector development.

This paper examines a number of ways in which housing assets might contribute to meet the income needs of older people or to finance care, with a particular emphasis on the potential role of reverse mortgages, these being financial products that enable owners to withdraw equity from their homes. The paper begins by reviewing policy debates at the European level about the consequences of demographic ageing. This is followed by an examination of the growth of housing assets and the ways, in practice, that those assets are accessed by older people. The main part of the paper focuses on one particular way, reverse mortgages, considering the variation across member states in the size of reverse mortgage markets, and the barriers to their development. The evidence suggests that since many households with higher incomes also have large amounts of housing assets, reverse mortgages would seem to provide them with an opportunity to increase consumption to even higher levels. The same housing asset-cash income relationship means that the reverse mortgages do not appear to perform well against the adequacy criterion in significantly reducing the risk of poverty.