WhereWeMove: The housing game that supports governments and residents in joining efforts for climate action

The Restless Urban Landscape of Housing Financialization: Geographies of Residential Real Estate Investment Trust Expansion in Germany and the United States

The expansion of Residential Real Estate Investment Trusts (R-REITs) represents an important frontier in the financialization of housing and cities. This paper advances the literature on institutional real estate investment and corporate landlordism by analyzing how and where the 15 largest, publicly-listed R-REITS and REIT-like funds in Germany...

The Insurance Crisis Is a Housing Crisis

Home insurance markets in the United States are experiencing a mounting crisis. Worsening climate disasters like more intense hurricanes, wildfires, and hailstorms are making multi-billion-dollar payouts an annual occurrence, hitting a broad range of US states. Insurance protections are shrinking and becoming increasingly unaffordable, while...

The Re-Risking State: The Limits of Property Insurance in Florida

Florida’s property insurance market is in crisis. Many of the Sunshine State’s insurers are raising rates or pulling out of communities, zip code by zip code. The average Florida homeowners insurance premium rose to nearly $11,000 in 2023, with notably higher rates in coastal South Florida cities—the costliest in the nation. This brewing...

Red&Blue: waarom betrouwbare beoordelingen van klimaatrisico’s in vastgoed nog ver weg zijn

Klimaatverandering zorgt tal van nieuwe risico’s voor gebouwen en infrastructuur. Het in kaart brengen van deze klimaatrisico’s is in volle gang, maar de betrouwbaarheid van de beoordelingen die hieruit volgen laat te wensen over en dit maakt de handelingsbasis beperkt. Dat concludeerden de experts die deelnamen aan de eerste Focal Point Meeting...

Financing “climate-proof” housing? The premises and pitfalls of PACE finance in Florida

Amidst growing concerns about climate risks to the U.S. housing markets, strategies to physically retrofit homes are gaining attention—including within debates over how to resolve intersecting crises of housing re/insurability and affordability in highly exposed sites like Florida. We consider an important but under-studied example of this ...

Inhabiting Regional Geographical Practice in a Climate-Changing World

Reflecting on the limits of the sovereign-state centricity of mainstream contemporary climate action, Peter Taylor calls for new forms of regional geographical analysis and intervention. What might these aims and ambitions look and feel like for geographers? With this commentary, I take up Taylor's propositions through personal reflection on the...

Interrupted rhythms and uncertain futures: Mortgage finance and the (spatio-) temporalities of climate breakdown

As intensifying climate-related disasters strike cities across the United States, they are provoking rising concern for the stability of the U.S. housing market and broader financial system. How homeowners, mortgage lenders, federal institutions/regulators, and investors will variously encounter and manage climate risk is an urgent question...

Climate adaptation in informal areas in hot arid climates

This conceptual and exploratory research study investigates, systematically and holistically, climate-adaptive spatial design interventions for high-density informal urban areas in hot arid climates, which remain understudied despite their vulnerability to heat stress and the heat-vulnerable groups populating them. Five streetscape design...

In Real Estate Investment We Trust: State De-Risking and the Ownership of Listed US and German Residential Real Estate Investment Trusts

 Real estate investment trusts (REITs) have been around since 1960 but have only become major players in housing markets in the last twenty years. The current and ongoing wave of residential REIT (R-REIT) expansion has attracted significant scholarly and broader public interest. This article examines how real estate, finance, and the state are...

“Gebiedsontwikkelaars moeten keihard met klimaatadaptatie aan de slag”

De watersnood in Limburg en Brabant. Het IPCC-rapport. De klimaattop in Glasgow. Afgelopen jaar is andermaal bevestigd dat klimaatverandering een urgent mondiaal probleem is dat Nederland bij uitstek raakt. Onderzoekers Tom Daamen en Zac Taylor doordenken wat dit voor gebiedsontwikkeling betekent - en welke kansen dit biedt.

Climate Gentrification: Risk, Rent, and Restructuring in Greater Miami

Despite the growing power of finance over cities and housing, the relationships between finance, climate risk management, and urban governance have yet to be examined from a climate gentrification perspective. Putting the practices of a wide array of property finance stakeholders in conversation with the foundational concept of the rent gap, we...

The Relational Urban Geographies of Re/insurance: Florida Hurricane Wind Risk and the Making of Singapore’s Catastrophe Finance Hub

Re/insurance plays a multifaceted and increasingly powerful role in the expansion of financialised forms of climate risk governance. While re/insurance markets are global(-ising), they are also geographically uneven, contingent, and provisional. This chapter reflects on this tension by examining how catastrophe capital markets evolve through...