Paper short abstract:

This paper considers financialized housing development in the US and Germany. Cultures of finance, post-Fordist housing policies, and the the centrality of the single family home are juxtaposed to ask what forms of kinship are enduring in late liberalism and why.

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers everyday experiences and global entanglements of financialized housing development in the US and Germany. Using Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) as a starting point of comparison, cultures of finance, post-Fordist housing, and the the centrality of the single family home are juxtaposed in order to ask what forms of kinship are enduring in late liberalism and why. After President Eisenhower signed legislation in 1960 allowing the absentee ownership of development funds and projects, REITs became the primary source funding the projects that built suburban America. This was a change from what had previously been mainly locally-funded development with more community involvement (Elizabeth Blackmar 2005). However, only in the last ten years has Germany opened up their markets to REIT investment and development. In this paper, I will compare the imagined futures embedded within the design of the single family home in the US and Germany at key points in the history of capitalism under both liberalism and late liberalism. Development projects are always, at their core, endeavors that engage with and build toward an imagined future. What policies and flows of capital have made the single family home the model to work toward in the US and Germany? Where do they differ and how might we attribute the influence of REITs in shaping these shifts? At the root of all these policies and flows that continue to fundamental anthropological questions of who and what is invested in and what imagined future is being built toward.