Land, Values, and Valuation Work: Moral Imaginaries of Land Markets in England and Germany

Land markets are commonly thought to deviate from the neoclassical model of perfect competition due to natural scarcity, their asset-like character, and the fictitious features of what is traded. But how can such a recalcitrant market object be valued and exchanged? Based on archival and ethnographic research in the field of valuation work in England and Germany, this article reveals how land is rendered as a legitimate market good by enacting moral imaginaries of what ‘the land market’ is and what it ought to be as an object of knowledge. While in England the imaginary of restless land markets emerged ‘bottom-up’ around valuers’ pragmatic engagement with the real estate sector, in Germany the careful post-war re-liberalization of the land market was intimately tied to the imaginary of orderly land markets enforced through the tight legal framework of the building code to counter speculation. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of these imaginaries for shaping contemporary land markets and the financialization of valuation.