The real estate state is not new, nor is it all-encompassing. Like the carceral state, the warfare state, the welfare state or the administrative state, it is an expression of government—a component, a bloc, a manifestation, a tendency—that has been around in one form or another for as long as states and private property have existed. Landowners have been determining the shape of cities for centuries, and the idea of housing as a commodity—even as a financial asset—is not exactly state of the art. What is relatively new, however, is the outsized power of real estate interests within the capitalist state. As real estate values have risen to absurd heights, so has the political force of real estate capital.