ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the intersection of financialisation and housing inequality in Anglo-capitalist countries, highlighting two key themes emerging from recent institutionalist, critical Marxist, and asset-based stratification literature. The first theme looks at how fiscal and monetary policies position housing as a central component of a financialised accumulation regime, particularly during times of crisis. The second identifies how these policies generate new forms of class inequality tied to housing (non)ownership and debt virality. However, the literature overlooks policies detrimental to some homeowners with mortgages, particularly during and after the Global Financial Crisis and Covid-19 pandemic. To bridge this gap, this chapter focuses on UK ‘mortgage prisoners’ – borrowers unable to remortgage even if up to date with payments. An analysis of the circumstances of this group underscores significant variations within the class of homeowners with mortgages, challenging the notion of their homogeneity. By emphasising the role of policies in creating these intra-cohort differences, I argue that existing accounts offer an overly broad, insufficiently nuanced analysis of the interplay between neoliberalism, financialisation, housing, and the resulting class inequalities.
