From the different scales of analyses of the authors follow different foci and arguments. Authors focusing on the global scale explored how global cycles of commodification and de-commodification accompanying cycles of capital accumulation led to the expansion and shrinkage of the social housing sector, and the expansion of mortgage lending globally. The authors argue the last such cycle began in the 1970s when the Bretton Woods system collapsed and materialised in two co-constitutive processes. On the one hand, since that period, high-income countries across the world started to decrease funding of their NRH stock and housing policy started to focus more on the promotion of home ownership (Ball, Harloe and Martens, 1988; Harloe, 1995). On the other hand, as part of this shift, by subsidies, tax exemptions and the deregulation of mortgage lending, states actively supported the expansion of mortgaged home ownership (Ball, Harloe and Martens, 1988; Aalbers, 2016). This process resulting in the re-commodification of housing globally is discussed as part of the trend of financialisation whereby ”the increasing dominance of financial actors, markets, practices, measurements, and narratives, at various scales, [result] in a structural transformation of economies, firms (including financial institutions), states, and households” (Aalbers, 2017, p. 3). The process drives the appreciation of real estate at times of booms compromising housing affordability while the costs of economic downturns are shifted onto owner-occupiers in the form of higher interest rates (Ball, Harloe and Martens, 1988; Harloe, 1995; Aalbers, 2016). Lax regulation of the extraction of rent from housing also contributes to the deteriorating affordability of housing and the widening of housing inequalities (Ryan-Collins, Lloyd and Macfarlane, 2017; Ryan-Collins, 2019).

Authors emphasising the importance of national or regional path dependencies, generally but not exclusively following welfare regime theory, set up regional housing system categories and focused on explaining the development and endurance of their specific characteristics despite global changes. Barlow and Duncan (1994) proposed the application of Esping-Andersen’s (1990) three welfare regime categories to housing. Examining housing production (the acquisition of land, methods and actors in housing construction) in three European countries, they argued a liberal/conservative/social democratic division can be identified.

Focusing on tenure distribution and rules of allocation of NRH, Kemeny (1995, 2006) spoke of rental systems and housing regimes rather than housing systems. He argued that countries cluster somewhat differently from Esping-Andersen’s (1990) “three worlds of welfare capitalism”. He found that in countries classified as corporatist and universalist by Esping-Andersen, NRH makes up such a high share of the housing stock that through influencing prices on the private market it is able to lead the market and keep home ownership relatively low. These housing regimes are categorised as corporatist housing regimes having unitary rental systems.

In countries where NRH composes only a small share of the housing stock, prices of housing are set by market actors and are therefore much higher than housing provided under a non-profit provision scheme. This type of rental system is called dualist by Kemeny and is characterised by low-quality NRH allocated on the basis of a means test, a weakly regulated but expensive private rental housing (PRH) market and extensive home ownership.

Blackwell and Kohl (2018, 2019) highlight the effect of early regulations of housing finance on the current tenure structure and the extent of financialisation in a country. While countries such as Anglo-Saxon countries, Belgium and the Netherlands establishing deposit-based housing finance systems in early capitalism have become more financialised by today, countries with bond-based housing finance systems such as e.g. Germany or Austria are characterised by lower level of mortgage lending today.

The different scale of macro and comparative analyses often implies they either see global processes or regional path-dependencies as the dominant mechanism transforming housing. Kemeny and his associates (Kemeny, 1995; Kemeny and Lowe, 1998; Kemeny, Kersloot and Thalmann, 2005) argue the latter are dominant and no convergence takes place between the two regional housing systems, while Harloe (1995) advocates similar trends across the globe. However, as Aalbers (2016), and Blackwell and Kohl (2019) highlight, the two processes can take place simultaneously: national or regional housing systems are affected by the same global processes, however, they do not necessarily react in the same way, let alone converge. The complexity of housing as a product allows for the simultaneous development of both similar processes and disparities in its different subfields across regions.