Clever Odysseus: narratives and strategies of rental property investor subjectivity in Australia

Abstract

This paper is about property investment discourse in Australia, and how it constructs ‘property investor subjectivity’. Using the conceptual frameworks of financialization and governmentality studies, the paper examines current policy settings, media, books and, in particular, property investment seminars. Property investment discourse often takes the narrative form of the ‘property investment journey’, invoking Campbell’s ‘monomyth’ of the ‘hero’s journey’. It also presents a range of strategies of investment, underpinned by a common commitment to strategic thinking, and a rethinking of debt, such that an individual comes to know themselves through property investment. The paper shows how property investor subjectivity obtains purchase in contemporary subjectivity formation, and presents both challenges and opportunities for a counter discourse that advances the prospect of policies for more affordable, accessible housing and financial security.

Keywords:

• Rental housing
• property investment
• financialization
• governmentality
• subjectivity
• discourse

Acknowledgments

The author acknowledges the helpful comments of Hal Pawson and Dallas Rogers, and three anonymous reviewers, and the assistance of Maggie Reynolds with the ATO statistics.

Notes

1. From Australian tax statistics for 2014–15 (ATO, 2017). The author is grateful to Margaret Reynolds for compiling the statistics.

2. The long-standing Australian Property Investor (API) was cancelled in December 2016, leaving a single print magazine (Your Investment Property) still on Australian newsstands. API is now an online publication connected with property data provider Ripehouse.

3. See also Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v We Buy Houses Pty Ltd [2017] FCA 915 (11 August 2017).