The uberisation of housing markets: putting theory into practice

Purpose: Digital disruption offers an innovative opportunity to address housing affordability issues through the use of market design theory and two sided matching markets. This paper scopes a model for how 'uberisation' can revolutionise the traditional apartment delivery model in Australia, leading to improved housing affordability. Design/methodology/approach: We use semi-structured interviews with operators of online real estate platforms and deliberative developers to examine how the principles of 'uberisation', that is two sided matching markets, are driving innovation in the apartment supply process. Findings: Findings confirm that real estate internet platforms and deliberative developers innovators are informed by the benefits of aggregating demand to reduce development risk, thus enabling apartments to be provided at a substantially lower price than by traditional methods. Research limitations/implications: The number of interviews is small reflecting the limited number of market actors currently engaged in the innovations investigated. Originality/value: This research is innovative as it introduces theoretical understandings gained from market design theory and applies those concepts to disrupt the apartment development process.