From home to asset: shifting housing social representations and practices in Portugal

Abstract

The financialisation of housing is escalating housing inequalities worldwide. However, little is known about how it is producing changes in housing social representations and practices. To advance research in this direction, the content of 42 semi-structured interviews conducted in Portugal were analysed. It was found that housing social representations and practices have significantly changed since the Global Financial Crisis, with impacts at the individual and societal levels. From a home that serves the needs of the household, while embracing risk and engaging financial calculative reasoning, it became an asset that could be sold or used to extract rent in case of need or as part of a profit-making strategy. As the housing crisis unfolds, more studies are needed, particularly on those most affected by widespread logic and practices of financial speculation.

Introduction

Financialisation has transformed contemporary capitalist societies, linking global financial markets to the everyday life of households (Bobek et al., 2023; Martin, 2002). The financialisation of housing—i.e. the increased preponderance of financial institutions, actors and motives in housing provision (Aalbers, 2016)—in particular, has expanded mortgage loans to finance the purchase of households’ homes, implying the adoption of risk and financial calculative reasoning. But as housing became progressively unaffordable to younger generations and the low- and middle-income groups, new financial actors emerged, shifting investment strategies towards the private rental market and tourism property (Aalbers et al., 2021; Wijburg et al., 2024), feeding speculative logics and practices with profound impacts on housing provision.

The Global Financial Crisis (GFC)¹ was critical in these developments, opening up a new round of investment opportunities for institutional and private investors when over-indebted households could no longer pay the mortgages of their overvalued homes, and the middle classes could no longer afford the housing prices. Housing markets then became global markets, attracting institutional investors and small-scale private investors from overseas, who invested in properties for the extraction of rent and speculative gains. Such trends were particularly visible in Southern European countries that were hit the hardest by the GFC. In this region, affluent individuals from all corners of the world started to purchase properties as safe deposit boxes, acquired second homes for temporary residence and/or for short-term rentals (e.g. Alexandri, 2022; Santos, 2024; Tulumello and Dagkouli-Kyriakoglou, 2021).

Portugal is a most illustrative case of post-crisis housing financialisation. As one of the EU countries most severely impacted by GFC, the country adopted a recovery strategy that relied on attracting foreign investment into its real estate sector. Such strategy turned out to be particularly successful in a prolonged low-interest-rate environment, generating short-term capital inflows (Santos and Teles, 2021). However, it also fuelled house price inflation, intensifying affordability pressures and residential displacement in key urban centres (Cocola-Gant and Gago, 2021; Silva, 2019).

This strategy was integral to an emergent tourism-led growth model that supplanted the pre-crisis debt-driven economic paradigm, favoured by Portugal’s amenable southern climate and strategic geographical location, turning the country—and especially cities like Lisbon and Porto—into prime destinations for international real estate investment (Lima, 2023). The result has been a reconfiguration of housing around the needs of transient populations and global capital at the expense of long-term local residents.

The financialisation of housing and of its recent impacts have been widely researched within diverse disciplinary and interdisciplinary areas, addressing both core and peripheral contexts. However, less attention has been given to the way these transformations are shifting housing social representations (SR) and social practices at a time when housing affordability becomes a more critical worldwide problem (Wetzstein, 2017). Based on the extent and intensity of housing precarity and of the related struggles across different geographies, the housing crisis has become ‘the new normal’ (Lancione, 2019).

This article examines how financialisation is producing changes in housing SR and social practices. Taking the Portuguese context as a case in point, the article begins with a brief description of housing provision in the country and how it became intertwined with financialisation. It then argues for the relevance of studying housing SR and practices for advancing the financialised housing research agenda. Subsequently, it describes the method and presents the results of the analyses of the content of 42 semi-structured interviews conducted between 2014 and 2018 to examine the interrelations between financialisation and housing SR and practices over time. Finally, it shows how housing SR and practices have changed after the GFC, with impacts at the individual and societal level, urging for more studies on those who have suffered the most.

The financialisation of housing in Portugal

The financialisation of housing in Portugal followed a distinct trajectory compared to that of core European countries. Unlike other countries, this was not the result of the retreat of public provisioning and its replacement by private financialised forms of housing provision. In Portugal, the promotion of private ownership allowed to (temporarily) overcome the traditional weakness of the Portuguese welfare state for the middle classes, as social housing represents only 2% of the total housing stock of permanent homes. Already prior to membership of the European Economic Community, ownership rates of primary residence were high in European terms (57% in 1981). But the financialisation of the Portuguese economy ultimately provided the conditions for the success of a policy model based on homeownership through mortgage loans (Santos, 2019). Ownership rates of main residence reached the highest value of 76% in 2001, declining since then to 70% in 2021. Second and seasonal homes rose from 5% in 1981 to 19% in 2021, being associated with an extraordinary growth of new dwellings in the peripheries of the main cities and touristic areas (Ribeiro and Santos, 2018).

In Portugal, the responsibility for satisfying housing needs has fundamentally fallen on Portuguese families. Until the late 1990s, this was pursued through the mobilisation of own resources and economic aid through kinship, friendship or neighbourhood relations, based on logics of reciprocity, solidarity and mutual help, on the so-called welfare society (Serra, 2002). The financialisation of housing allowed relieving family dependency through the easy access to credit and the low interest rates favoured by the country’s participation in the European Monetary Union, further stimulated by the active support of the State through substantial subsidies to help finance loans for permanent homeownership (Santos, 2019). Mortgage loans also stimulated a boom in housing construction allowing the improvement of housing conditions for homeowners, expanding household indebtedness until the outburst of the crisis in 2008, as is shown in the first part of Fig. 1.

Fig. 1: New housing loans: volume and interest rate.

Source: the authors based on data from the Bank of Portugal.

The conditionality attached to the financial programme established with the Troika of financial institutions², together with austerity policies directed at tackling the crisis, led to a new phase of the financialisation of housing. With public debt reaching record highs, a shaky banking sector requiring continual assistance from public authorities, and an impoverished middle class, household debt initiated a downward trend. Public policies now turned to foreign investors, including the implementation of fiscal incentives, such as the Non-Habitual Resident tax regime, and Golden Visa programmes offering residency in exchange for property investment to lure high-income foreigners to visit, live, invest, and study in the country (Santos, 2024).

Mortgage markets would recover from 2018 onwards, but in a context marked by wage stagnation, greater credit selectivity and house price inflation (Fig. 2). The rise of housing loans since then express not only rising amounts of loans granted to finance more expensive homes, but also a higher concentration of these on higher-income households, including foreign citizens. Indeed, non-nationals residents have become increasingly prominent clients of domestic banks. In 2024, foreign borrowers accounted for 10% of the total amount of loans granted for permanent residential properties, and 45% of loans granted for secondary residential properties (Bank of Portugal, 2025).³

Fig. 2: Real house price index (Base - 2015).

Source: The authors based on data from OECD.

The increased demand for residential properties by affluent households led to an extraordinary rise in housing prices, that soon spread from main urban centres, undergoing renovation, and tourist destinations, to the whole country. It also resulted in increased housing insecurity, with low-income and young households finding it increasingly hard to meet their housing needs (Monini et al., 2025).

Why study housing SR and practices?

While a growing body of literature describes the interplay between financialisation and housing, little is known about the way financialisation shapes housing SR and practices. Admittedly, the studies on financialisation of everyday life maintain that financialisation is not only about material transformations and that it also involves narratives and discourses that convey new models of citizenship, success and risk-taking practices (Bobek et al., 2023; Lai, 2017; Martin, 2002). But while these approaches explain discursive and institutional practices that create the ‘investor subject’ (Aitken, 2007), the interrelations between socio-psychological and socioeconomic processes are still understudied. The present study is part of a larger interdisciplinary research project (e.g., Ribeiro, 2023; Ribeiro, Castro Seixas, and Neto, 2025; Ribeiro, Poeschl, and Santos, 2025; Santos, 2024) pursued to address this gap.

Because the SR approach places the study of socio-cognition and behaviour within individuals’ economic, historical, political and geographical contexts, it constitutes a privileged framework to understand the interrelations between socio-psychological and socioeconomic processes (Elcheroth et al., 2011), such as those involved in the current housing crisis. It conceives SR as lay theories that orient behaviours and social practices, which are composed of statements and explanations deriving from everyday communications between individuals (e.g., Abric 1994; Moscovici 1981). The SR approach is then devoted to the examination of how scientific and ideological discourses infiltrate natural or common sense thinking, becoming part of one’s heritage, thinking, language, and practices. Moreover, the SR approach relies on two socio-cognitive mechanisms−objectification and anchoring−in the study of socio-cognition and behaviour. The former focuses on the common elements that enable communication among the members of a community, and the latter underpins inter-individual variations (Doise and Valentim, 2015).

An exploratory study conducted in Portugal in 2018 (Ribeiro, 2019) showed how the objectification of the SR of “house” includes central dimensions of human life, highlighting the importance of housing in satisfying psychological and emotional needs and the inseparability between housing, dignity, security, and life.⁴ The study also showed that feelings and experiences of housing (in)security were anchored in housing tenure, highlighting the inequalities between homeowners and tenants.

The present study aims at identifying housing SR and categorizing housing-related practices in Portugal before and after the GFC. The study’s main assumption is that the processes of housing financialisation since the beginning of the 21st century have produced changes in housing SR and practices that have profound psychosocial impacts. To examine this conjecture, we conducted a secondary analysis of 42 semi-structured interviews carried out under two research projects: one in 2014–15 (P1, Coelho et al., 2015) and another in 2018 (P2, Santos, 2020). The goal was to answer the following research questions: What are households’ most common practices? In what way do housing practices relate to housing SR? What are the motivations or the reasons given for specific housing practices? What are the psychosocial impacts of different housing practices? Have housing practices changed over time?

In the next section, we present the method of the study followed by a discussion of the main results and implications.

Method

Data

The data consist of the transcriptions of 42 semi-structured interviews, 20 of which were carried out in the metropolitan area (MA) of Lisbon and Porto between October 2014 and June 2015 within the scope of the project P1, and 22 interviews conducted in the Lisbon MA in the year 2018 within the scope of project P2. The interviews involved 63 participants, men and women, aged between 26 and 71 years old, living under different housing tenure regimes (outright owners, owners with mortgage loans, tenants in the private rental market, social housing residents, or in other situations such as living in caravans or sheds) as shown in Fig. 3 (see Table 1 for a detailed sociodemographic characterisation of the interviewees).

Fig. 3: Participants in studies P1 and P2 by housing tenure.

Source: the authors.

Table 1 Sociodemographic characterisation of the interviewees.

P1 interviews were dyadic, that is, the interviews were conducted with both members of each couple. The interviews followed a semi-structured script with the main objective of collecting detailed information on the methods of managing family finances and on the impact of the 2008 economic and financial crisis on family and personal life. Specifically, the couples were asked about: (a) their own personal trajectory and how they had set up their family; (b) their family life (routines, division of domestic and parental work, socialising, etc.); (c) how they manage their family budget; (d) the impact of the economic crisis on personal, social, professional, and family life; and (e) strategies adopted to deal with these negative impacts (for a full description of the script see Coelho et al., 2015). In this study, housing issues arose spontaneously, associated with the description of family history and individual paths, and with regard to the strategies adopted to deal with the consequences of the crisis on family budgets (e.g., increase in mortgage interest rates; unemployment).

The 22 interviews conducted within the scope of P2 project aimed at examining in depth, and in a comparative way, housing inequalities after the GFC. In this case, interviewees were deliberately asked about their personal housing trajectory, in particular the conditions of access, comfort and affordability associated with the household tenure regime (for a full description of the script see Santos, 2020, see also Silva, 2019).

Both sets of interviews were recorded after study objectives’ have been explained and verbal full informed consent obtained. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and anonymized.

Data analysis

The secondary analysis of the data was carried out through a hybrid combination of content and thematic analyses (Neuendorf, 2019). While content analysis “seeks to quantify content in terms of predetermined categories and in a systematic and replicable manner” (Bryman, 2016, p. 285), thematic analysis strives for “identifying, analysing and reporting patterns (themes) within data” (Braun and Clarke, 2006, p. 79). This blended approach allowed us to provide “a simple, but in-depth report of commonalities and differences in the data” (content analysis) and “a rich and complex nuanced interpretation of the data as the theme” (Vaismoradi and Snelgrove, 2019, p. 7).

Data analysis followed the steps described in Fig. 4. Starting with the research questions listed above (step 1), the investigator first “immersed” in the data (step 2), to familiarise with it. Then, adopting the methodology used by Brough, O’Driscoll and Biggs (2009), the content analysis was conducted based on a priori developed codebook (step 3).

Fig. 4: Steps of the data analysis.

Source: the authors.

Built on the research questions and the literature on housing financialisation and SR, the codebook included six broad dimensions of non-exclusive categories: (a) housing practices; (b) tenure regime related to housing practices; (c) SR on housing; (d) motives underpinning housing practices; (e) psychosocial impacts; and (f) time (see Table 2). Categories “housing practices”, “tenure regime”, and “time” concern mostly manifest content−ideas explicitly expressed by interviewees−while categories “SR on housing”, “motives” and “psychosocial impacts” also concern unobservable, latent ideas and concepts, that require interpretation. During the coding process (step 4), inductive subcategories were added to the codebook whenever excerpts referred to new information or constructs.

Table 2 Codebook.

Once established, the categories and subcategories of the codebook were sorted by frequency of occurrence (step 5) to help identify the most common themes emerging from the data, the prevalence of practices by time and tenure regimes, the main motives and psychosocial impacts associated with different housing practices.

In step 6 we advanced an interpretative work of the list of the different categories and subcategories to identify the overarching themes and sub-themes with the assistance of visual representations, establishing relationships between codes, themes and different levels of themes. The next step consisted in the “review of the themes” (step 7) with the refinement of the analysed data. Finally, in step 8 (“definition and nomination of themes”), we made a detailed analysis for each individual theme, taking into account how it fits into the data set and relates to the research questions (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Finally, we mapped the relations between themes and sub-themes (Neuendorf, 2019).

Data limitations

Conducted over two different research projects, the interviews allowed us to capture housing SR and practices and to understand the motives that guided families in providing for their housing needs before and during the GFC, and after the economic recovery that followed.

Nonetheless, the data present some limitations. First, housing tenure regimes were not evenly distributed across the two data sets, which undermines the coverage of housing practices across the examined categories (types of families, socioeconomic strata, etc.). Second, the data refers to the two main urban areas of the country and lacks information on other regions and rural areas. Third, as the last set of interviews took place in 2018, the analysis does not cover the turbulent period following the COVID-19 pandemic, when rents and credit payments skyrocketed with the rise of interest rates. Nonetheless, the interviews do provide situated data on housing SR and practices in two important historical moments of housing financialisation in Portugal: the GFC and the subsequent recovery. Moreover, although each set of interviews is temporarily situated, the interviews followed a narrative approach. That is, the interviews were designed to capture change over time, inquiring about personal trajectories and life stories that allowed the gathering of information about changes in housing SR and practices. Indeed, the transcripts of the interviews contain plenty of references to changes in housing practices and SR that are explicitly evoked and recognised by participants themselves. Hence, the data is considered relevant to examine the research questions listed above.

Results

From the application of the steps mentioned above, 523 excerpts were selected and coded, of which 31.4% refer to SR and 68.6% to practices related to housing choices and decisions. Although housing SR and practices are highly intertwined, we considered housing practices to be those that involve an action. The following excerpts illustrate SR and practices associated with tenancy, respectively:

My parents […] lived their whole lives with the idea that they could live there [the house] as long as they wanted, and that’s what I thought happened when I rented a house […] I didn’t believe it was possible for an owner to rent a house and then tell people: ‘look, now leave because I want to do something else with the house’. (P2)

A friend of mine told me ‘Look I have a T4 [4 bedroom residence] for 600€. […] I went to visit immediately. […] I called my daughters and thought ‘let’s launch ourselves into the madness of moving house again’ […] [I now have a contract for] two years. (P2)

The 164 excerpts classified as SR were organised into seven themes (see Fig. 5). The largest theme conceives the modes of provision (38.9%), followed by the representations of the house and the dream house (19.8%). Other themes concern representations about the place, location, and accessibility (11.7%), housing policies (15.4%), housing financialisation processes (10.5%), exclusion processes (1.9%), and other topics (1.9%). Concerning housing practices, the 359 excerpts were organised into four major themes whose frequency of occurrence in the dataset suggests their relative importance to households:

• a. housing provision (51.1%), i.e. the strategies households use to provide for their housing needs, which can be organised into welfare society, market provision, financialised housing, welfare state, and substandard housing;

• b. transition processes (23.6%), that relate mainly to changes of house and household;

• c. maintenance and comfort (13.8%), which includes home improvement works;

• d. management of housing as a financial asset (8.4%), which refers to the acquisition, alienation, and monetisation of real estate properties; and

• e. other practices that do not fit the previous themes (3.1%).

Fig. 5: Themes and sub-themes.

Source: The authors.

Housing practices were further codified in terms of the time, reasons for the practice, and associated psychosocial impacts. For this study, we will focus the analysis on the SR and practices related with housing provision and management of housing as a financial asset.

Housing provision

The different categories of housing provision, as we will show, are not completely self-contained. The boundaries of market provision, welfare society or welfare state and substandard housing are not that clear-cut. For example, substandard housing, consisting of living situations that do not guarantee minimum basic conditions (e.g., of privacy, security, hygiene) or may be irregular (e.g., without formal contracts), may occur in private, public or in family lodging. Financialised housing, to give another example, may rely on the welfare state, given the amount of subsidies to promote it, and the role of the so-called welfare society, as access to mortgage credit has relied on financial guarantees, down payments, and credit guarantors, for which individuals often resort to relatives.

Welfare society

Like in the 20th century (and before), the provision of housing in Portugal continued to depend in great part on the welfare society. This is not a surprising outcome. In fact, the semi-structured interviews were designed to inquire about the family life and housing trajectories in which, inevitably, the starting point is the family of origin and the parents’ house. But besides being part of one’s personal trajectory, the parents’ home is also taken as an available resource when disruptive events occur, like the breaking of an affective relationship, unemployment, or health problems. This was particularly evident during the GFC. Indeed, returning to the parents’ home is not only an actual solution (i.e. a practice) in case of need (excerpt 1), it is also a potential solution (i.e. a representation) and part of household decisions about housing provision (excerpt 2).

Due to disagreements between me and her father, I understood that it was better to go back to my parents’ house (E12_P2, 329).

In the worst case, you think, if everything goes wrong and I can’t get a job and I can’t support it [the rent or the instalment], I can go to my mother’s house, but that’s obviously not ideal (E11_P2, 316)

The support of the welfare society goes beyond opening the doors of the family home, it may also involve the free use of other family houses, loans without interests or financial help in the payment of housing costs, either rents or mortgages. In most cases, intergenerational transfers go from parents to descendants, but the reverse situation also occurs, namely in case of disability or when descendants have higher incomes than their parents.

His father had built a small house, precisely to support his children when they thought about getting married… and we were in that small house for seven or eight years […] we managed to raise the money [needed to build our house]. (E16_P1, 42)

It was your mother and father who lent us half the down payment [to buy the house] (E34_P1, 132)

Psychosocial impacts include feelings of gratitude (“I owe my mother an eternal debt”, E29_P1, 98), but also discomfort and negative emotional states (e.g., anxiety) induced by dependency, lack of privacy, and even conflict as family members may hold different values or interests, in line with studies from other countries.

If I ask for 4000€, 5000€ [from my brother] when will I pay? Maybe never! I wouldn’t be able to sleep. (E28_P1, 88)

[My father] accepted me inside his house not to leave me on the street, but still today… I’ve been separated for 10 years and we never spoke again. […] it’s a total hell […] I only go home to spend the night (E8_P2, 259)

Financialised housing

As mentioned above, the rise of homeownership through mortgage lending is a late 20th century development sponsored by the State under a favourable macroeconomic environment. It is no surprise that the rapid and extraordinary rise of mortgage loans is associated with a substantial transformation of household perceptions and practices about housing.

High interest rates and difficult access to credit

Until the mid of the 20th century, acquiring a house using bank credit was quite uncommon in Portugal. Besides the extremely high interest rates (e.g., 16.6% in 1993), that made access to credit extraordinarily difficult to most households, debt had also a negative connotation. It was seen as something that needed to be terminated as quickly as possible, even if that meant living with great consumption sacrifices.

When we gried, applying for a mortgage loan was like something… Wow [very difficult]! My father went with me […] the interest was still very high […] just paying for the house almost took our entire salary (E34_P1, 133)

We took out a loan, and then we tried to pay it off as quickly as possible. Everything they gave us went toward paying down the loan, because it was a burden (E14_P2, 377)

Subsidised interest rates and facilitated access to credit

The 1990s were characterised by the arrival of substantial State subsidies and tax benefits to stimulate loans for permanent homeownership. Even though the subsidies lasted until 2002 for new contracts, the adherence to the Euro currency’s in 1999 allowed to keep interest rates low, favouring the continued expansion of housing loans until the GFC (see Fig. 1). Bank’s competition resulted in very aggressive campaigns with massive investment in marketing and advertising – disseminating ideas of financial rationality, security, and happiness—while granting the full amount of the house or even more (see Ribeiro, 2023).

At the time it [getting a loan] was easy, they lent for the house and even more if we wanted […] they lent me 100% of the house, and if I wanted money to furnish the whole house, they would lend me all that too (E31_P1, 104)

The SR highlight rational thinking—if I pay the same whether I rent or buy, it is better to buy, as I am paying for something that will be mine. This SR corresponded to some extent to a rational response to the political and social environment at the time, as the expansion of credit took place in a favourable economic environment characterised by the continued growth of real wages combined with the continued decline in interest rates. This spirit was well captured in our interviews, depicting the transformation of SR about indebtedness from something to avoid to a socially valued practice:

In 2001, I bought a house […] I went with the trend at the time, everybody said ‘you are paying rent and in the end you may already have a house of your own’ (E22_P1, 61)

A friend of mine had bought a house (…) [and told me] ‘Even if you still live at your parents’ house […] buy it because it’s an investment!’ (E32_P1, 106)

Hence, the exponential increase in household indebtedness in this period is also a manifestation of the normalisation of debt.⁵ If some people still had some reservations about going into debt, there were others who accepted banks’ offers and took a loan higher than the value of the house, which allowed them to also acquire the furniture or a car.

Until the GFC housing loans were not seriously questioned, however, at the time of the interviews, participants negatively reassess them considering that banking institutions failed to fulfil their duty in advising clients about underlying risks. Moreover, they cynically interpret and question the actual beneficiaries of the supporting policies, highlighting important negative psychosocial impacts.

When people are paying the bank, they are paying over a very long period of time with all the risks inherent in that very long term … these warnings are not made now and were not made then … (E22_P1, 61)

The subsidised interest rates were never for the benefit of those who borrowed… they were always for benefit of the banks […] it was the banks that won (E17_P1, 48)

International financial and economic crisis

Before the burst of the GFC in 2007, there was a period of rapid increase in interest rates of mortgage loans, but credit policy was still facilitated (see Fig. 1). The rise in interest rates took many households by surprise and posed great financial difficulties to families to keep up with their credit obligations. Many of them were no longer able to pay and had to hand their houses over to the bank. This was then a period where debt had important psychosocial impacts, namely fear and anxiety about future interest rate increases and inability to pay mortgages.

At the time when we bought the house, Euribor [the average loan base rate] was at 4.5 or 4.6 […] which is a great advantage today [in 2015] because we have a relatively low spread [the extra percentage the bank adds to Euribor] […] At the time we were very surprised… because I, with a scholarship, without any social protection […] we were treated very well by the banks (E15_P1, 36)

The value of the montly payment […] increased a lot, right after 2008 […] I started to have a lot of difficulty making payments, and at a certain point I reached a situation where the payment only covered the interest and that meant that the outstanding capital was increasing (E19_P2, 472)

We were paying more than double of what we pay at the moment [2015] for the loan. […]. I’m paying not even 400€ when I’ve already paid almost a 1000€. […] If the Euribor suddenly goes up, I’m going to pay 1000€ and I don’t know how to do it, do I? If the Euribor skyrockets like it did in 2007, 90% of Portuguese people will hand their houses over to the bank (E32_P1, 111)

The GFC then led to a comeback of previous SR of mortgage loans.

When I can get rid of them [loans] it will be forever! I’d rather be stuck on a lease than stuck on a bank loan, because the rent we always have the chance to try to look for a lower one and change… and adjust. We can’t adjust this one. So, it was a bad move. (E28_P1, 87)

As the financial crisis gave way to an economic crisis (that persisted in Portugal until 2015), unemployment rates rose and housing prices declined (see Fig. 2). To stimulate economic activity, the European Central Bank lowered interest rates within the monetary union. However, for those who lost their jobs, this drop in interest rates did not prevent the loss of their homes. But for others, the vast housing stock at sales price due to massive credit default made it possible to acquire a house at an affordable cost (or to buy a house for investment purposes, see management of housing as a financial asset). Thus, those who were able to buy a house were well aware that their fortune resulted from the misfortune of others.

The GFC has exposed the negative consequences of the policies of easy credit leading to changes in EU regulations (e.g., Directive 2014/17/EU), which became more restrictive. However, it also negatively impacted trust in governmental and financial institutions. The massive bail out of banks meant that assistance came to those who caused the crisis instead of families that suffered most from it.

At the height of the crisis, I began to realise that there were a lot of bank [repossessed] houses, houses that had belonged to people who had not been able to pay, and as dramatic as this may be, they were on the internet […] they were for sale and there were very cheap […] they granted a loan right away, they granted it to everyone, they want to get rid of it, until the next one comes along who can’t pay it. I think it’s a bit like: they make money with the sale now, I ask for a loan, I get stuck and I can’t pay, oh what a bummer, the house goes to the bank again, they do the same thing, they don’t care (E13_P2, 360)

Homeownership has, frequently, positive impacts such as ontological security and affirmative social identity, as it constitutes an important indicator of social status, recognition and social differentiation from others (Arundel and Lennartz, 2020). This was recognised by the interviewees during the crisis: “99.8% of the Portuguese are much worse off than us… because we have real estate… we have more than enough to not worry” (E22_P1, 58).

Financial constraints have, on the contrary, important negative impacts (e.g., Glonti et al., 2015). During the GFC, a major concern was to protect the family home and the well-being of children (Frade and Coelho, 2015). However, for low-income households, homeownership may not represent the expected relief as real estate wealth is taken in consideration in financial support measures.

The house made us lose, for example, the [tax] exemption […] I also don’t know if we’re going to lose the benefit [for my children] […] because of the property value of the house. […] I don’t know if they think we eat and drink from the house, right? (E33_P1, 131)

Considering these findings, it is possible to understand the extreme levels of psychological distress faced by Portuguese households after the COVID-19 pandemic, when interest rates rose to 3.5%, in a country where about 90% of households have variable interest rates (Fig. 1).

Economic recovery and rising prices

The Portuguese economy eventually recovered from 2015 onwards. However, buying a house became increasingly difficult after the GFC⁶. Not only have the conditions for credit granting become more selective due to EU regulations, but also the spreads and housing prices have increased dramatically in a context of stagnant wages and job insecurity (see Fig. 2).

I think the spread nowadays is almost three times higher [than the value of my spread] […] After the crisis, the bank stopped lending money for home loans, it was very complicated. Then, as they started to lend, nowadays, the spread is quite high (E10_P2, 291).

The continuous rise in housing prices and the increasing inaccessibility of homeownership, which particularly affects the younger generations, has led to the perception of homeownership as one of the best financial investments.

Nowadays, anyone who lives in the Lisbon area and surroundings […] knows that a house is currently an investment, and perhaps one of the best investments. (E1_P2, 156)

The last set of interviews was conducted in 2018 and did not cover the consequences of the economic crisis resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic between 2020 and 2022, which surpassed the GFC. The impacts of the pandemic were strongly felt in the Portuguese economy, which is highly dependent on tourism, which suffered a revenue loss of about 60% (Frade et al., 2021). Like in other countries, the Portuguese Government approved housing support measures to protect indebted owners from eviction, a measure that was well received but not without doubts about the ability to repay a growing debt in the future (European Banking Authority EBA, 2020). Contrariwise to the GFC, during the pandemic crisis and the inflationary crisis that followed (and that has led to an increase in interest rates by the ECB to tackle it), the prices of housing haven’t gone down in Portugal as they did in other countries. Housing prices in Portugal continued to rise, making of the housing crisis in Portugal one of the deepest in Europe, raising concerns at the EU level (European Commission EC, 2025, pp. 22–24).

Market provision

For Portuguese households, renting a house (or a room) in the private market plays an important role in the emancipation of individuals, as young adults leave their parent’s house to study, work or constitute a new household. It is often the first (and only) option to leave the family home and the most prevalent form of provision among the lower socioeconomic strata (Observatório da Habitação, do Arrendamento e da Reabilitação Urbana OHARU, 2023).

I rented the house because I wanted to raise my own family and in my mother’s house it was not possible (E6_P2, 227)

Before the 1990s, the Portuguese rental market was heavily regulated and had been subject to several rent freezes to curb the working class’s recurring difficulties in providing for their housing needs. From the 1990s onwards, rental reforms were gradually introduced, updating rents, reducing the duration of contracts and their transmission to family members. While the old contracts led to a degraded rental market as landlords failed to perform structural repair works, the subsequent reforms turned renting increasingly insecure and unaffordable (Monini et al., 2025), negatively impacting SR about renting, as shown in the interviewees discourses below, and in a focus group discussion conducted in 2022 (Ribeiro, Castro Seixas, and Neto, 2025).

[my parents] rented that house all their lives until the law changed, until the law allowed the landlord to send them away […] and he did. […] My parents lived in that house for 30 years, they never thought of another option but to live in that house, and at a certain point they received a letter saying that they had 5 years to leave. That was very complicated for them (E17_P2, 444)

Tenants report important changes in practices: constant increases in rental prices and permanent renegotiation of lease contracts; increased bureaucracy and more restrictive selection procedures; non-renewal of contracts and evictions; and even coercion and bullying. These changes are associated with increased investment in domestic real estate by foreign investors and the use of housing for more lucrative purposes like short-term rentals (Cocola-Gant and Gago, 2021). The data from the National Rental Desk (Balcão Nacional do Arrendamento), in turn, shows an increase in the termination of rental contracts by opposition to renewal by the landlord since 2016 (Santos et al., 2022), which could be made available for more lucrative uses.

The contract was for two years, but after a year […] I was pressured to leave because the building was sold to a Chinese investor. […] In 2014 when I was sent away from that house, I could not find another house […] It was very difficult to convince my landlord to let me rent this house […] it is the most expensive house I have been in Alfama and it is the smallest (E17_P2, 438)

We wrote a letter of application to be able to rent the house […] it’s a T2 for 750€, and it was the cheapest we found […] It was luck, it was luck. […] the 4th floor was bought by a Frenchman who is renting it out and that is definitely on Airbnb […] I open the mailbox and I receive many offers […] flyers with offers to buy the building (E15_P2, 394).

The processes of expulsion from city centres associated with touristification have important negative psychosocial impacts, perceived as a threat to social identity and a social injustice: people’s identity as residents is lost as they cannot financially afford to continue living in their neighbourhoods; places lose their identity due to the massive exodus of the resident population and the arrival of new residents with different habits and culture.

The role played by the home in an individual’s emotional and psychological balance is threatened by the constant feelings of worry, insecurity, uncertainty, and lack of personal control. Experiences of ‘not being chosen’ and of discrimination, in a fundamental area of human life, are accompanied by emotions of anger and feelings of being disrespected, which may have profound impacts on self-esteem, interpersonal trust, and political behaviour.

This results in an increased social differentiation between homeowners and renters, as it is taking place elsewhere (Arundel and Lennartz, 2020; Forrest and Hirayama, 2018). Furthermore, increased unaffordability has also important impacts in the representations about landlords, as a social group, suggesting an increasing resentment and negative stereotypes and prejudice.

This possibility of trying out tenants raises house prices […] if I am not able to pay 300€, and you come and pay 500€, they [the landlords] almost hold an auction, because they can choose the tenants. […] since I am not the owner of anything or the heir of anything […] if the landlady informs me that she is not renewing my contract, it shakes all my confidence. […] Many times I have envied the landlady […] I really envy the possibility of being sure that there is a house (E17_P2, 426)

Landlords like to get their hands on everything […] a house might be worth 200€ or 300€ and they go up to 500€ or 600€. […] They want the money from the rent and they couldn’t care less about anything else. […] That’s why there are so many angry people (E16_P2, 421)

Other studies support these findings, showing a decrease in the perception of freedom to move house (highly valued during the GFC) and an increase in insecurity, with tenants being the major “victims” of the current housing crisis rather than indebted households (Monini et al., 2025; Ribeiro, Poeschl, and Santos, 2025). Hence, since the GFC, private housing provision in Portugal has become increasingly unpredictable and unaffordable.

Substandard housing

Substandard housing is the last resort when all other alternatives fail. This generally refers to inappropriate housing conditions (e.g., a shed, a shop, illegal occupation of social housing) in terms of comfort and security.

Before separating from my husband, I had to live in a storage room where there was no electricity or water, there were no conditions at all, it was an empty shed (E8_A2, 258)

I slept in the store […] but in the store I was not able to take a shower, so I would go with a bag to the [public] bathhouse to take a shower (E17_P2, 432)

I had to occupy a council house because I had nowhere to go, my household doesn’t fit in anyone’s house – it’s me, my husband, and 4 more children – we don’t fit in anyone’s house (E6_P2, 234)

As with welfare society provision, substandard housing often relies on the support of relatives, friends and neighbours. Although comfort conditions are very poor, the sharing, help and cooperation between residents have positive psychosocial impacts. The autonomy allowed by the situation—to build an annex or another shed whenever they need more space or to guarantee privacy and independence of a new household—is highly valued.

My whole childhood was in a neighbourhood [of illegal construction] … it was all family, if we needed something, if the neighbour next door had it we could count on it, we were all united, they didn’t mind getting together to help setting up a shed […] during the day there was an empty space, during the night they worked and the next day there was already a shed set up in that space (E12_P2, 325)

Nonetheless, there were constant appeals to the local authorities demanding for social housing. In the majority of cases, their needs are recognised by those authorities. However, as public resources are scarce, and the waiting lists are several years long, such recognition does not mean an actual response within a reasonable period. Besides negative impacts on physical and mental health (Ribeiro and Barros, 2020), substandard housing impacts trust in institutions as the attribution procedures of social housing raise doubts and rage.

Two years ago I applied [for social housing] so I spent almost 40€ on papers, I had to go to Finance, to Social Security, to go to different places to deal with papers, I delivered the papers […] they forced people to spend money, but this contest is by raffle, sometimes they draw the ball, and sometimes it may be that the ball has a bit of glue and is left in the hands of the gentleman of the Chamber (E22_P2, 497)

Residents of precarious and illegal housing are also often subjected to violent, dehumanised practices of displacement without guarantee of an adequate alternative. Evictions are conducted with little respect for citizens needs and rights, with important negative impacts in terms of physical and mental health. With the continuous aggravation of the housing affordability crisis in the country after the GFC and even more after the pandemic, substandard housing practices, and even homelessness, have re-emerged affecting in a disproportionate way poor households and migrants (Monini et al., 2025). Although the Portuguese Housing Basic Law (which was only approved in 2019, Law n.^o 83/2019) determines the prior assurance of an alternative solution, evictions are frequently conducted without sufficient notice and without any guarantees of alternative housing.

They get there and throw people out on the street like puppies. I couldn’t pack up anything [when they came to demolish the shed], I was really down, it was my neighbour who went and gathered my things […] I felt so low, I really felt desperate […] at work I felt a problem in my heart like never before… it was the first time I felt that, I was really dying there […] I couldn’t sleep, and then I looked for a house, I looked, I looked, I couldn’t find any… I couldn’t find a house (E18_P2, 458)

Welfare State

Welfare State provision includes various housing policies, namely public housing from the local and central government, resettlement of illegal and self-built neighbourhoods and various subsidies for both tenants and landlords in the private rental market.

As mentioned, the Portuguese social housing stock is residual due to a historical trajectory of neglect, which undermines state ability to respond to the current housing affordability crisis. Although the social value of public housing is recognised by the Portuguese society and by its beneficiaries, residual social housing is not unproblematic. Their tenants also report various problems in comfort conditions (e.g., humidity, overcrowding) and neighbourhood security (e.g., drug trafficking, neighbours’ conflicts), resulting in negative impacts on identity, feelings of disrespect, discrimination, and dehumanised treatment.

People don’t live in social housing because they want to! People live in social housing because they have to […] we are not bad people, we are not animals, if we have more problems than people who have their privacy, it is due to that, because we all need to have a little space, some privacy (E10_P2, 293).

There are eight of us going to a bathroom […] social workers and council technicians don’t want to know, they have nothing to do with it, that’s the answer they give. If someone becomes pregnant: ‘Why did you get pregnant? You didn’t know you lived in a type 1 [one-bedroom] house?’ (E12_P2, 334)

The situation has even deteriorated over the last decades. Notwithstanding the insufficiency of public offer, the Lisbon municipality has underinvested and sold several units of its social housing stock to siting tenants. This not only led to the neglect of repair and improvement works, forcing tenants to take care of these by themselves, but also to what were perceived as unfair practices of alienation. Moreover, the sale of social housing by the municipality is perceived as incomprehensible, unfair and giving rise to speculative practices.

With our bonuses [vacation and Christmas] we fixed the house, room by room. Now we have received a letter with the option to buy the house […] 30.000 euros! Well, if I hadn’t done any work, if the house would be as we received it […] I’m sure it would be about 5000€ or 6000€. No, I mean, it was my effort, and they are the ones who profit with my effort! […] No, I didn’t think it was fair! (E3_P2, 180)

In my building […] there were some that were bought and after a year they were immediately sold. […] They bought them for 20,000€ and sold them for 75,000€ […] there are hundreds of people who are registered for social housing and who are waiting for an answer […] they’ve been waiting for seven or eight years (E7_P2, 248, 251)

The aggravation of the housing crisis in the country afterwards the COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to the development of a social consensus regarding the need of public investment in housing (Santos and Ribeiro, 2022). The Portuguese Post-pandemic Recovery and Resilience Programme (PRR) has foreseen an investment of 1211 million euros in housing aiming at responding to the needs of at least 26,000 families. However, delays and multiple constrains are putting at risk this achievement in a time that it is estimated that would be needed about 140 thousand homes to solve most urgent needs (CAN/PRR, 2025, p. 108).

Management of housing as a financial asset

Even if it initiated in different timings in different places, the first phase of the financialisation of housing is associated with the general build-up of mortgage loans that reached an end with the GFC. In this phase, private finance entered the housing sphere with the gradual involvement of the state, non-financial firms and households. The second wave is associated with the growing participation of institutional investors, where corporate landlords expanded the business of managing portfolios of residential housing, generating both rental income and capital gains as the market value of houses increases. In this post-GFC period, more affluent households also become investors in real estate in the long or short-term rental markets, changing housing practices of both landlords and tenants. Within our sample, we found a variety of practices coded as management of housing as a financial asset, which increased after the GFC. Three common practices were identified: alienation, monetisation and wealth accumulation.

Alienation, monetisation and acquisition

Prior to the GFC, most households were risk-averse. The most common practice when a household needed to move to a new house, was to sell the “old” one, even if that would mean losing money. The costs of having two mortgages was perceived as too risky, as something to avoid.

We sold our apartment. We lost a lot of money… […] we couldn’t have two houses in our name […] we could but it would always be a risk if we failed to rent and had to pay for both loans. And we decided instead to lose a little money and sell it cheaper, but at least get rid of the expense […] our parents even had to lend us money to pay the rest to the bank […] because the money from the sale was not enough to cover [the debt] (E33_P1, 124–125)

After the crisis, such strategy was further facilitated with the policies devoted to attract external demand (e.g., Golden Visas), contributing to the transfer of assets to foreign investors with greater financial capacity pursuing their own financialised strategy of treating housing as a source of economic rent extraction rather than a source of shelter and security.

Most fortunate households did manage to keep their houses. When housing prices went down, and it would not be possible to sell without a loss, those who could opted to maintain the old house and monetise it by renting it to other families, avoiding losing property and remaining in debt:

He has a house, although it’s rented… […] he’s already thought about selling it to us […] but it’s unthinkable because they [the buyers] offer very little money for the house and the debt remains […] at least this way it is being used and the payment of the debt is being settled (E13_P1, 26)

We tried to sell, but, at the time, it wasn’t easy anymore… loans didn’t come so easily and people didn’t want to get so involved with banking anymore. And that’s when the rental market took a huge leap, people started wanting to rent because they didn’t want to have a loan with the bank. […] It is leased, therefore, it is a value […] at this moment it ends up being an investment (E11_ P1, 9)

Monetisation is conceived as a rational decision that has a positive impact on mental health, as it contributes to feelings of relief and contentment. However, it also constitutes a factor of latent anxiety “[The other house] is rented […] what they pay me is what I pay the bank… But […] I am always with my heart in my hands…” (E29_P1, 96).

Subsequently, with the growing touristification of the country, and the scarcity of affordable housing, some households considered even to sublet parts of the house as a monetisation strategy.

This subletting is the only thing that allows me – without having to resort to family and loans from friends – it’s the only thing that allows me […] to have a house to live in (E17_P2, 436)

We are also renting the room, which is a bedroom, which is a much larger room, it must be around 20 square metres, and we are asking a little more, that is our third person […] so she pays 300€ […] and we, each, pay 225€ and pay the 750€. That was the way to pay for the house, to pay and that’s it, even so, 225€ for a house that is yours is much more worth it than being in a room paying 300€, and so I’m even happy with the situation (E15_P2, 395)

For others, monetisation through Airbnb, renting to foreign students or digital nomads, became a part-time or even full-time business, in a time characterised by loss of real wages. Hence, while some households followed prudent strategies incurring into some loss to avoid being overburdened with debt, others managed to rent their houses to avoid losses. Others still monetised their properties to help them pay their mortgages.

If during the first phase of housing financialisation in the country, which corresponded to a boom in housing construction, wealthier families bought second and third homes mainly for family holidays, after the GFC, housing began to be increasingly seen as an investment, associated with the idea that buying real estate is the best way to save and make money.

I think the incentive to buy a house should continue, it’s an investment […] certain investments don’t depreciate in value and it’s a way for you to save money, whether you need it or not, … you can keep it for your children, or … you can sell and make money (E10_P2, 296).

Seminal analyses on ‘investor’ subjectivity on the first wave of financialisation stressed the emergence of specific narratives and discourses that emphasised individual responsibility alongside risk-taking and calculative assessment in financial management. This was associated with increasing responsibility for individual financial security through expanding demand for financial products and services that supplemented or replaced public provision, including credit to provide for housing, education, health or consumption in general (Beggs et al., 2014; Finlayson, 2009). As households became (indebted) homeowners, they could access to an asset that could be sold or that could be used to extract rent in case of need or as an investment under more favourable conditions. This is in line with the ethnographic work conducted by Mikuš (2024) on indebted households living in Zagreb, where a variety of similar strategies were found, ranging from outright profit-making strategies to prudent rationality that combined instrumental reasoning and value-based goals.

Discussion of results and recent developments

Altogether, the analysis of the interviews shows how housing SR and related practices have evolved from the first to the second phase of the financialisation of housing in Portugal. It shows that financial logics and actions gradually permeated the daily lives of households when purchasing a home with credit. As such logics and actions expanded, credit became part of a rational course of action rather than something to be fearful about. This corresponded to the first phase of financialisation, when the normalisation of debt was also legitimised by State subsidies and tax benefits to help finance loans for permanent homeownership. However, the repercussions of the GFC have put this model on hold, leading to a backlash in the SR and practices of financialised housing.

If, in the first phase, housing loans were based on arguments of financial rationality and personal and family advancement through access to improved living conditions, in the second phase, they came to be perceived as highly risky when accessible or simply and out of reach. Somehow, unexpectedly, the rental market soon also turned into an insecure and unaffordable tenure. In a country with a residual welfare state in this domain, most vulnerable households resorted to the welfare society. The most destitute could only have recourse to substandard forms of housing that appeared to belong to the past. However, the greater availability of real estate assets at sale prices further stimulated a reduced fraction of households to continue pursuing their investment strategies, including overseas.

The fact that house markets have increasingly become global means that the contrast should not only be made between owners and tenants, but also between the different socioeconomic strata within each tenure and the different groups of migrants living in a country. This is particularly relevant in the Portuguese case, as it has unprecedentedly become a destination country. Between 2015 and 2023, the foreign population with the legal status of residence increased an astonishing 272% (Instituto Nacional de Estatística INE, 2025).

Based on 2019 foreign residency data, Carreiras (2024) identified five distinct migrant groups. The two most prominent were retirees over 65−typically homeowners−and highly qualified professionals, often nationals from core European countries, who tended to live in high-rent housing. Chinese migrants are also relatively well-off, owning property and earning income from businesses or rentals. Brazilians form the largest group of immigrants in the country, primarily consisting of young, working-aged individuals. At the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum were migrants from Portuguese-speaking African countries, marked by low education levels and relatively higher rates of unemployment and inactivity, and South Asians, who often lived in the most substandard conditions.

As a larger middle and lower class, of both nationals and migrants, struggled to manage their housing needs, an increasing share of affluent overseas households benefited from speculative investment in the residential housing market, aided by attractive fiscal and citizenship incentives. Focusing on this privileged group, Montezuma and McGarrigle (2018) identified three investor profiles. The safe haven investors include individuals (mostly from China, Russia, and Turkey) seeking a secure investment environment and access to intra-EU mobility driven by the relatively easier visa access compared to countries like the U.S. or the U.K. The lifestyle income optimisers, consisting mainly of intra-EU migrants, are attracted by lower tax rates, reduced cost of living, and improved quality of life. The safe haven lifestyle migrants, mostly composed of Brazilian homebuyers, represent a hybrid category of those who seek political and economic stability, driven as well by cultural and linguistic familiarity with the country. These strategies are facilitated by the rise of real estate intermediaries that specialise not only in attracting international investors to local property markets, but also in helping them to manage their properties in the rental industry (Jover and Cocola-Gant, 2023).

In between stand qualified professionals, who also benefit−albeit to a lesser extent—from the power asymmetries embedded in the global mobility regime. Drawing on narrative interviews with young lifestyle migrants, Caminero and McGarrigle (2023) show that some affluent lifestyle migrants attempt to manage the conflicts and tensions tied to their privileged position by striking a balance between their social positions and a sense of belonging through ‘local anchorage’ and by opting ‘to belong to what they construe as authentic nontouristic residential neighbourhoods’, framing this choice as ‘part of a moral code to justify their presence in a city that has been rapidly transformed by tourism and other transient populations’ (p.2). But even these reconstrued narratives ultimately reveal the depth of the social transformations underway in contemporary global markets.

This in turn points to the critical role of housing in accentuating inequalities (Forrest and Hirayama, 2018), between property wealthy families that have their life chances improved with the accumulation of appreciating assets (‘real estate accumulators’), those who still manage to deploy their wealth to cope with hostile economic and social circumstances (‘housing wealth dissipaters’), and those who have no assets to rely on (‘perpetual renting families’). The present study showed that these changes in housing practices and associated SR have profound psychosocial impacts. Financialised housing has had positive impacts on those who successfully invested in the family home that could be passed on to future generations, and even more so on those who managed to accumulate further assets. But when they started to struggle to keep up with their credit obligations in a country where there are no affordable alternatives, housing became a constant source of anxiety for socioeconomic groups that had until recently been protected from the housing crisis.

Conclusions

In this article, we examined how the processes of housing financialisation in the 21st century Portugal have produced changes in households housing SR and practices, which is still an understudied subject. Building on secondary analysis of narrative life story semi-structured interviews conducted with households in Portugal between 2014 and 2018, this study contributed to increase the understanding of how, and to what extent, households have appropriated discourses and narratives around the ‘investor subject’ by examining housing SR and practices.

Even though the study has some limitations, namely the fact that it does not exhaustively cover all housing conditions and the more recent period, it nonetheless captures relevant transformations. Despite the limitations, the interviews provide situated data on SR and practices in two important periods that allow for an understanding of the processes of housing financialisation in Portugal: the peak of the GFC in the country, in 2014, that exposed the consequences of the first phase of the financialisation of housing characterised by an extraordinary rise of mortgage loans; and the subsequent recovery period, already visible in 2018, based on the opening up of the housing market to transient wealthy populations that accentuated the housing crisis in the country. By focusing on long-term residents who suffered the impact of recent changes, the present article offers a complementary analysis to recent work that focuses on newcomers to the residential market who have intensified the problem.

Households’ housing practices and SR have evolved with ongoing socioeconomic and political changes, namely with the GFC and the policies used to tackle its effects. The increased motivation to use housing as an asset arose out of multiple motivations, either triggered by financial necessity (e.g., subletting a room to help support housing expenses), as part of financial calculation (e.g., selling it to get rid of debt or strategically waiting for a more convenient timing), or as an opportunity for a profitable investment enhanced by state incentives, enacting investor subjectivity. Such practices and underlying subjectivities impact not only on homeowners themselves, but also, and more severely, on renters who did not have at their disposable such strategies.

While portraying the manifestation of global systemic trends, the Portuguese case highlights the importance of considering the specific historical socioeconomic and political contexts. As a European periphery, Portugal possesses traits of both core and peripheral countries, with a large impoverished middle-class facing increasing housing costs as well as a growing affluent population attracted by the capitalist assurance of the country’s EU governance and touristic amenities that ensure the quality of life. This lucky group is, even temporarily, enjoying their properties while expecting certain capital gains with most appreciating assets at the global level.

Further studies are needed to further examine the SR and practices of those who suffer the most from the ongoing housing crisis, of those who live at the margins of our global urbanised worlds. This is both an epistemic and political endeavour as has been pointed out by the radical housing approach (Lancione, 2019). Such studies should not only attempt to capture housing SR and practices, but they should also include its psychosocial impacts, both at the individual level (e.g., emotional well-being) and at the societal level (e.g., trust in political, public, and financial institutions), to help counteract most pernicious effects to social cohesion and to our democratic societies.

Data accessibility

This study uses secondary data, thus transcriptions are not shared. Derived data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author on request.