The financialization of real estate in megacities and its variegated trajectories in East Asia

This chapter sheds light on the forces that drive global financial investment into the real estate markets of megacity-regions. Although financial approaches and metrics of valuation stem from the Anglo-American investment culture, their rooting in different institutional contexts produces varied trajectories of financialization. Hybridization dynamics are seen especially in East Asia, where local cultures and institutional arrangements were not initially a good fit with Western investment concepts. This chapter highlights the diverging patterns of real estate financialization in the megacities of the three East Asian countries/regions of Japan, Hong Kong, and Mainland China. It is based on a framework that combines three key elements: (1) the representations of ‘investable’ markets by the global financial industry; (2) the initiatives taken by state agencies to provide a supportive environment for financial investment; and (3) the response by property developers to the supply of market capital in the built environment.