Beyond private actors: urban conflicts between tenants and corporate landlords in Santiago de Chile

Abstract

Over the last two decades, rental housing has expanded rapidly in Chile, particularly in Santiago, where built-to-rent multifamily developments managed by corporate landlords have become increasingly prominent. This article examines how rental housing financialization reshapes tenant–landlord relations and urban conflict in a deregulated context. Drawing on in-depth interviews with multifamily tenants and publicly available eviction cases as contextual material, it explores residential trajectories, housing precariousness, and everyday frictions, negotiation, and instability. Findings show that corporate landlordism produces atomized relationships, mediated by managerial and technological arrangements that limit negotiation and collective organization. Conflicts are expressed through individualized practices, including residential turnover, avoidance, and withdrawal from collective life, conceptualized as forms of unlikely resistance through which tenants manage financial pressures and institutional asymmetries while remaining publicly invisible. The article contributes to debates on housing financialization and urban conflict in the Global South and highlights the need for stronger institutional and regulatory mechanisms.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Urban Research & Practice, 2026 · DOI ↗