Book Review: Home Ownership in a Risk Society. An Analysis of Mortgage Arrears and Possessions
| Published date | 01 September 2002 |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466390201100312 |
| Date | 01 September 2002 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
BOOK REVIEWS
JANET FORD, ROGER BURROWS AND SARAH NETTLETON, Home Ownership in a Risk
Society. An Analysis of Mortgage Arrears and Possessions. Bristol: The Policy Press,
2001, 212 pp., £16.99 (pbk), £45.00 (hbk).
This may seem an odd time to publish a book about the causes and consequences of
unsustainable home ownership. The money pages of the broadsheets are full of cheer-
ful news for owner occupiers. For instance in the Guardian,1‘Figures issued by
Nationwide building society revealed that average house prices rose last year by their
largest amount since the height of the last property boom in 1988’. While the 13.8
percent increase of 2001 is unlikely to be equalled, the Nationwide anticipates growth
in 2002 of around 5 percent. The Guardian also reports the results of a poll carried
out for Yorkshire Bank which, despite the traumatic events of September 11th and the
resulting uncertainties, demonstrates a remarkably high level of confidence in home
ownership. It found that half of all owner occupiers believe that the value of their
house will increase even further in 2002 and only one in 17 believed that their prop-
erty would decrease in value.
Of course one response is that this is all part of the normal ‘boom and bust’ pattern,
that we may already have reached the peak of the economic cycle and that a collapse
is imminent. Consumers remain confident because their understanding of where we
are in the cycle lags behind economic reality. Increasing mortgage arrears, possession
proceedings and negative equity are inevitable, and probably sooner rather than later.
However, the authors of this book present an important and powerful argument that
owner occupation is suffering from more than cyclical fluctuations. Over the last two
decades fundamental structural shifts have impacted upon the housing market so that
the nature of home ownership has changed radically. What was once ‘as safe as houses’
is now a source of increasing instability.
The authors believe that the explanations of these changes are best located within
the theoretical approach described by Giddens and Beck as the risk society. The nature
of the socioeconomic changes that these sociologists describe is familiar. In particular
technological innovation and globalization have created a new flexible labour market
which features deregulation, part-time working, temporary contracts and low pay.
What this book adds, by way of extensive empirical research, is a demonstration of
the impact upon owner occupation. The research combines personal evidence and evi-
dence of the societal costs in a way that is both informative and compelling. I found
the accounts of possession proceedings particularly moving. They demonstrated the
extent to which identity and status are bound up with ownership of property, and that
financial failure equates with personal failure.
Nonetheless, to an extent I remain sceptical about the risks of home ownership
per se. In particular an argument can be made that the changing policies of lending
SOCIAL &LEGAL STUDIES 0964 6639 (200209) 11:3 Copyright © 2002
SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi,
Vol. 11(3), 455–469; 027075
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