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Governance structures for real estate transactions: Markets, networks and hierarchies in Windhoek’s urban low-income settlements

Acta Structilia

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Title Governance structures for real estate transactions: Markets, networks and hierarchies in Windhoek’s urban low-income settlements
 
Creator Mooya, M
Cloete, C
 
Subject Property rights, real-estate transactions, governance structures, Windhoek
 
Description This article examines the relative prevalence of markets, hierarchies and networks in the governance of real-estate transactions under three property rights regimes in Windhoek’s low-income settlements. These governance structures are related to respective property rights regimes and to conjectures made about the implications for capital accumulation for the urban poor. It is found that network governance structures are the predominant modes of organising transactions under conditions of informal property rights, while hierarchical mechanisms predominate in the freehold and group categories. It is found that there is very little secondary market activity in all three rights categories. The article posits that, while networks provide access to real estate for the poor under conditions of informal rights, these are associated with tenure insecurity, and lock households in clusters based on ethnicity and kinship. Hierarchical structures, on the other hand, make freehold ownerships possible for the poor, but suffer from insufficient scale and create market distortions. It is concluded that a lack of secondary market activity in all the three rights categories severely limits the potential for capital accumulation.Keywords: Property rights, real-estate transactions, governance structures, Windhoek
 
Publisher University of the Free State
 
Contributor
 
Date 2013-04-22
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
 
Format application/pdf
 
Identifier https://www.ajol.info/index.php/actas/article/view/87638
 
Source Acta Structilia; Vol 19, No 2 (2012); 46-73
2415-0487
1023-0564
 
Language eng
 
Relation https://www.ajol.info/index.php/actas/article/view/87638/77302
 
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