Price to Rent

Racialized Accumulation and Institutional Single-Family Rentals

Bibliographic Data

ID21633664
AuthorsAmy K Fottrell (Virginia Commonwealth University), J Revel Sims (0000-0001-9806-881X, Planning and Landscape Architecture, University of Wisconsin-Madison, corresponding author)
Year2025
Pages1-26
Publication date2025-12-09
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHousing Policy Debate (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1051-1482 • E-ISSN: 2152-050X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10511482.2025.2591670
OpenAlexW4417154141
LanguageEN
References cited66

Recent scholarship on capital accumulation in housing markets has brought renewed attention to the importance of racial abstraction in value formation. Using parcel and sales data from fourteen North Carolina counties over nine years that we analyze with a quasi-experimental propensity score matching method, we show that racialized risk and dispossession are central features of a post-Great Recession restructuring project based on accumulation in certain housing and land markets. Specifically, we find that institutional investors of single-family rentals were more likely to purchase properties in census tracts with higher Black concentration, higher percentages of owner-occupants, and low price-rent ratios. Within this investor class, we also find that private equity firms tend to disproportionately target tracts with higher rates of Black concentration and even lower price-rent ratios. Based on our findings, we argue that racial abstraction plays a formative role in restructuring and spatial fixing processes through a framework of racialized risk

Institutional change · Institutional theory · Rental housing · Renting · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies · Economic Theory and Institutions · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism

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