Subjectification as an ideal tenant. Competing for housing in the Viennese private rental market

Abstract

Despite its reputation as a ‘paradise for renters,’ housing seekers in Vienna also face increasing difficulties in finding affordable housing, especially in the private rental housing market. We examine how competitive housing search, application, and allocation shape the subjectivities of housing seekers. Drawing on interviews with landlords, real estate agents and housing seekers in the Viennese private rental market, we analyse the suggestions of subjectivity housing seekers face and how they appropriate—enact, negotiate, or contest—these subjectivities. The study shows that housing seekers must sense and enact an ideal tenant to increase their chances of successfully accessing housing. The various modes of subjectification clustered around this image of the ideal tenant—being solvent, caring for the apartment, not being a foreigner, and invoking a good ‘gut feeling’—show that increased competition not only makes access to affordable housing more difficult, but also has normative effects.

Keywords:

• Tenant screening
• private rental sector
• subjectification
• competitive allocation
• housing discrimination

1. Introduction

Despite its reputation as a ‘paradise for renters’ due to its large social housing sector (Punz 2019), even Vienna is showing an increasing scarcity of affordable housing (Kadi et al., 2021). This is the result of the policy of housing recommodification that has emerged in recent decades, which included a weakening of the social housing sector upon the termination of Vienna’s public housing program and the deregulation of the private rental market (Kadi, 2015; Reinprecht, 2017). Affordable housing is particularly scarce in the city’s private rental housing market, which has been deeply affected by increased rental costs (Kadi et al., 2021). Those who are excluded from social housing are, thus, especially exposed to sharp competition for affordable and secure housing. Within this context, we conducted an empirical study among housing seekers, landlords and real estate agents in Vienna to examine how housing search, application, and allocation shape the subjectivities of people searching for housing.

The paper’s contributions are twofold: First, we contribute to the discussion on the effects of the housing crisis in the context of different housing regimes. In recent decades, several studies (e.g. Bate, 2020; Reosti, 2020; Short et al., 2008; Verstraete & Moris, 2019;) on housing search, application, and allocation have shown that housing seekers experience unequal power relations within the housing crisis, particularly in housing contexts that are heavily structured by neoliberal logic. This paper shows that this is also increasingly true for housing seekers in Vienna, which has been predominantly discussed as an example of a particularly tenant-friendly city, emphasising the legacy of Red Vienna and the evolution of social housing (Förster and Menking, 2016; Kadi, 2015; Novy et al., 2001), while only comparatively few papers address access to housing in the private rental market (Kadi et al., 2021; Musil et al., 2022; Tockner, 2017). Thus, this paper contributes to research on private rental housing in a context of social housing dominance, i.e. under a social welfare regime. Second, we enrich the research on housing allocation through a perspective on subjectification. The study of subjectification has gained much prominence in the last few decades, especially regarding topics such as work and the professional self (e.g. Bröckling, 2016), the shaping of the modern self by the psychosciences (Rose, 1996), or technologies of quantifying the self (Lupton, 2016). By contrast, there is relatively little research on subjectification in the field of housing, which primarily focuses on homeownership and indebtedness (Allon, 2015; Di Feliciantonio, 2016; García-Lamarca & Kaika, 2016; Kear, 2013; Langley, 2006; Watson, 2010) or the identities of social housing tenants (e.g. Flint, 2003, 2004). In light of the sharp competition for affordable housing in the private rental market, our perspective pays special attention to forms of competitive subjectification, i.e. how the increasing competitive demands in the field of housing are subjectivised by housing seekers.

The paper proceeds as follows: The next Section 2 discusses the study’s theoretical framework and formulates the main research question, and is followed by Section 3, the empirical approach. Section 4 shows how the lack of affordable housing in Vienna’s private rental housing market emerged and discusses the characteristics of competitive housing allocation in this housing field. Section 5 explores which subjectivities are suggested to housing seekers during the housing search, application, and allocation and how housing seekers appropriate these subjectivities. The conclusion in Section 6 summarises the results and draws general implications from our analysis.

2. Studying subjectification in the private rental housing market

2.1. Previous research on housing search, application, and allocation (in Vienna)

In recent decades, many studies have looked at different housing regimes and their specific mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion; in particular, the differences between social and private housing, the eligibility of housing seekers, and, accordingly, housing outcomes and discrimination (e.g. Clapham, 2018; Kemeny, 1992; Kemeny et al., 2005; Marquardt & Glaser, 2020; Scanlon et al., 2014; Tsenkova, 2022). However, only a few studies recognise the housing search, application, and allocation process itself as a pivotal moment in determining which people have access to which kind of housing. With respect to the private rental housing market, these include, for example, the study by Short et al. (2008) on risk assessment practices in the ‘moment of allocation’ in the Australian private rental market; the study by Verstraete & Moris (2019) on landlords’ tenant screening strategies and tenants’ counterstrategies in the Belgian private rental sector; Bate’s (2020) study on the experiences of housing seekers during the housing search, and especially the relationship between prospective tenants and property managers in the Australian private rental sector; or, Reosti’s (2020) study on the tenant screening and selection practices of landlords in Seattle’s private rental sector. These studies describe the different practices and strategies of tenant screening in housing allocation and the criteria according to which landlords and real estate agents allocate apartments, such as the avoidance of rent arrears, trustworthiness, or the ability to take care of the apartment. In our study, we found similar criteria in the context of Vienna and analysed them as modes of subjectification.

Vienna, however, differs greatly from the local contexts of the aforementioned studies. Our field of study, the Viennese private rental sector, is embedded in a specific housing regime that is characterised as an integrated market (Kemeny et al., 2005; Mundt & Amann, 2010). With less than 20% of the city’s housing stock being owner-occupied, rented apartments are the most important form of housing in Vienna of which more than half are social rental housing provided by the municipality or limited-profit housing associations (see Figure 1).¹ While this social housing sector has been widely analysed as a specificity of Vienna’s housing system (e.g. Mundt, 2018; Reinprecht 2014, 2017), the private rental sector is relatively under-researched in the Viennese context. However, given increasing pressure on the private housing market, sharply rising rental costs, and growing challenges in finding affordable housing for consistently growing segments of the population (see Section 4), some recent studies have appeared around these issues; for example, Kadi et al. (2021) on affordability issues, Aigner (2019) on accessibility for specific groups, or Hejda et al. (2014) on vacancy rates. Our research adds to the studies on housing search processes in other local contexts and housing regimes, and to the rather under-researched field of private rental housing in Vienna, by addressing housing search, application, and allocation in the private rental market looking at the subjectivities that are connected to these processes.

Figure 1. Share of housing segments, Vienna 2021.

2.2. Researching subjectification in the competitive field of private rental housing

In order to better understand the specific dynamics of the Viennese private rental housing market, where housing seekers face increasingly tight competition over affordable and secure housing, we connect our study to existing constructivist research on competition (Arora-Jonsson et al., 2021; Werron, 2015). More specifically, this paper combines our interest in competition with our focus on subjectification. Building on Bosančić et al. (2019), we define subjectification as both the programs and technologies through which subjects learn how to perceive and interpret themselves as well as the appropriation and transformation of these programs and technologies. Subjectification, in this understanding, links the subjection of individuals to their agency: Individuals subject themselves through self-government and self-practices in order to approximate desirable subject positions. There is a wide corpus of literature on how programs and technologies suggest subjectification, but less attention has been paid to how individuals adapt these subjectivities in their daily concerns (Beer and Sievi, 2010; Bosančić et al., 2019; Bührmann, 2012).

We are particularly interested in competitive subjectivities. Competitive subjectivities have been widely studied, for example, in relation to the governmental rationality of economic liberalism (Foucault, 2008), managerial discourse (Bröckling, 2016), the academy (Lenk, 2024), and the (late) modern subject in general (Reckwitz, 2020; Rose, 1999). These studies show how neoliberalization fosters entrepreneurial, managerial, and self-optimizing subjects. While studies of subjectification in the context of homeownership and debt have also shown the formation of neoliberal subjects, especially entrepreneurial investor-subjects (Allon, 2015; Di Feliciantonio, 2016; García-Lamarca & Kaika, 2016; Kear, 2013; Langley, 2006; Watson, 2010), there are no studies that look at the private rental market and how the housing crisis and the dynamics of housing search and application shape the subjectivities of housing seekers. To address this gap, the following questions were central to the research: To what extent do landlords and real estate agents suggest certain subject positions to housing seekers when allocating housing in the private rental market? To what extent do housing seekers orient themselves to these subject positions within the context of the power relations between housing seekers, real estate agents, and landlords? How do they reflect upon their actions and govern themselves to meet these subject positions? Conversely, when does this subjectification not occur?

3. Empirical approach

Following the theoretical orientation outlined above, our empirical approach was fourfold:

The first body of empirical material consists of legal regulations and the institutional framework that structures the field of housing in Vienna. It focuses on the tenancy law (in German "Mietrechtsgesetz - MRG”) that regulates the private rental sector, but also explores the criteria for social housing access and their indirect implications for the private rental market that arise from how they create inclusions and exclusions. Additionally, we analysed quantitative data from the Austrian Microcensus to trace the development of housing prices in Vienna’s different housing fields.

Second, we conducted four interviews with real estate agents (REA01–REA04) and five interviews with landlords (LL01–LL05). We recruited all real estate agents and landlords via online ads on social media platforms or via snowball sampling, including both landlords who own only one or a few apartments and those who own entire buildings with more than 15 apartments (in German “Zinshaus”), assuming that these differences in portfolio size also manifest in the way these landlords address housing seekers. We did not include real estate companies, because they rarely have any personal involvement in the allocation process. Interview questions focused on which housing seekers landlords and real estate agents favour and how they interact with them, their methods for learning about and comparing housing seekers, and their criteria for deciding between applicants.

Third, we analysed documents involved in housing application and allocation. We focused on documents that landlords and real estate agents can ask prospective tenants to provide to help them select a tenant from the pool of candidates and on how these suggest specific subjectivities by addressing aspects of the applicants’ personal lives. These documents are not standardized and not issued by the government but are usually designed by the landlords and real estate agents themselves. However, various real estate and landlord platforms provide templates online.

Finally, and most importantly, the article is based on interviews with 26 housing seekers in Vienna (HS01—HS26), who were recruited via online ads on social media platforms. The sample (see Table 1) was selected according to the principle of contrasting cases (Kelle & Kluge, 2010), aiming, in a first phase, to gain a diverse picture regarding the housing seekers’ gender and age, capital and milieu (in Pierre Bourdieu’s sense), and migration background. In terms of age, the range was between 19 and 60 years, with a focus on middle-aged people (53.8% between 30 and 40 years, 23.1% under 30 years, 11.5% between 40 and 50 years, 11.5% over 50 years). In terms of net income, the range was between 600 €and 3,100 €(53.8% between 1,000 and 2,000 €, 15.4% under 1,000 €, 30.8% over 2,000 €). In terms of education, our sample included housing seekers with compulsory education and apprenticeship, high school education as well as a university degree, with a focus on medium to high education (15.4% compulsory education or apprenticeship, 42.3% high school education, 42.3% university degree). The second research phase complemented this approach with a theoretical sampling strategy used to select participants who faced heightened exposure to competition in housing search. In particular, the study focused on people with a migrant background, as they are particularly dependent on the private housing market (see section 4) and face discrimination and therefore a smaller amount of housing that is accessible. In addition, a focus was placed on single-person households, as access to affordable housing on the private market appears to be particularly difficult for them due to a lack of smaller apartments (Kadi et al., 2021). As a result of the sampling strategy, the final sample has a high proportion of people from single-person households (50% of interviewees) and of housing seekers with migration background (57.7%). The interviews addressed issues about the housing search process, including interactions with landlords and real estate agents, and placed a special focus on how housing seekers perceived and enacted or contested landlords’ criteria.²

Table 1. Characteristics of the sample of housing seekers.

	Number of interviewees (n = 26)	percentage
Age
under 30 years	6	23.1%
between 30 and 40 years	14	53.8%
between 40 and 50 years	3	11.5%
over 50 years	3	11.5%
Net income
under 1,000 €	4	15.4%
between 1,000 and 2,000 €	14	53.8%
over 2,000 €	8	30.8%
Education
compulsory education or apprenticeship	4	15.4%
high school education	11	42.3%
university degree	11	42.3%
Household size
single person	13	50%
more than one person	13	50%
Migration background
yes, first generation	8	30,8%
yes, second generation	7	26,9%
no	11	42,3%

A semi-structured approach was used for each of these qualitative interviews, which ranged between 60 and 90 min. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, interviews were partially conducted online, especially interviews with housing seekers that took place early in the research process (the research took place in the years 2020 to 2022). The documents and interviews were coded and analyzed in a grounded theory framework (Charmaz, 2014) using the qualitative data analysis software MaxQDA. Codes were generated abductively and were theoretically informed by preliminary work on competition and competitization. All interview excerpts in the paper have been anonymised.

4. The lack of affordable housing and competitive allocation in the Viennese private rental sector

As in many other major cities (Lee et al., 2022; Tsenkova, 2022), affordable housing in Vienna has become increasingly scarce in recent decades, especially in the private rental housing market. The city’s private rental market essentially consists of two forms of housing stock that are regulated differently and, thus, show different dynamics of increasing rental costs (Musil et al., 2022). The tenancy law fully applies to Vienna’s old, regulated housing stock, which consists of apartments that received a construction permit before 1945. The law includes rent regulation, which makes the old private rental housing stock a comparatively affordable segment of the housing market. However, since the 1980s, many small and poorly equipped apartments have been refurbished and upgraded as “gentle urban renewal,” which has reduced a considerable part of Vienna’s low-cost housing stock in the medium term (cf. Kadi, 2015; Mundt, 2018; Verlič & Kadi, 2015). Moreover, in 1994, changes to the rent regulation system increased the complexity of rental cost calculations, which has led to rents that often exceed the legal limit (Rosifka, 2015). The new, unregulated housing stock consists of apartments built after 1945 and is not subject to any cost regulations. While the older housing stock, which still makes up a larger share than the newer stock, has been stagnating or even shrinking (Musil et al., 2022), Vienna’s new housing stock is growing rapidly. Hence, a growing share of the Viennese population must now search for housing within the unregulated segment of the market with the sharpest ongoing rent increases (from 7% of all housing units in 2001 to 11% in 2018, Friesenecker & Kazepov, 2021).

Since the 1980s, various reforms of tenancy laws have weakened protections for tenants in both housing stocks. Notably, landlords were given the option to limit the duration of tenancy contracts in 1994 (Gutheil-Knopp-Kirchwald & Kadi, 2014; Kadi, 2015). Since then, there has been a clear tendency towards these limited contracts, which accounted for 62% of new private rental contracts in 2015 (Tockner, 2017; Verlič & Kadi 2015). This development has not only impacted the dynamic of rent prices, since new leases can be adjusted every few years, but has also led to a situation where tenants must search for housing and compete with other housing seekers more frequently. Besides these legal reforms, the transformations described as financialization and responsibilization that occurred after the 2008 economic crisis narrowed the available housing supply due to a speculative approach to real estate and increasing vacancy rates (Hejda et al., 2014). Moreover, new housing construction could not keep up with population growth and the demand for private rental housing (Musil et al., 2022), which has only changed in recent years with a surge in construction activity (Plank et al., 2022).

These developments have all led to steep rental increases in the private rental housing market (see Figures 2 and 3) and to a shortage of affordable housing, which has increased the competitive pressure in this sector. As Kadi et al. (2021) discovered in a comprehensive study, the majority of available apartments in the private rental housing market result in a housing cost burden of 30% or more for people with an average income.

Figure 2. Average gross rents per m² in different rental housing subsegments, Vienna 2021.

Figure 3. Average gross rents per m² in different rental housing subsegments, Vienna 2005–2021, index (year 2005 = 100).

Among those who rely on this increasingly competitive housing field are housing seekers who are either ineligible for social housing (e.g. newcomers who have not lived at the same location in Vienna for the past two years), need housing quickly (renting social housing often requires long waiting periods), and those who do not see the social housing sector as able to meet their personal housing needs. In general, people with a migrant background are more likely to live in private rented accommodation. In particular, first-generation migrants who have recently moved to Vienna and are not eligible for social housing are dependent on the private rental housing market (Stadt Wien, 2021, 2023). Moreover, while the private rental housing market used to offer for the poorer classes a very affordable segment, albeit with poor quality, this segment is now much smaller for the reasons mentioned above. Displacement of poorer residents is therefore an important issue on the private rental housing market (Kadi & Verlič, 2019). This is also the reason why there is an increase in informal and irregular housing arrangements, such as collective accommodation or the shared use of housing units, often under exploitative conditions (Aigner, 2019; Reinprecht, 2017, 2019). The scarcity of affordable housing in the private rental market and its increasing competition poses great difficulties for housing seekers in their search for a new home and have major implications for the housing search, application, and allocation processes. Three characteristics of the specific format of competition in the private rental sector are especially relevant as a context for subjectification in this field:

First, the private rental sector is characterised by the scarcity of affordable housing, which turns it into a landlord’s market where the landlord can choose between a great number of applicants. The more the apartment meets current needs (e.g., affordability), the more competition there will be, and the more power landlords have to choose according to their preferences. This shifts the power relations between housing seekers and landlords in favour of the latter, as shown in studies on spatial contexts elsewhere (e.g. Reosti 2020; Verstraete & Moris 2019; Wolifson et al., 2023).

Second, competition for private rental housing is not formally organised. Although the Equal Treatment Act (in German “Gleichbehandlungsgesetz—GlBG”) prohibits discrimination in access to housing based on gender or ethnicity, it does not—in contrast to regulations at the workplace—prohibit discrimination based on religion, ideology, age, or sexual orientation. There is little to prevent discrimination as there are no rules governing the housing allocation process itself, such as formal requirements for applications.³ Thus, in contrast to municipal or limited-profit housing, allocation criteria can vary heavily and usually remain implicit and non-transparent.

Third, housing allocation is shaped by intermediaries. There are multiple, different constellations of the relationship between landlords, real estate agents, and property managers, which makes it hard for housing seekers to get a detailed picture of each apartment’s allocation process, including who is responsible for the final decision. Some landlords—especially those who only rent a few apartments—handle tenant evaluation and selection themselves, instead of hiring a real estate agent, and allocate the apartments in their social network⁴. Others assign these tasks entirely to agents and do not have any personal contact with prospective tenants, or they let agents make a preliminary selection before making the final choice. Landlords with large portfolios, which are often banks or real estate companies, usually have an intermediary property management company—and sometimes an asset manager—and are not in direct contact with the real estate agent. When landlords and real estate agents are both involved, there are variations in who determines the criteria; for example, some landlords have clear ideas, while others leave the selection to the agents.

5. Competitive subjectification in the private rental sector

The sharp rise in rents in the Viennese private rental market and the shortage of affordable housing have resulted in an increasingly competitive process of applying for and being allocated housing. This is reflected by how many landlords and real estate agents, as well as housing seekers, compared this situation to a job application (HS11, HS14, LL02, REA02). Most of the interviewed housing seekers, especially those facing time pressure, described the market as being very competitive and the search process itself as intense and tedious. In order to manage these situations, they took adaptive measures such as rushing their decision (HS01), taking extra vacation days specifically intended for the apartment search (HS11), or adjusting their preferences or budgets according to the market and its supply (HS03). For example, Aziz, who urgently needed an apartment described how he limited his expectations: ‘I was not looking for an ideal apartment, I was looking for an apartment’ (HS03).

The increasing competition in the search for affordable housing creates high standards for applicants to meet and encourages a competitive stance, making it necessary to exceed the basic standard for being a ‘good tenant’ (Bonnet & Pollard, 2021; Power & Gillon, 2022), and rather meet the characteristics of an ideal tenant. Because the criteria that landlords and real estate agents define for an ideal tenant vary and are rarely expressed openly, housing seekers try to guess these criteria by looking at different implicit and explicit instructions during their search and application process, for example, hints provided by the advertisements or the real estate agents or suggestions made by application questionnaires. Nevertheless, prospective tenants must largely rely on their own assumptions of the landlord and real estate agents’ expectations. Thus, the subjectivity of the ideal tenant is partly the outcome of the real estate agent/landlord requirements, and partly of the attempts that housing seekers make to interpret non-transparent criteria.

Our material revealed some dominant, sometimes-contradictory characteristics of an ideal tenant: Housing applicants were expected to be solvent, care for the apartment, not foreign, and provoke a positive ‘gut feeling.’ However, these criteria were not equally important to all landlords. For example, while some landlords pursued exclusively financial interests, others distanced themselves from the role of being purely an investor, noting that there is not much money to be made in Vienna’s rent-regulated stock (LL01, LL03, LL05). Moreover, some clearly followed racist allocation criteria (LL05), while others did not care if tenants were ‘undocumented or documented’ (LL02), or emphasised renting as a social duty with high ethical obligations, putting the tenants’ needs first (LL01). However, this paper will not further explore the differences between landlords in how they allocate housing. Instead, in the following section, we analyse the four dominant criteria for an ideal tenant as suggested subjectivities and examine how they are appropriated within practices of the housing search, application, and allocation.

5.1. The ideal tenant is solvent

All landlords and real estate agents from our sample confirmed that applicants must be solvent to receive a positive evaluation.⁵ Landlords can demand various forms of verification for proof of solvency; for example, through proof of income such as a payslip; a third-party financial guarantor who asserts that the rent will always be paid even in the event of unemployment; reference documents from a former landlord that confirms the tenant’s previous reliability in paying their rent in full and on time, and that there are no rent arrears (Mietschulden-Freiheitsbescheinigung, see Figure 4), or a letter of recommendation from the prospective tenant’s employer (see Figure 5). Moreover, landlords can ask for a credit check, which is issued by an Austrian creditor protection association that records insolvency information, outstanding debt payments, and the likelihood of default, and confirms solvency to authorities or landlords. The website for the creditor protection association, KSV1870, promotes the KSV InfoPass in a way that depicts housing seekers as competitive, solvent subjects: ‘If landlords want to make safe economic decisions, the tenant is concerned about a good, reliable impression. After all, there are often several applicants for an apartment. In this situation, the InfoPass can prove to be your advantage. You create trust through objective information and give the landlord the security they want.’ (https://www.ksv.at/selbstauskunft-private/infopass-mieter)

Figure 4. The "Mietschulden-Freiheitsbescheinigung".

Figure 5. A letter of recommendation from the prospective tenant’s employer.

Some landlords emphasised that they felt it was their responsibility to assess the tenant’s ability to afford rent also in the future (LL05), which they accomplished by having real estate agents pay attention to additional tenant information; for example, about the current employer or the length of employment: ‘I can tell a lot from the proof of income. This can be a payslip when someone is employed. When someone is employed in a public institution, Wiener Linien [a public transport company] for instance, then he has the same income every month, a crisis-proof, permanent job. If he’s a waiter, then he won’t have the same regular income and then it’s a bit more negative. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, but simply a bit worse in terms of comparison with someone who is a civil servant or a teacher or something, with a stable income.’ (REA01) As this example shows, proof of income such as a payslip is used not only to assess current solvency but also to predict the probability of solvency in the future. Some real estate agents used software like FINcredible that automatically calculates whether applicants can afford an apartment with a certain rent price based on an algorithm that goes through their bank account and scans salary deposits and debits (REA03), while others made their own ‘household calculation’ (REA02) that balanced income and expected expenses according to additional applicant information (e.g. car, children): ‘I once had a case, a single mother with three children. I did the household calculation [estimating her income including public services] and it just didn’t work out financially. And she yelled at me on the phone, "You have no idea how cheap I can cook!" Yes, but there’s simply no buffer. If the washing machine breaks down, there’s nothing left. […] And she depended on the car to get to work. But what if the car breaks down. They can’t afford that at all.’ (REA02) These and other examples show, that proving solvency has not only to do with having a job, showing a payslip or bank balance. The housing seekers must prove credibility and convince them of their ability to pay.

Although most of the housing seekers we interviewed perceived the importance of demonstrating ‘how you finance the apartment’ (HS13), they varied in how they dealt with these requirements. During apartment viewings, some emphasised their crisis-proof jobs and good incomes (HS11) or brought financial guarantors (HS03). Young housing seekers without a fixed income tried to assure that they would be supported by their parents (HS13) and sometimes brought their parents to the apartment viewings (HS02).

As Aziz’ case shows, real estate agents and landlords did not always acknowledge the applicants’ strategies to convey their ability to pay. After moving from Istanbul to Vienna and going through a very time-consuming apartment search, Aziz brought his father with him to viewings and offered to pay the rent for a year in advance to demonstrate that solvency would not be an issue. However, he commented that ‘things don’t work like that in Vienna. […] So, that was sometimes backfiring. […] You don’t get a smiling reaction to that offer. I think it’s more considered cocky, maybe. Maybe it’s more like, a little bit unheimlich [dodgy].’ (HS03) During his search, he repeatedly experienced difficulties in successfully using his high economic resources. Similarly, Sibel, a Turkish student who wanted to move from a dormitory to her own apartment, faced challenges because Austrian landlords would not accept her parents as financial guarantors until she coincidentally met a Turkish landlord: ‘[…] everything was so uncomplicated, we just got it [the apartment] and everything was fine. He [the Turkish landlord] didn’t even ask if we have people in Austria. But with Austrians, it was really complicated.’ (HS02)

As these examples show, housing seekers must not only be able to afford an apartment and present themselves as solvent subjects, but they must also be acknowledged as such. The real estate agents emphasised that ‘the story behind it [the solvency] must be coherent’ (REA02). Additionally, the more applicants an apartment had, the more important other criteria and personal characteristics—described as ‘soft facts’ (REA01, see Section 5.4)—became. Thus, solvency is insufficient alone and has a complex relationship with other intersecting categories explored in the next sections.

5.2. The ideal tenant cares for the apartment

Landlords often emphasised the importance of tenants taking care of and appreciating the apartment, for example, not to smoke or keep pets, and to inform the owner if something is broken or, better yet, to fix it themselves (LL02, LL03, LL05, REA02). However, as landlords and agents described, assessing applicants’ future behaviour was difficult. Some described that they developed a sense or understanding of human nature (REA01, REA02, REA04) and looked for someone with a certain ‘general attitude toward life’, someone who is a ‘decent person’ (REA02). One real estate agent added that with affordable housing, where the apartments are often in a poor condition, it is especially hard to find ‘decent people.’(REA02) In doing so, she ascribed a caring attitude to people in more privileged social positions who apply for more expensive housing. Hence, landlords and real estate agents conduct a social evaluation of housing seekers and link assumptions of decency closely to the housing seekers’ social status.

In the interviews, housing seekers frequently described situations where they faced this suggestion of subjectivity. One housing seeker recalled the moment of getting to know the landlady before her decision: ‘I think she just wanted to get to know me, what kind of person I am and whether I seem, I don’t know, tidy probably or something.’ (HS13) Other interviewees remarked that they were lucky to not have pets since many housing ads specified that pet owners or smokers were unwanted. Some housing seekers dealt with these requirements by giving false information. Adele, for instance, explained that she lied about having pets, because ‘in the end, no one really cares about that.’ She added that ‘you just have to give the information that they want to hear from you, even if it is not correct.’ She ended by saying that ‘it’s horrible, but that is how it works’ (HS20). Another interviewee was searching for a bigger apartment with enough space for a planned child. Instead of sharing these plans, she told the real estate agent that she needed a third room as a home office space since she suspected that this would make a better impression on the real estate agent and landlord: ‘I don’t know, I had the feeling that it would come across well if you talked about a home office room rather than a children’s room. […] So I just said: "[…] We’re actually also looking for a third room for a home office." And he was completely thrilled and was extremely responsive to me and said: "Yes!" And he showed me the apartment enthusiastically. […] It was like one of those buzzwords that completely flipped the switch.’ (HS11) Thus, some seekers lied or distorted information based on assumptions about the characteristics of an ideal tenant and the reactions of real estate agents and landlords.

5.3. The ideal tenant is not foreign

Another vital aspect of the ideal tenant, which is somewhat—but not only—linked to assumptions about lifestyle and the expected use of the apartment, is where prospective tenants come from. Some real estate agents told us that there are ‘landlords who simply do not want foreigners per se’ (REA01) and that they were often confronted with racist landlords in the real estate business (REA01, REA03). Detailed questions in the tenant self-disclosure form⁶ (see figure 6) about characteristics like citizenship, mother tongue, or length of residency in Austria also suggested that many landlords are concerned with the migration background of prospective tenants. Thus, a successful search often requires housing seekers to present themselves as not being too ‘foreign.’

Figure 6. Sample tenant’s self-disclosure with questions about net income, nationality, smoking habits, pets, and musical activities.

However, often in this context, a foreigner does not refer to a person without Austrian citizenship, but to someone with a migration background from countries to the south and east of Austria who is ethnically marked by their appearance or language—especially those with little economic, cultural, and social capital. For example, one real estate agent made the distinction between ‘internationals’ and ‘migrants’ (REA02), referring to high and low economic and cultural capital. She emphasised: ‘If Africans come who earn 6000€a month, they’re just as welcome.’ (REA02) One landlady said that she had ‘nothing against foreigners as such,’ but ‘if five Turks come, […] and mom and everyone moves in’ (LL05), she did not want that. On the other hand, another real estate agent bluntly stated that he pre-excludes certain prospective tenants from low-cost housing based on their names. When he was asked why, he answered: ‘Prejudices. Help us to go through life. [spells an Arabic sounding name], seven children. Maybe he’s a diplomat. But I still don’t call him. If you do as many lettings as we do, you become so dull. And you go through this market with your "filter" [prejudices] and I keep catching myself making mistakes. […] But when you’re working through it, you can’t help it. But anyway, there aren’t that many diplomats who want to rent a 400-euro apartment.’ (REA03)

As our empirical material shows, many of the housing seekers who could not speak German or did not have a common surname pointed out that they faced prejudice and racism from landlords and real estate agents; for example, in housing ads stating ‘no foreigners’ (HS11). However, discrimination and racism are often implicit and therefore not clearly tangible and even less provable for housing seekers; for example, when not receiving a response to an enquiry. This is in line with recent studies on racism in the private rental market in Austria (Schönherr, 2023; Weichselbaumer & Riess 2023), which used email correspondence tests to show that housing seekers with a migrant background are discriminated against. Consequently, in our empirical material, housing seekers sometimes tried to bypass these barriers by presenting themselves as more ‘Austrian’ than they are usually perceived as. They might obscure or hide their surname during the application process (HS08) or bring Austrian friends to the apartment viewings (HS03). One interviewee from Turkey, Aziz, brought his Austrian girlfriend to apartment viewings, explaining: ‘I would just take her with me to show that modern, beautiful people, a couple is coming here. Like, they are gonna live here, or the guy is gonna come, but he has a beautiful girlfriend, obviously they get along well, obviously a nice person, obviously no threat.’ (HS03) He told us that during his last, tedious search process, he even considered asking an Austrian friend to rent the apartment for him (HS03).

Country of origin is a good example of how ideal tenant criteria varies depending on the landlord or real estate agent. While many landlords and real estate agents prefer non-foreigners as described above, this might change with landlords who also have a migration background, as seen with Sibel (Section 5.1.). Moreover, as one real estate agent explained, some landlords deliberately look for ‘naïve’ tenants in great need and precarious situations who are not familiar with the Austrian tenancy law, because landlords can then charge them illegally higher rents while having less pressure to fulfil their obligations (REA01). This means that landlords sometimes prefer foreigners because they expect them to be less self-confident, be poorly informed about their rights, and therefore unable to seek outside help, as also shown in a study about housing entry pathways of refugees in Vienna (Aigner 2019). This is also reflected in frequent media reports about the overpriced housing costs faced by newly arrived migrants (Adenberger et al., 2018; Kahlweit, 2015; Lapper, 2019). One of our interviewees, Anastasia, who moved from Russia to Vienna alone to work as a therapist, was aware of this risk and explained how she feared being taken advantage of because of not knowing her legal rights: ‘Interestingly, I have understood that for me this contact with the real estate agent and the landlord is one of the main things to see whether I can trust or not. And If I sense something bad, I don’t want to have anything to do with this person.’ (HS22). She described how she followed a double strategy of observing the behaviour of the real estate agents and carefully assessing their trustworthiness on the one hand and presenting herself as confident and knowledgeable on the other hand. At the same time, this also means that she risked not getting certain apartments. However, her social position as a doctor of psychology allowed her to take this risk because she met the criteria for solvency and ability to care for the apartment quite well. By contrast, those with the least resources who do not correspond to the image of the ideal tenant, and therefore have the most difficulties in finding an apartment, are also most at risk of being taken advantage of and ending up in bad housing conditions.

5.4. With the ideal tenant, the ‘gut feeling’ is good

Landlords and real-estate agents often referred to assessing their ‘gut feelings’ as a key tenant-selection strategy. This is a way of informally checking the reliability of the other pieces of information given in the application process. Some landlords and real estate agents emphasised that they can quickly notice if someone is trying to pretend during personal encounters or if ‘it is the true story’ (REA02) and sense warning signs (LL02). The gut feeling involves assessing the prospective tenant on a personal level and checking whether the ‘soft facts’ (REA01) are correct. To get a feel for prospects, many real estate agents and landlords emphasised small talk with housing seekers: ‘It’s often kind of easy in the context of small talk. I say for example, "Ah, where do you work? Ah okay, my partner is in the same company. In which department?" And somehow, you get a bit of a feeling for how they live, whether they are married, what kind of attitudes towards life they have. Some of them just say things like: "Yeah, we went hiking at the weekend." This type of information kind of gives you a bit of a feeling for the person.’ (REA02)

The process of assessing the ‘gut feeling’ may start by evaluating the first written enquiry, as one real estate agent told us: ‘Of course, we look at how much text is written. (…) Has the prospect made an effort to write a personal text? Here we already separate the wheat from the chaff.’ (REA03) Real estate agents sometimes asked the applicants for photos and to write short, personal descriptions to collect more personal information and gain a better impression of the tenants through their writing style and ability (LL02). Additionally, one real estate agent described how they used initial telephone calls with prospective tenants to quickly gain a sense of ‘whether the person sounds reasonable’ and if they were truly eager to rent (REA03). A key moment for determining the gut feeling with a prospective tenant is the first personal encounter, which usually happens at the apartment viewing. The first impression was described as being particularly important (LL02, LL03); for example, whether prospective tenants arrived on time (REA02), how they shook hands, whether they made eye contact or smiled, and what they said about themselves (LL02). However, respondents also paid attention to general appearance, including how appropriately people were dressed and if they made a ‘normal, friendly impression’ (REA02). The social proximity between tenant and landlord or real estate agent is often decisive for the good ‘gut feeling;’ for example, when a landlord emphasised that certain tenants are likeable because they ‘have a lot of books’ (LL01), or, conversely, when another landlord remarked that he was not happy about ‘dreadlocks and ripped jeans’ (LL05). The examples show that the ‘gut feeling’ is a feeling that is constituted within a complex process of social evaluation through multiple formal and informal strategies within a specific environment and should not be simply misinterpreted as a subjective instance.

While the previous ideal tenant characteristics are often non-transparent to housing seekers, the ‘gut feeling’ category is even more nebulous. Accordingly, housing seekers may sense its importance, like Lena, who described her attempts to establish a personal connection with the real estate agent. However, prospective tenants can usually only guess the best way to convey themselves and find it difficult to name discrimination. To evoke a good ‘gut feeling,’ interviewees used multiple approaches to present themselves positively and to convince the landlords and real estate agents of their merits. This included presenting oneself as tidy and trustworthy (HS13), modern and beautiful (HS03), as flattering (HS21) and as culturally educated and with an affinity to nature: ‘And then I told a bit, why I like the 2nd district very, very much and then maybe personal things came across. For example, that I like going out to eat. […] And things that one can be proud of like that one is culturally educated, that you somehow know where the nearest theatre is, things like that, […] that I’m a nature-loving person. Which I am not but I was just trying to convince them that I really wanted to live in the 2^nd district [the 2nd district is known for its parks].’ (HS11) Lena, who wanted to move in with her boyfriend, paid particular attention to how she presented herself throughout all stages of the process. This began with the first carefully written enquiry and continued with dressing respectably, attaching great importance to her appearance and paying attention to her manner of expression. She developed strategies, such as talking about the location of the apartment and its surroundings to subtly express what she thought were desirable character traits. In doing so, she carefully crafted an image of her and her boyfriend as ideal tenants. In sum, the interviewees’ descriptions reveal that personal elements of lifestyle, milieu, and social proximity to the landlord or real estate agent are key for creating trustworthiness and a good ‘gut feeling.’

While many of the interviewed housing seekers tried to evoke a good ‘gut feeling’ in the real estate agents and landlords, some were more reluctant to do so. Anna, who was looking for a larger apartment with a balcony, emphasised that although she perceived the housing market as extremely tight and overpriced, she still had certain limits on what she was willing to do to get an apartment. She did not want to write a motivation letter, give out personal information about herself, or dress deliberately for apartment viewings, which she summarised as: ‘I would not sell my soul.’ (HS20) This contesting subject position must be seen within the context of her privileged socio-economic position, composed of high cultural and economic capital, which allowed her to set these limits and refuse housing if the requirements were not in line with her principles.

6. Conclusion: the housing affordability crisis as a moment of social standardisation

Although the average rents in Vienna may seem comparatively low relative to other European cities, affordable private rental housing is increasingly characterised by tight competition. Even if Vienna can be considered an integrated market with a dominant social housing segment where a large share of the population has access to all housing fields, some housing seekers completely rely on the private rental sector; for example, newcomers or those facing time constraints. Developments from the last decades, such as changes to the rent regulation system, the increase in the new, unregulated housing stock, the option of fixed-term contracts, the growth in population, and trends of financialization and responsibilization have raised the prices in this field, which makes affordable housing in the private rental market increasingly scarce. This results in the current situation where housing seekers have to face high demands and unequal power relations in trying to meet their basic needs.

Our study sheds new light on the exclusions in this context through the lens of subjectification research. Studies on subjectification in relation to homeownership, financialization, and debt emphasize how individuals are transformed into entrepreneurial investor-subjects. In this context, mortgages and debt serve as powerful disciplinary mechanisms that encourage debtors to work on themselves and their futures (Allon, 2015; Di Feliciantonio, 2016; García-Lamarca & Kaika, 2016; Kear, 2013; Langley, 2006; Watson, 2010). Subjectification in the field of social housing, on the other hand, operates primarily through formal allocation mechanisms that address housing seekers primarily as administered, passive subjects, although also here there are increasingly elements of responsibilization and activation (Flint, 2004; Morris et al., 2022). In contrast, subjectification in the private rental market is exercised through the disciplinary mechanism of competition (see Table 2). While Bonnet & Pollard (2021) and Power & Gillon (2022) refer to the notion of the ‘good tenant’ to describe how tenants must present themselves to landlords and real estate agents, our study demonstrates that gaining access to affordable housing in the context of increasing competition requires housing seekers to embody and to exhibit the characteristics of an ideal tenant. Thus, stronger competition not only makes access to affordable housing more difficult, but also has normative effects. As competition over affordable housing increases, landlords’ and real estate agents’ epistemologies of socially evaluating and selecting tenants, as well as their ethical notions of social conduct become more decisive; for example, preferences about appropriate behaviour, decency, lifestyles, appearances, family structure, and neatness can all shape who gets housing and who does not. The empirical material shows that landlords and real estate agents rely on narrow notions of which people are appropriate to rent to that are especially characterised by white bourgeois attributes. Thus, as other studies have shown (Besbris, 2020; Rosen et al., 2021), their criteria and methods of social evaluation are not only subjective, but closely linked to societal and institutional inequality structures. Housing allocation under highly competitive conditions in the context of the housing affordability crisis is thus not only a purely technical form of allocation, but a site of social standardisation where norms surrounding the ideal tenant as well as the ideal subject are negotiated and established. This is also carried out by the housing seekers who govern themselves by enacting, and thus also reproducing and re-enforcing, these norms. They must sense and enact the various modes of subjectification that cluster around the image of the ideal tenant to improve their chances of success: being solvent, caring for the apartment, not being foreign, and evoking a good ‘gut feeling’ (see Table 3) - attributes that align with studies on housing searches in the private rental housing market in more neoliberal housing regimes (Bate, 2020; Decker, 2023; Short et al., 2008; Verstraete & Moris, 2019).

Table 2. Subjectification in the different fields of housing.

Housing field	Disciplinary mechanism	Subjectification
homeownership	mortgages and debt	entrepreneurial investor-subjects
Social housing	formal allocation	administered, passive subjects (increasingly responsibilization and activation)
Private rental	competition	ideal tenant

Table 3. Characteristics of an ideal tenant in the private rental market in Vienna.

Characteristics of an ideal tenant	Suggestion of subjectification (by landlords and real estate agents)	Appropriation of subjectification (by housing seekers)
The ideal tenant is solvent	proof of income credit check third-party financial guarantor reference documents from a former landlord letter of recommendation from the housing seeker’s employer questions about current employment questions in the tenant self-disclosure form about current employment and income	emphasise crisis-proof jobs and good incomes bring financial guarantors assure support by parents bring parents
The ideal tenant cares for the apartment	questions about lifestyle questions in the tenant self-disclosure form about lifestyle	distort information about lifestyle
The ideal tenant is not foreign	questions in the tenant self-disclosure form about citizenship, mother tongue, or length of residency	obscure or hide surname during the application process bring Austrian friends and partners search for landlords with migration background
With the ideal tenant, the ‘gut feeling’ is good	evaluation of written enquiry ask applicants for photos and personal descriptions personal encounter and small talk with housing seekers	attempt to establish a personal connection present oneself in an appealing way (e.g. as tidy, trustworthy, modern or culturally educated)

Examining the normative effects of housing allocation under highly competitive conditions reveals dynamics of exclusion beyond matters of affordability and formal eligibility, which is particularly relevant to Vienna’s private rental housing market, on which a range of socially diverse people depend. Although the Equal Treatment Act prohibits discrimination in access to housing according to gender and ethnicity, it does not truly prevent discrimination since there are no rules about housing allocation itself and the ‘blurriness’ of competition—i.e. the variability and non-transparency of criteria—creates more space for discrimination. This is different from countries like the United States, where many states have regulations for selection criteria, such as prohibiting requests for photos from applicants (Decker 2023; Reosti 2020). Consequently, although there are no legal restrictions on access to the private rental housing market in Vienna, access to affordable housing under the current competitive situation is a challenge for many housing seekers (cf. also Aigner, 2019; Friesenecker & Kazepov, 2021). Although housing seekers frequently resist subjectification and self-governing, this strongly depends on their circumstances, such as having sufficient time for the search process, having high social and cultural capital, or searching beyond affordable housing, where the power relations between landlords/real estate agents and housing seekers are often reversed and housing seekers are less selected (or mostly unselected) subjects and rather selecting ones.

Acknowledgments

We want to thank the SPACE research team for their comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper. Remaining errors are ours.

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the FWF under Grant ZK60-G27.

Notes on contributors

Susanna Azevedo

Susanna Azevedo is a PhD student at the Department of Sociology at the University of Vienna, conducting qualitative research on access to and allocation of housing in the private rental housing market of Vienna and Lisbon. She is interested in the impact of affective practices, such as relying on gut feelings, and the role of emotions in gatekeepers’ decision-making processes. (Twitter: @susanna_azevedo; LinkedIn: Susanna Azevedo)

Raphaela Kohout

Raphaela Kohout is a research fellow with the FWF-funded interdisciplinary research project SPACE—Spatial Competition and Economic Policies at the University of Vienna. She holds a master’s degree in Sociology and her interests include housing research, cultures of intimate life and care, practice theory, social inequality, childhood, and youth. Currently, her research is related to competition cultures in housing allocation and housing production in Vienna.

Ana Rogojanu

Ana Rogojanu works as a postdoc researcher on the project SPACE—Spatial Competition and Economic Policies (funded by FWF) at the University of Vienna. With a background in European Ethnology, she is particularly interested in material culture studies, the anthropology of architecture, housing studies, and spatial theories. Currently, her research focuses on the role of competition in the production of housing and in access to housing.

Georg Wolfmayr

Georg Wolfmayr is a European ethnologist and cultural anthropologist and investigates research topics in and between the fields of economy, housing, city, science and culture, in particular issues of competition, the production of and access to housing, territorial stigmatisation, urbanity, urban competition, the negotiation of locality/globality and the social organisation of science.

Notes

1 The high share of social rental housing and rental housing in general is the reason why, unlike many other places (e.g. McKee et al., 2020), there is no stigmatization of renters in Vienna. Also, unlike many other places (e.g. Byrne, 2020), the proportion of renters is not increasing (Kadi and Lilius, 2022), which is why we cannot speak of a generation rent in the Viennese context.

2 All ethical standards for conducting social research were met. First and foremost, we guaranteed the privacy and anonymity of our respondents. We also communicated our research objectives and methods transparently in advance.

3 In the event of discrimination, housing seekers can turn to the Ombud for Equal Treatment. They have to prove to the Equal Treatment Commission that the discriminatory factors were the only reason why they did not get the apartment, which can often be difficult.

4 In our sample, we excluded cases of informal housing allocation. These are interesting cases that need to be studied more closely for the housing market in Vienna as a whole. In this study, however, we focused on cases where landlords and tenants do not know each other in advance and landlords or real estate agents have to choose from applicants they do not know. It was this competitive situation and the related subjectivities and dynamics involved that interested us.

5 There are companies that specialise in renting Viennese apartments and subletting them to subtenants. They guarantee that only trustworthy tenants will stay at these apartments and that the landlords will not experience any rental losses. For example, Blueground advertises, ‘Find the perfect tenant and maximize your rental income.’ According to their website, their apartments are only occupied by ‘consultants, diplomats, expats and executives—our tenants are carefully evaluated and selected through background checks.’.

6 The tenant’s self-disclosure (in German “Mieterselbstauskunft”) is an open-format questionnaire that can be requested by landlords or real estate agents. It often includes questions about ethnic origin, marital status, whether someone has children or not, smoking status, income, and current employer. There are no legal restrictions on what questions can be asked, since asking them does not constitute a violation of the Equal Treatment Act and seekers are not obliged to answer. Refusing to answer the questions may, however, result in not getting the apartment.