Navigating London: The Financialisation and Commodification of Housing and the Survival of the Financially Fittest

Ruth Glass warned in London: Aspects of Change that ‘London may soon be … the survival of the financially fittest’—a city, she argued, characterised by complexity, vastness, and contradictions. Today we see those complexities and contradictions continuing to manifest themselves, so often within the built environment, particularly in relation to housing. Across London, we have seen the growing influence of global finance on housing and its commodification, as housing has come to represent an appealing asset class within the internationalisation of real estate markets and the financialisation of housing. Focusing on the advent of build to rent in London, this article considers how the financialisation and commodification of rental housing raises fundamental questions about the purpose of housing and how its value is imagined, and in doing so, it attends to the necessity of challenging the transformation of London into a city shaped by the survival of the financially fittest.