The ageing of European societies, the mounting pressure on pension systems, the rise of home ownership and the growth in house prices have sparked interest in housing equity release options and strategies. Much of the available literature approaches this topic through a financial lens, focusing on equity release schemes as a way to free up housing equity while remaining in the dwelling. However, there are also other ways in which housing wealth can be extracted, such as downsizing, moving to a rental dwelling or subletting part of the dwelling. There is very little recent international comparative insight into the perceptions and preferences of older home owners with regard to this matter. Which housing equity release strategy do they prefer and why? And to what extent is their decision to release housing equity influenced by the bequest motive? Based on focus group research in six European countries (Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Hungary, Italy and the Netherlands), this paper observes some general trends and identifies a number of country specific variations.

Historically, housing cooperatives in our environment have been created, the same as protected housing, for the most disadvantaged social sectors, traditionally excluded from the housing market. Traditional housing cooperatives have played the part of developer and builder in the Spanish housing market, in order to be able to offer lower cost housing to the members of said cooperatives, generally as its owners. Added to this, after the collapse of development and construction activity and profit-earning following the property bubble burst in 2008, another phenomenon of "false cooperativism" was generated, where former developing companies made instrumental use of this legal formula with a view to reducing the costs of the construction and development process. These cooperative modes are far removed from the principles of social economy and have nothing in common with other international models of housing cooperatives, which offer an alternative system to meet residential needs. Interesting references are to be found in Denmark, Germany, Sweden, the USA, Uruguay and Canada, among others. However, despite this model not having been introduced in our historic context, initiatives have recently emerged involving a "new" housing cooperative trend corresponding to another kind of tenancy: right of use or assignment of use. With this new emerging model, it could be possible to overcome the traditional property-rental binomial on the Spanish housing market. These initiatives are pioneer and innovative in the context of Spain, which is why they have been framed within the scope of social innovation in some recent research. Furthermore, owing, among other factors, to the strong connection of some of these initiatives to our society's problem of ageing and care management, it is a subject which is now also attracting growing interest from other disciplines, such as psychology, gender studies, social services and others. Several recent research projects are turning up highly interesting results; all necessary in a field practically unexplored until now. Emerging assignment of use cooperative initiatives often (but not necessarily) include a cohousing project. Within this new concept a series of types have been classified; depending on the age of the cooperative members, a difference can be made between senior cohousing and intergenerational cohousing. The study presented here shows the main results of a qualitative research project carried out between January and May 2016, in order to obtain deeper knowledge of these pioneer initiatives emerging in Spain in the field of assignment of use cooperative housing. To take a closer look at an emerging practice, the formation of right of use cooperatives, the decision was taken to use a qualitative analysis, considering that it is the experts and users who can provide most information on the characteristics, causes and processes of forming these cooperatives. The approach included a first stage of theoretical research on the state of the question, and a second stage involving a series of non-structured interviews with assignment of use cooperative experts and users between March and May 2016. In view of the widely differing profiles of the people interviewed, the decision was taken to use a non-structured interviewing methodology, given its more open and flexible nature, thanks to which we were able to maintain common questions for the experts and users, while being able to ask specific questions depending on their specialisation. Being a qualitative approximation to this type of housing tenancy, the objectives of the research were rather introductory and unexplored, and can be summed up as follows: to obtain deeper knowledge of right of use cooperatives and cohousing, their categories and profile types; how the projects are set in motion, the process methodology; models of relationship between right of use cooperatives and cohousing, obstacles and successes of real projects; funding and economic aspects; eco-housing, more sustainable models. Outstanding among the results obtained, in first place is the fact that assignment of use housing cooperatives generally, but not necessarily, entail a cohousing or collaborative housing project. Collaborative or cohousing initiatives involve living with other people and assignment of use cooperatives are a legal tool which can serve to carry out that purpose. They can occur together, and, in fact, this legal formula represents for most of the people interviewed the most adequate formula for being able to launch a collaborative housing initiative in Spain. However, cases have also been found where a cohousing project uses other, more generic legal formulas, such as traditional associations or cooperatives (due either to lack of knowledge or to the actual size of the project). Lastly, there may also be cases of instrumental use of the "assignment of use" concept, which use the legal tool with the aim of obtaining improved economic conditions (without constructing a collaborative housing project). Between the two types of cohousing projects, senior cohousing initiatives enjoy greater success rates in Spain (distinguished from the intergenerational nature of the original cohousing experiences at international level). The fact that intergenerational initiatives experience higher failure rates is due to different factors, mainly of an economic-cultural or cultural nature. In general terms, one of the main stumbling blocks of these projects is the financing of intergenerational initiatives (only supported by ethical banking). In many cases, the minimum income required by financial institutions to grant loans can represent an obstacle impossible to overcome. The difficulty of finding the plot of land on which to set the project in motion is another of the major stumbling blocks. Involvement of the regional and local institutions in overcoming these difficulties could increase the number of successfully developed projects. Another of the major difficulties is the change of mentality implied by these cooperative projects in a society like the Spanish one, where owning a home has been the backbone of the family patrimony. The change towards new forms of housing tenancy means that these projects do not always end in success. In fact, this factor limits the interest of a certain part of society with sufficient economic resources to take out a mortgage in traditional terms. On the other hand, participatory methods and a non-hierarchical structure, added to self-management and community-oriented design are an essential part of all cohousing projects analysed. Likewise, open architecture and participatory design (i.e. where the members of these projects actively participate in designing the private and common spaces), and reservation of the more privileged spaces for common use are features shared by all of the projects analysed. Concern for the environment and ecology is also highly present in the essence and development of these alternative living projects (eco-housing). Consequently, assignment of use cooperatives represent a new answer to the residential needs gradually developing in Spain. These projects place the accent on the social and participatory construction of the cooperative for its improved solidity and greater durability of the project, thereby responding to the new living needs that the traditional market is unable to cover.

This article investigates the backgrounds to changing residential mobility of Dutch owner-occupiers from 1986-2006 and during the 2008-2018 crisis. The Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition is used to disentangle the main factors at work. Households of all age groups and family types have become more mobile in 1986-2006, with the highest increase amongst the youngest age groups. Nonetheless, ageing of owner-occupiers has dampened the growth between 1986 and 2006, because older owner-occupiers usually move less frequently than younger age groups. Had this ageing process not taken place, the overall increase in mobility would have been much higher (about 3.5 percentage points) than the 1.4 percentage point observed. The overall compositional effect remains negative despite a shift from traditional families with children towards more singles and couples without children, who are more mobile. During the crisis of 2008-2012, high residential mobility rates amongst the young age groups took a sharp negative turn. Combined with their increased presence among owner-occupiers, this implies that the contemporary Dutch owner occupied sector is more vulnerable to economic shocks.

Increasingly, policy-makers regard flexible labour as a condition for a well-functioning economy, while they also tend to regard home ownership as the superior tenure. These two goals appear to be contradictory, as mortgage lenders prefer clients with a permanent, uninterrupted income stream. For the Dutch context, multivariate analysis shows that flexworkers on temporary/zero hour contracts have smaller chances of moving into home ownership than those on permanent contracts. They also tend to express less preference for home ownership. Because flexworkers often experience spells of unemployment, risk aversion appears to play a role. Our findings show, in the Netherlands at least, that self-employed freelancers do not experience too many problems in accessing home ownership, possibly because of more stable and higher incomes. However, the role of flexible labour is on the rise and policy-makers might consider methods to promote access to home ownership, ranging from mortgage guarantee schemes to mortgage payment insurances. Our research findings may not always be valid for other countries because of international variation in institutional arrangements, such as unemployment benefits, mortgage insurance and guarantee schemes, etc., but, nonetheless, sheds considerable light on this policy issue.

The Spanish home ownership sector has been hit hard by the economic crisis. Repossessions stand at around half a million in the period from 2008 to 2014. This article investigates how the authorities, both at the level of the Spanish state and of the autonomous communities (regions), have responded to this problem. We investigated whether they assist troubled home owners and aim to design a less risky housing system, with more (social) rental housing. Our research in Catalonia, the Basque Country and Andalusia shows that Autonomous Communities are playing an increasingly important role in this matter. This finding fits well with theories on the formation of regional varieties of welfare, which indicate that flaws of the central governments in providing social welfare, are increasingly addressed by regions. The Basque Country seems to be on the way of designing the most comprehensive system of housing policies of the three regions, including a strong Right to Housing. All three regions regard the mobilisation of the large vacant dwelling stock as an important means to provide more affordable rental housing. However, the owners are often unwilling and the three regions have proposed drastic measures, such as fines and even temporary expropriations. The central government resists such measures, because they might interfere with the proper working of the country's financial system. It shows that certain policy competences can never be totally isolated from other policy fields and multi-level distribution of competences makes it all the more complex.

Many governments encourage home ownership and try to find ways to make this tenure more affordable for lower income groups. Well-known examples are Shared ownership and Home buy in the UK and Land Community Trust and Shared Equity Home Ownership in the USA. In the Netherlands, these types of products are popular among housing associations, which are private non-profit organisations. With the Dutch housing market in crisis, affordable home ownership products have gained popularity among house-seekers and social housing suppliers. This has resulted in a range of mostly complex products with different features which are not easy to compare. This paper aims to compare the financial performance of the various products under different economic conditions. This paper firstly puts the Dutch products into an international perspective by providing a typology based on an overview of the literature. Subsequently, each product is described in more detail and its financial consequences from a consumer as well as an investor perspective are calculated for three different economic scenarios. Finally, the paper reflects on how the Dutch products compare to the well-known products in the UK and the USA.

It is almost three decades after the first great comparative study by Boleat (1985) on housing finance systems. Since this date more comparative work on housing finance has seen the light, and amon...

This work analyses the residential boom, its collapse and the consequences of this collapse. As far as these consequences are concerned, we particularly pay attention to the phenomena of repossessions and evictions since these have a strong impact on the lives of people.The paper uses a welfare system perspective to explain how the importance of repossessions and evictions differs between European countries and regions. The research is based on a literature review and an analysis of policy documents and secondary data sources. Three different levels of scale are considered in our analysis: Europe, Spain and Basque country. The main research findings are outlined in the remainder of this abstract.The paper starts with an overview of house price developments and repossessions in different European countries. We observe that, even though house price developments have followed a rather similar path across Europe (a boom followed by a bust), the importance of repossessions clearly differs between countries. Based on a literature review, we conclude that the risk of repossession has six main dimensions (see also Cano et al., 2013):the employment situation: the higher the level of unemployment, the higher the risk of repossession;the social protection schemes: a lack of good social protection schemes increases the risk of repossession;the structure of the housing and housing finance markets: a large share of home ownership and relatively high mortgages increase the risk of repossession;the lending practices: high loan to value ratios and the occurrence of subprime mortgages increase the risk of repossessions;the house price development: a strong fall in house prices after the outbreak of the crisis increases the risk of repossessions and residual debts;the effectiveness of policies to prevent repossession: the absence of effective policies by either the government or the banking sector increases the risk of repossessions.An international comparative analysis shows that these risk factors are not equally distributed across the different types of welfare state regime. They are more prevalent in the liberal and Mediterranean welfare state regime than in the social-democratic and the corporatist welfare state regime. Indeed, the available statistics show that the number of repossessions is particularly high in Spain and Italy (Mediterranean welfare state regime) and the United Kingdom and Ireland (liberal welfare state regime). Especially Spain stands out as a rather dramatic case.The second part of the paper analyses the boom and bust on the Spanish housing market and describes how the various risk factors outlined above have developed in this country. We conclude that the number of repossessions has strongly increased after 2007 and that the response of the Spanish government to this problem can best be described with the term 'too little, too late'. Only recently, the Spanish national government has introduced a moratorium on repossessions for specific types of home owners.The third part of the paper focuses on the situation in Basque country. In this autonomous region, there are relatively few repossessions and evictions, which seems to be due to the fact that the regional government and the local banks are conducting active policies to prevent this problem. Furthermore, the level of unemployment in Basque country is relatively low compared to that in the rest of Spain, whereas the social protection system is better.

After a real estate boom the housing market took a dramatic turn in Spain, where repossessions and evictions are now a big social problem. Hundreds of thousands have lost their home since 2008 and many more are at risk. This paper provides a qualitative analysis of the Spanish experience and puts it into a comparative West European perspective. The risk of repossession was found to have six dimensions: the employment situation, the social protection schemes, the structure of the housing and housing finance markets, the lending practices, the house price development and the effectiveness of policies to prevent repossession. Spain scores' badly on all six dimensions, which explain the large number of repossessions. Only recently, and under strong societal pressure, has the Spanish government developed policies to tackle this problem.

Resumen es: Este trabajo aborda el boom inmobiliario, su colapso y las consecuencias que de todo ello se derivan, particularmente, las ejecuciones hipotecarias y los...

In the second half of the 1990s, Dutch urban housing policy shifted from urban renewal to urban restructuring and the creation of more socially mixed neighbourhoods. Motives for restructuring stem from the ongoing debates on concentration, segregation and social mix. Here, we focus on the main instruments of urban restructuring, that is, the demolition of social housing and the construction of more expensive rental and owner-occupied housing. Continued restructuring may eventually lead to a shortage of social rented dwellings for low-income households, the target group of social housing. An important political question is therefore whether the dwindling supply of social housing still matches the potential demand in the target group. We addressed this question with an analysis of three Dutch cities: Rotterdam, The Hague and Breda. The results indicate that, although demolition has brought about substantial changes, the share of social rented housing remains high in most restructuring neighbourhoods and restructuring has not resulted in concentrations of social rented housing in other, non-restructuring neighbourhoods in any of the three cities. In Rotterdam, which had a very large social housing stock at the beginning of the restructuring operation, there are still sufficient affordable homes for lower income households. However, in The Hague and Breda, restructuring has tightened the supply of social rental housing. The municipal authority in The Hague has attempted to remedy the situation by entering regional agreements to secure sufficient levels of affordable housing.

Uno de los problemas mas acuciantes del panorama estatal e internacional es, ademas de la crisis global y el desempleo, el fenomeno de los desahucios o las ejecuciones hipotecarias por impago. Desde que estallara la crisis financiera internacional tras la quiebra de Lehman Brothers, numerosas crisis y fenomenos dramaticos se han desatado, algunas directamente relacionadas con la evolucion del sistema financiero y otras derivadas de la degradacion general de las economias reales. Sin embargo, lo cierto es que el mundo occidental ha entrado en crisis, y de hecho diversas burbujas se estaban gestando simultaneamente en diferentes paises, pero con identico perfil, aunque con matices, en un contexto global comun. En este articulo, en primer lugar, se abordan el ciclo expansivo y la burbuja inmobiliaria acaecidos en el mundo occidental, en segundo lugar, se analizan los diferentes aspectos de la burbuja inmobiliaria y crediticia en Espana, en tercer lugar, la evolucion de las ejecuciones hipotecarias a partir del pinchazo de la burbuja inmobiliaria, y en cuarto y ultimo lugar, las respuestas ciudadanas e institucionales que se estan dando a la crisis actual.