What's wrong with investment apartments? On the construction of a ‘financialized’ rental investment product in Vienna

Abstract

This article sheds light on the investment-driven construction sector in Vienna and provides a critique of the Austrian rental investment product Vorsorgewohnung (VSW), a tax-saving investment construction primarily aimed at small private investors. Building on ‘new’ new economic sociology and a performative take on markets, the focus is on the social construction and the making of a market around this product. The transformation of housing into an investment product is examined by drawing on the advertising discourse, especially the VSW-market makers' webites. The negative effects of financialized housing production on the micro and urban level are also discussed. Against economic common sense, it is argued that the VSW market is not a ‘natural’ matter of a given demand and supply, but the product of a twofold social construction to which the Austrian state and the local banks make a significant contribution. What appears rational and advantageous from the investors’ individual point of view is, in various ways, a disadvantage for the urban community. .