Entryways to homeownership
Family strategies and intergenerational transfers in Malta’s housing system under financialisation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12820573 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Dylan Cassar (0000-0001-7432-8330, University of Malta, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-02-18 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Housing and the Built Environment (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1566-4910 • E-ISSN: 1573-7772 |
| Publisher | Springer Science+Business Media (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s10901-026-10279-5 |
| OpenAlex | W7130350689 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 46 |
As housing markets across Europe become increasingly financialised, a question has been raised over whether Southern European housing regimes, traditionally characterised by strong family-based welfare, are being displaced by liberal, financialised models. By focusing on the case of Malta, this paper argues that, rather than being disrupted, familial systems are finding new opportunities in those very same processes. Current literature has emphasised how Southern European families provide support in response to financialisation and as a safety net during periods of crisis, youth unemployment and state retrenchment. However, in the Maltese post-crisis context characterised by sustained economic growth and surging property prices, families adopt not only defensive strategies to ensure access to homeownership, but also offensive ones to promote wealth accumulation. These often leverage the tools of finance, such as accessing reconstruction loans and investment in real estate as a means of asset-building and intergenerational advancement. In doing so, families act not only as buffers against exclusion but as strategic agents capitalising on the very financialised dynamics that are reshaping housing markets. These strategies, whether defensive or offensive, take the form of (i) intergenerational property transfers, (ii) financial support such as gifted cash, intra-family loans, and guarantees, and (iii) co-residence. Crucially, however, these strategies are enabled by earlier state interventions, such as land distribution in the 1970s and 1980s, which created the conditions for property-based wealth accumulation. By adopting a historical-institutionalist lens, this paper underscores the importance of attending to historically contingent processes that shape institutional configurations, layered over comparative typologies
Context (archaeology · Human geography · Investment (military · Leverage (statistics · Offensive · Real estate · State (computer science · Unemployment · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Migration, Aging, and Tourism Studies · Urban Planning and Governance
Education, Individualization and Neoliberalism
From public housing to the social market
Housing and Welfare in Southern Europe
The Politics of Housing Booms and Busts
The Financialization of Housing
Financialization and housing
The Financialization of Everyday life or the Domestication of Finance
Youth in the age of anxiety
Late Leaving of the Parental Home in Southern Europe
Homeownership, family and the gift effect
Mortgage debt versus intergenerational transfers
Housing the poor? Accessibility and exclusion in the local housing systems of Vienna and Milan
Why so moderate? Understanding millennials’ views on the urban housing affordability crisis in the post-socialist context of the Czech Republic
The Italian housing system and the global financial crisis
Younger Adults and Homeownership in Europe Through the Global Financial Crisis
Parental co-residence, shared living and emerging adulthood in Europe
From a culture of homeownership to generation rent
The Impact of the Economic Crisis on Youth Trajectories
The 'Southern Model' of Welfare in Social Europe
Returning to the parental home
Money or space? Intergenerational transfers in a comparative perspective
Post-Socialist Housing Systems in Europe
Housing careers, intergenerational support and family relations
Historicizing housing typologies
Parents’ housing careers and support for adult children across Europe
Homeownership out of reach? Intergenerational transfers and homeownership reproduction in middle class families in Rome, Italy
Varieties of indebtedness
The financialisation of the social project
Construction as pseudo-development in Malta
Mortgaged lives’
A Crisis of What? Mortgage Credit Markets and the Social Policy of Promoting Homeownership in the United States and in Europe
The Generational Contract in the Family
What ever happened to asset-based welfare? Shifting approaches to housing wealth and welfare security
High dwelling vacancy rate and high prices of housing in Malta a mediterranean phenomenon
Late Neoliberalism
Supported Home Ownership and Adult Independence in Milan
Performing housing debt attachments
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |