Institutional private rental sector and tenure security in Poland

Abstract

Despite the long-standing dominance of homeownership in Poland, institutional investors backed by global capital have become increasingly active in the Polish private rented sector in recent years. This article aims to analyse the legal and non-legal measures they use in rent management and their impact on tenure security. It explores how investors benefit from the niches created by post-transformation housing policy and, more recently, from the process of ‘regulated deregulation’ of tenancies. The article also investigates how loopholes in spatial planning regulations have allowed tenancy contracts to be excluded from the Tenant Rights Act and how landlords have leveraged this to influence contract length and eviction procedures. Finally, it examines the standardised debt management procedures implemented by institutional investors. The research demonstrates that rent management practices characteristic of institutional landlords negatively affect tenure security, primarily because their structural capacity to manage vacancies leads them to favour short-term contracts and swift evictions. It shows that a new approach to tenure security has been adopted by both the state and investors, indicating a shift from a rights-based to a commodified approach. It also shows that the entry of institutional investors into the private rented sector in Poland bears the marks of variegated financialisation, whereby investors with specific knowledge and resources adapt global rent management practices to local conditions through standardisation, as well as by exploiting legal shifts and loopholes.