Financialized Housing and Socioterritorial Inequalities: A Comparative Study of Lisbon and Porto Metropolitan Areas

Abstract

Mortgage credit marks housing provision in Portugal since the beginning of the 1990s, becoming an important mechanism of reproduction of social and territorial inequalities. Based on data from the Census of 2011, this article analyzes the relationship between forms of housing provision and socioterritorial heterogeneity in the Metropolitan Areas of Lisbon and Porto. The article concludes that financialization of housing is mostly a phenomenon of the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon, where a closer relationship was found between finance and housing, associating new construction and population dispersion with mortgage credit.