“Investification” in Chile: sociodemographic profiles of rental housing hoarders

Abstract

This article raises as a research question What the typological characteristics of people who buy housing for rent in Chile are. The main aim is to contribute to the characterization of this social group in order to recognize its potential motivations and inform the development of public policies that allow to identify the virtues and problems of these processes. At the same time, as a result, a cartography is developed that allows to visualize the location of these people in relation to the place in which the investments are made, presenting that the emerging theoretical framework of the “investification” is applicable for the Chilean case. Given the significant increase in housing accumulators by 20% between 2015 and 2020, it is proposed that housing policy should deepen its diagnosis in terms of rent by integrating in its design the local and dynamic complexities at the neighbourhood level that are generated from “investification” and seek effective strategies to reduce the social impact of this phenomenon.