Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution
1–10 of 194 posts
Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution
#2Nope, because they'll just setup a load of shell companies.
Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution
#3Nope, because they'll just setup a load of shell companies.
Should there be a limit to how many Shell companies a lord can own?
Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution
#4Yes, housing is a right not a speculation opportunity. Also there should be opportunities for people to get their own houses, like cheap credits with a monthly payment close to the rent.
Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution
#5Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution
#6Nope, because they'll just setup a load of shell companies.
I always wondered if there might be some way to write a law that essentially bans clever financial tricks.
Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution
#7Regulate behaviour, not ownership.
If you want landlords to behave better, then rather than keeping them small, stick limits on what they can do.
Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Should there be a limit to how many Shell companies a lord can own?
You can probably set up a tree of shell companies.
The law is sophisticated enough to walk trees, and smart enough to have concepts like "beneficial ownership" where who _actually_ owns something matters, at least in common law.
Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution
#9The truth is that rents in Berlin are exceptionally cheap compared to other major cities. Try finding a flat in London or Paris for The only way to keep rents this low in the face of rising demand is public housing that is rented out below market rates to low income tenants, or via a lottery.
Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution
#10Nope, because they'll just setup a load of shell companies.
I always wondered if there might be some way to write a law that essentially bans clever financial tricks.
Clever? no. Clever is how you get to where we are now.
The law(s) that would need to re-written are the core laws that define what a company is, how ownership, liability and such work.
These are all clever-complicated. They cross jurisdictions, and enable cascading ownership (companies, owning companies, owning trusts, etc.), each with different (incompatible) rules: tax, reporting & transparency obligations, definitions of terms like profit. They've been complicated constantly for hundreds of years, trying to encourage one things and discourage another, usually for a small picture reason.
Most of the "tricks" involve using multiple types of legal "persons" registered in multiple jurisdictions with multiple ownership structures. New laws try to plug certain loopholes, open other ones, or achieve a political or policy goal. This complexity is why it's so hard to do anything with company law.