Towards a Critical Housing Studies Research Agenda on Platform Real Estate

Abstract

The pace and scope of digital innovation targeting the real estate industry has intensified over the past decade. This article is therefore concerned with the digitization of the residential real estate industry, and how critical housing scholars might shape a research agenda on this transformation. We set out platform logic, digital labor, and financialization as a conceptual vocabulary for studying new digital modalities of real estate practice. Platform logic highlights questions of power and politics relating to the data collection capacities potentially obscured by platforms’ convenience and ease of use. Digital labor points to how platform real estate may change relationships among incumbent real estate professionals, investors and property owners, and tenants and residents. Financialization shifts the focus to how digital platforms participate in the contemporary political economy of housing. The article concludes with an agenda for critical housing research on digital real estate platforms.