Yield and the City : When a metric entered Swedish Public Housing companies
Keywords:
Real estate is an investment object following the logics of diversifying a portfolio. The housing bubbles and financial crash in 2008 have not refrained the actors. In contrast to this attention, studies have pointed to the problems of real estate as a tradable object. The physical status and location, plus a variety of other factors make every object special. This reasoning applies also to investments in housing, but with some added implications. Housing holds a specific position between “a right” and “a commodity” which has resulted in institutional solutions such as social and public housing. Accounting practices are required to facilitate trade with such property objects. With the yield-metric real estate objects are possible to relate and housing becomes comparable to assets such as options, futures and bonds. This paper illustrates how yield has become applied in Swedish Public Housing, at the background of changes in the sector over the last twenty years. Rule following and regulation in accounting are discussed and findings point to how accounting practices determine the character of housing oscillating between commodity and right.