After the U.S. foreclosure crisis of 2008, residential real estate investment became a dubious financial strategy. But in the real estate investment seminars I attended in Chicago and its surrounding suburbs in 2014 and 2015, the housing market's recent collapse was being repackaged into a space for ordinary people to seize financial freedom and find opportunity in the wake of crisis. This article explores how real estate seminar speakers use the long‐standing cultural and economic valorization of residential real estate and the reality television–driven approachability of house flipping to turn the grim inequities the crisis produced into a platform for selling insider knowledge to people with limited financial resources and experience. I argue that the seminars offer a window into understanding how market logics of taking on risk to build wealth circulate and become incorporated into the financial subjectivities and dreams of both investors and ordinary people. Seminar speakers insist that just as devalued homes can become valuable assets, passive workers can transform themselves into empowered market makers. Their framings speak to the pervasive power of rags‐to‐riches stories in the United States and to the cyclical nature of market making and dissolution under capitalism.

中文翻译：

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“您是自己成功的建筑师”：在2008年止赎危机之后，通过房地产投资出售财务自由

在2008年美国丧失抵押品赎回权危机之后，住宅房地产投资成为一种可疑的金融策略。但是在2014年和2015年我在芝加哥及其周边地区参加的房地产投资研讨会上，房地产市场的近期崩溃被重新包装成一个供普通百姓抓住金融自由并在危机后寻找机会的空间。本文探讨了房地产研讨会的讲者如何利用住宅房地产的长期文化和经济价值以及现实电视驱动的房屋倒置的可及性，从而将危机产生的严峻不平等现象转化为向知情人士销售内幕知识的平台财务资源和经验。我认为，这些研讨会为您提供了一个窗口，可以了解理解为积累财富而承担风险的市场逻辑如何传播并融入投资者和普通百姓的财务主观和梦想中。研讨会发言人坚持认为，就像贬值的房屋可以成为有价值的资产一样，被动的工人也可以将自己转变为有能力的做市商。他们的观点说明了在美国破烂不堪的故事的无处不在的力量，以及在资本主义制度下市场做市和解散的周期性特征。