Discounted housing? Understanding shared rental markets under platformisation

Nicole Gurran, Zahra Nasreen and Pranita Shrestha

Housing Studies, 2024, vol. 39, issue 12, 3067-3091

Abstract: Low-income earners and others facing housing market barriers have long sought to save costs by sharing. Potentially a release valve in constrained markets, the share sector is poorly understood due to the difficulty of tracing informal negotiations between cohabiting households. However, the rise of online accommodation platforms opens new opportunities to view these hidden arrangements while also propelling new practices under the broader financialisation of housing and ‘platformisation’ of daily life. With reference to Sydney, Australia, one of the world’s most expensive housing markets, we use platform data to investigate the contemporary share housing sector, using listings placed by people both seeking and offering shared accommodation via Flatmates.com.au. Our study contributes to emerging literature at the intersection between informal housing markets and platformisation, revealing a complex rental sector where costs may be discounted but are not necessarily affordable for lower income earners unable to access more appropriate or secure alternatives.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02673037.2023.2242794 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:chosxx:v:39:y:2024:i:12:p:3067-3091

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/chos20

DOI: 10.1080/02673037.2023.2242794

Access Statistics for this article

Housing Studies is currently edited by Chris Leishman, Moira Munro, Ray Forrest, Alex Schwartz, Hal Pawson and John Flint

More articles in Housing Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().