The ideal of home-ownership – a generator of prosperity or crisis engine?

Until the global financial crisis of 2007, homeownership had been a broadly supported political ideal in most countries and political parties. Historically, the idea of getting more people into homeownership can be traced back to a conservative answer to the upheavals of industrialization, but it can also be found in many political manifestos of center-left parties. It was not until after the financial crisis that observers noticed that the homeownership ideal had also produced mortgage and house price booms, followed by deep recession and more political radicalism.