The Greek crisis: financialization of housing and new geographies in a Mediterranean metropolis, Athens

Abstract

This article highlights the changes in the Greek housing system during the 2000s, focusing in relation between housing and mortgages’ system before and during the austerity regime in this country. More specifically, it studies the commotion of the housing system due to the participation and investments of the main economic actors, particularly the financial systems, for which housing has become a privileged investment area during the 2000s. How does housing gradually become dependent on indebtedness, thus reversing its role as a “social elevator” during the post II World War period? How has real estate debt for buying a family dwelling led to high levels of insecurity in terms of access to housing for people with low and middle incomes, as well as for vulnerable groups that are often invisible to “big investors”? These questions are the study object of a relatively large literature in other European countries, but they are still little studied in Greece, remaining even in the margins of the dominant discourse on the “Greek crisis”. Finally, is the financialization of housing a symptom of a housing crisis in 21st century Greece, or is it a trend toward the westernization of a local and typically Balkan familiar economy?