Cover; Half Title; Title Page; Copyright Page; Table of Contents; List of figures; List of tables; Acknowledgments; List of abbreviations; Introduction; Why care about homeownership rates?; Development of homeownership rates; Explanations in the existing literature and their shortcomings; New explanation and chapter outline; 1 The historical origins and persistency of suburbanized versus compact cities; How Germany became a country of multi-unit buildings; How the USA became urbanized in single-family house cities; 2 Historical differences in housing finance
Germany: mortgage bank regime with non-profit associationsUSA: deposit-banking regime; 3 Fordist mass production and the Handwerk tradition of single-family houses; The German Handwerk production of single-family houses; Mass-produced single-family houses in the USA; 4 The broader picture of OECD countries: generalization of findings, horizontal ownership and homeownership ideology; Exploring the generalizability: from two cases to OECD countries; Differences in the legal tradition of horizontal ownership; The origins and country differences of the political homeownership idea; Conclusion
