The New Frontiers of Housing Financialization in Phnom Penh, Cambodia: The Condominium Boom and the Foreignization of Housing Markets in the Global South

This article investigates housing financialization processes in low-income countries (LICs). Considering housing as both capital and commodity, the article excavates the roots of housing financialization in LICs since the 1960s, and shows how financialization has been used, since the 1990s, to circumvent long-standing obstacles to the marketization and commodification of LICs’ housing markets. Focusing on the recent development of the condominium market in Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia, the article then investigates the role of various stakeholders (e.g., development agencies, public institutions, foreign and international investors, transnational developers, brokers) in the contemporary financialization of local housing markets. Detailing their strategies, discourses, and actions, I argue that in economic contexts where the financial sector remains underdeveloped, local and international developers and brokers act as agents of financialization by creating specific channels of real estate capital circulation and landing. I argue that the case of Phnom Penh reveals how foreign and transnational stakeholders, mainly originating from Asia, have created a specific regime of capital accumulation through housing financialization, which I name the foreignization of housing markets. This regime emphasizes the significant capacity of financialization to penetrate markets that have long remained out of its reach by establishing capital extraversion mechanisms.