Land and the housing affordability crisis: landowner and developer strategies in Luxembourg’s facilitative planning context

Antoine Paccoud, Markus Hesse, Tom Becker and Magdalena Górczyńska

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: The issue of land and its ownership remains under-explored in relation to the housing affordability crisis. We argue that the concentrated ownership of residential land affects housing production in Luxembourg through the interplay of landowner and developer wealth accumulation strategies. Drawing on expert interviews, we first show that the country’s growth-centred ecology has produced a negotiated planning regime that does little to manage the pace of residential development. Through an investigation of the development of 71 large-scale residential projects since 2007, we then identify the private land-based wealth accumulation strategies this facilitative planning regime enables. This analysis of land registry data identifies land hoarding, land banking and the strategic use of the planning system. The Luxembourg case – with its extremes of land concentration, low taxes and public disengagement from land – provides a glimpse at the influence of landowner and property developer strategies on housing affordability free of the usual mediating impact of the planning system.

Keywords: land; housing; affordability; political economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2022-12-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-isf, nep-ppm and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Housing Studies, 31, December, 2022, 37(10), pp. 1782-1799. ISSN: 0267-3037

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:111497

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