From homeownership to property investment gentrification: Dudelange (1960-2019)

This paper is an analysis of gentrification at the apartment level in Dudelange, a former industrial city in Luxembourg, based on notarial transactions of apartments from 1960s to 2019. With information about the age, country of birth, and occupation of owners, we measure the social change from sellers to buyers for each transaction. Having already determined the dominant position of Luxembourg-born individuals over the age of 45 in the past two decades in Dudelange, we now study the link between the development of property wealth inequality and the presence of gentrification. This dataset’s focus on the owners rather than the tenants of property makes it possible to expand the concept of gentrification. In the perspective proposed here, gentrification can be identified in two ways. Homeownership gentrification is any transfer of property between owners of single properties that is accompanied by social upscaling. We expect property investment to play a big role in gentrification dynamics, following the model of super-gentrification and reaching a new stage – ‘property investment’ gentrification, where the buyer owns more than the seller in the area.