This panel is the second of two in a symposium on the comparative political economy of housing within Europe. Papers in this panel explain how macroeconomic growth model strategies and mortgage debt expansion have shaped housing booms, home-ownership rates, and home-owner behavior in rental markets. The first paper (Bohle) dissects how the EU’s free movement of capital (which increased the volume of credit while decreasing its price) impacted (mortgage) financialization in the European periphery, making their mortgage markets heavily dependent upon foreign capital flows and foreign financial institutions. Bohle highlights how varieties of financial liberalization reinforced systemic mortgage debt accumulation in these countries, which ultimately undermined their banking systems before and during the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. The second paper (Reisenbichler) takes a similar “growth model” view towards housing policy in Germany and the US, highlighting that the type of growth model that these countries had ultimately shaped the expansion (in the case of the US) or retrenchment (in the case of Germany) of their (pro-homeownership) housing policies. The third paper (Kohl) questions whether the “great mortgaging” that has fueled (and has been fueled by) financialization resulted in expanded homeownership rates across Europe. He finds that mortgage finance and homeownership rates are not as closely connected as they are perceived to be. The final paper (Tranøy and Stamsø) examines how housing is currently being used as an investment vehicle within rental markets (i.e. buy-to-let and Air BnB) by home-owners in one of the world’s most egalitarian welfare states, Norway.