David Ley, PhD, is Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Millionaire Migrants: Trans-Pacific Life Lines and The New Middle Class and the Remaking of the Central City. He has been awarded the Massey Medal of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and the Distinguished Scholarship Award of the Association of American Geographers.

Series Editors' Preface viii
Acknowledgements ix
List of Figures xi
List of Tables xii
1 Introduction: Housing as Asset 1
The New Centrality of Housing 2
The Volatile Housing Markets of Gateway Cities 5
The Globalisation of Residential Markets 7
A Narrative of Key Relationships 10
Homeownership and Asset-based Welfare 13
Corollaries of Homeownership in Asset Society 17
Concerning Method 18
Notes 21
2 Singapore: Housing and Nation Building 23
The Busy Life of House and Home in Singapore 24
The Property State 30
Global Pressures... 36
...and National Defences 39
Reproducing Labour: Housing Costs and Fertility 45
The Immigration Fix 49
Tears in the Seamless Society: Housing Affordability 51
The 2011 General Election and Since 53
Conclusion 56
Notes 57
3 Housing Divides: Property and Society in Hong Kong 61
The Tycoons and the Property Market 63
Hong Kong's Land Supply 66
Collusion: A Cohesive Growth Coalition 68
Housing Prices and Their Causes 73
The Response of Government Policy 83
Cooling Measures 86
Inequality in the Housing Market and Beyond 89
Residential Alienation and Its Discontents 95
Conclusion 97
Notes 98
4 Sydney: Investors, Offshore Relations, and the 2013-2017 Residential Boom 102
Sydney's House Price Profile 105
Consequences of House Price Inflation 108
Maurice Daly and the International Drivers of Sydney's Property Market 112
From the British Empire to an Asian Hegemon: Australia Pivots 116
The Economic Contexts of the 2013-2017 Housing Boom 119
Off-shore Residential Investors: Evidence from the Foreign Investment Review Board 121
China and the 2013-2017 Real Estate Boom 124
Gifted Migrants from China 129
From External to Internal Relations: Investor Profiles 131
The Domestic Property Investor and Tax-Subsidised Rental Assets 134
From Financial Policy to Cooling Measures 137
Housing Policy: What Policy? 139
Conclusion 141
Notes 144
5 Vancouver: From Housing Deregulation to Reregulation? 149
Vancouver Housing: The Back Story 152
Ownership, Assets, Gains 155
Spring 2015: An Emerging Counter-Narrative 158
The Angus Reid Survey and the Shaking of an Ideology 161
Governments and Elections: All Change 164
Towards Reregulation? Clipping the Libertarian Wings of the Real Estate Council 166
Serious Reregulation? 169
Assessment: Reregulation Achieved? 173
Conclusion 178
Notes 181
6 London 2012: The Best of Times, the Worst of Times 184
London's House Prices 187
The Significance of Prime London 190
'The World Capital for Property Investment' 196
Opaque Investment and Money Laundering 201
Global Property Developers 203
The Supply-Demand Imbalance 205
Public Policy and the Transformation of Housing Supply 209
Austerity: The Metanarrative 213
Austerity Vs. Social Housing 215
Conclusion 220
Notes 223
Contents vii
7 Conclusion: The Place of Housing 228
Intercity Generalisations 229
Gateways and Nations 229
Housing Booms in Time and Space 230
The Globalisation of Residential Markets 232
Housing Inequality 235
Housing Booms: Market-Based Causes 236
The State's Role in Incentivising and Cooling Housing Booms 238
Homeownership and an Asset-Based Society 242
Placing Urban Housing Theoretically 250
Notes 257
References 259
Index 310