QThat urbanization is a cog in the accumulation of capital is hardly surprising, given the high prices of housing. The exercise of an exclusive property right over the land allows any owner to extract value by collecting rents or capital gains on resale. Pinel-type tax exemption and platforms like Airbnb are among the best-known contemporary avatars of this mechanism of land rent.
What is less obvious is that real estate and infrastructure have been financialized as market finance occupies a growing place there. The affair is not entirely new, like Haussmann’s Paris. However, today it is taking on an unprecedented scale and spatial scope due to the deployment of “asset management capitalism”.
This term refers to the rise, over the last twenty years, of fund managers and real estate companies which channel savings towards the built environment of cities, like Blackstone, Axa and Unibail. Concretely, they raise capital from households and institutional investors (insurance companies, pension funds, sovereign funds), which they invest by acquiring places of work, consumption and housing that are rented out. By transforming buildings into financial assets, managers maximize land rent income for the benefit of these client-investors, while allowing them to diversify their usual investments, such as sovereign debt.
Little known to the general public, funds and companies own numerous addresses: shopping centers, towers and office complexes, student or senior residences, and even logistics platforms. In total, analysts estimate these assets at 11,000 billion euros in 2021 globally. In France, the value of this heritage has increased by 80% in a decade, to stand at 365 billion euros. From 2012 to 2022, these players have invested an average of 25 billion euros, the equivalent of seventy Stade de Frances per year.
Selective criteria
Certainly spectacular, the growth of this empire varies depending on the territories and areas of activity. In Paris, their share in the ownership of office buildings rises from simple (50%) at the municipal level to double (nearly 100%) in the central business district. In contrast, their presence in housing remains very marginal on a national scale, despite their recent renewed interest in this type of investment.
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