Re-inventing the commodification of homes with blockchain

Blockchain technology can be used to enhance transparency and standardise processes of conveyancing and mortgaging of properties. Its implementation, however, will alter relations between products circulating in mortgage markets and market-supporting institutions. This paper empirically investigates the direction and shape of this change in a market environment characterised by rising household indebtedness and high-leverage financing of home ownership. The analysis is based on the case of Sweden, where a public-private consortium has developed a blockchain application to power the entire transaction lifecycle of a directly-owned property, including mortgaging. This initiative could be situated in a longer trajectory of state-led attempts to harmonise Swedish mortgage products secured on both direct and indirect home ownership, on the one hand, and to rein in excessive risk taking by households in tenant-owned homes, on the other. Following Ashton and Christophers (2018), deploying the theorisation of the economy of qualities advanced by ANT scholars, to analyse the remaking of mortgage markets, I suggest that a prime topic has been fixing Swedish housing finance by performing work on the commodities securing residential mortgage loans, namely direct and indirect property ownership rights. In light of this, I argue that the primary novelty of the Swedish blockchain application for housing transactions lies in the way it [re]creates links between home ownership rights, borrowers and creditors, redesigning mechanisms and processes through which home ownership rights are turned into a commodity. This alters the organisational structure of existing market-supporting institutions, shaping a new set of contradictions and conflicts between the established economic organisation and value chains on the one hand, and the governance arrangements of mature housing and mortgage markets, on the other.