Reading the Changing Landscape of Property Investors through a Multidimensional Framework

Property markets are social constructs. However, understanding the complex behavioral patterns of property market actors is equally complex. Moreover, the analytical frameworks and fine-grained empirical applications that center around the characteristics and diversities of property market actors are rare. To fill this gap, in this presentation we put forward a multidimensional framework we developed to read the changing landscape of property investors. Our framework combines investor’s scale of operation, the utilized type of capital, the ownership composition of the investment body or company through their locational and strategic behavior. Establishing a methodology and a frame of analysis to understand what we call 'actor landscapes', we aim to provide an alternative and actor-centered framework to systematically unpack the effects of property investment market shifts on urban built environments. We argue that changing actor landscapes have tangible effects for cities as they channel investments into the urban built environment. Quantitative data analysis of investment transactions and investor profiles, and qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with a wide range of property investors are utilized to examine property markets between three distinct periods defined by market shifts in Amsterdam before and after the 2008 financial crisis.