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Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution

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Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution

#151

Post by walshemj »

anonymous5133 wrote: post #141
choeger wrote: post #17

Everyone and their cat wants to live as close as humanly possible to the hip center of the hip city. But of course, they literally do not want to pay the price. Why is there a vegan bakery specialized in Afghan Bagel[1] around the corner? Because there are enough hip, young professionals to pay for even the most unlikely specialty. Business can afford to cater to the most extraordinary taste, but only because there a…

I view it from a different approach. The city centers are the most expensive because that's where all the good paying jobs are. Thus if you want to solve the housing crisis, you simply need to shift the density of where these jobs are located. Personally I like the circular city model where you have several CBDs on the outer rings of the city. The current model basically has all the good jobs in the CBD. The further…

mm working in a soulless business park with no facilities has is downside compared to say central London

Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution

#152

Post by walshemj »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #65
scotty79 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can only regulate what you can measure. Ownership is very easy to measure. And tax progressively.

And suddenly one landlord owns ten companies trough subsidiaries and trusts. This is yet another nice trick that won't work. Besides, price and demand curve would still apply where it was one landlord or hundreds. What would help is to encourage housing density to increase supply. That has two main drive: building regulations (mandate building of a certain height) and taxation (tax building by footprint and not by he…

Ask how that worked out when the UK went for system built high-rise estates or the projects in NYC

Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution

#153

Post by mdorazio »

manicdee wrote: post #149

All you people claiming that the only way to reduce housing costs is to build more housing are missing the other only way to reduce housing costs. Remember, there is not only supply but also demand. We need to reduce population growth to below zero. A sustainable world population is probably close to 0.9B, far less than the current level of about 9B, and significantly less than projected “stable” population of around…

That doesn't work because it's not only general population growth that's driving housing shortages in cities, it's that people are moving to popular cities from less popular places. San Francisco doesn't have a housing problem because too many people had babies in the last 10 years, it has a housing problem because way more people want to move to San Francisco from other US cities than it can support.

Another way to think about it: Japan's population is flat or declining depending on the stat you look at, but Tokyo is still increasing in population.

Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution

#154

Post by tryptophan »

scotty79 wrote: post #122
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't everyone's rent increase by whatever that tax is? There's already an incentive to create additional density, money. More units, more money. If there's some tax that the owner also has to account for that changes nothing. It's no different than any other increase in overhead. It just gets passed on.

> Why wouldn't everyone's rent increase by whatever that tax is? Because the tax is progressive, which means is not equal for all landlords, which means if big landlords increased their rent by their tax then nobody would rent from them because smaller landlords would have smaller rents thanks to smaller tax. This way large landlords no longer find owning real estate profitable and relocate their capital away from re…

You seem to have the misconception that rents are set by individual owners(a large company, or 1 house/person landlord). In actuality, rents are set by the rental market overall, governed by supply and demand. It doesn't matter if 500 homes to rent are owned by 2 or 200 people.

A tax like that would just make rents increase to X+Y for units owned by large landlords, where Y is the new tax cost. X would not change, making the policy achieve exactly nothing.

Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution

#155

Post by zwaps »

choeger wrote: post #17

Everyone and their cat wants to live as close as humanly possible to the hip center of the hip city. But of course, they literally do not want to pay the price. Why is there a vegan bakery specialized in Afghan Bagel[1] around the corner? Because there are enough hip, young professionals to pay for even the most unlikely specialty. Business can afford to cater to the most extraordinary taste, but only because there a…

Berlin is still empty compared to pre WW2. There are huge empty areas right in the center of the city.

There just isn't enough building going on. Building in Germany is expensive, and complicated. Even though almost anything would improve upon this clustereff of 60's communist architecture, you can not even build a skyscraper because people don't want it.

Berlin is Berlin. Removing it from Germany would increase its GDP. Nothing makes sense here, and its a chaotic antithesis of the other large cities in Germany. Heck, they can't even finish the airport because our socialist officials just had to show they can build it themselves (they could not).

Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution

#156

Post by zwaps »

anonymous5133 wrote: post #141
choeger wrote: post #17

Everyone and their cat wants to live as close as humanly possible to the hip center of the hip city. But of course, they literally do not want to pay the price. Why is there a vegan bakery specialized in Afghan Bagel[1] around the corner? Because there are enough hip, young professionals to pay for even the most unlikely specialty. Business can afford to cater to the most extraordinary taste, but only because there a…

I view it from a different approach. The city centers are the most expensive because that's where all the good paying jobs are. Thus if you want to solve the housing crisis, you simply need to shift the density of where these jobs are located. Personally I like the circular city model where you have several CBDs on the outer rings of the city. The current model basically has all the good jobs in the CBD. The further…

Berlin has no singular city center and certainly no CBD.

Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution

#157

Post by zwaps »

ucaetano wrote: post #150
vvillena wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference lies on the metropolitan area. The New York area is surely more populated than in WW2, even if Manhattan isn't.

Nope. The difference is that you had far more people living in the same dwelling units. The population of Manhattan peaked around 1910, at 2.3M, it is 1.6M today.

NYC population, he meant.

Berlin is overall smaller than before WW2. And it shows, the place is really empty and spacious compared to comparably attractive cities.

The issue is that Berlin people like it that way. They don't want high rise buildings, let alone skyscrapers. They want their local "Kiez" culture, where you live, eat, meet and have everything around your house. Berlin doesn't have a CBD, and it doesn't have a real city center. It has many equivalent ones. It's like a huge collection of villages.

Berlin is different from Paris or London, and certainly NYC, most importantly in that it is not cramped. There are numerous huge empty buildings and free areas right around the geographical center. The issue is not space. The issue is buildings.

Building in Berlin is difficult. It needs to be pretty and fit the area, its spaces need to be open to the public or accessible, it needs to provide public infrastructure and provide for kindergartens, doctors offices etc, it can not be too large, it needs to have x% social appartements, and it can not have more than y% luxury flats for sale etc. etc.

Is that good? I don't know. I compare it often to places in developing countries, where you can build up huge areas of high rises indiscriminately, and if you wanna have gated areas for rich people, that's fine. That's why the sidewalks are usually unfinished just outside a given area. Not so in Berlin. Building something is like an expensive privilege.

And hence, there isn't enough space for housing, even if there is certainly enough space to "be".

Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution

#158

Post by selectodude »

ucaetano wrote: post #150
vvillena wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference lies on the metropolitan area. The New York area is surely more populated than in WW2, even if Manhattan isn't.

Nope. The difference is that you had far more people living in the same dwelling units. The population of Manhattan peaked around 1910, at 2.3M, it is 1.6M today.

Fewer people live in Manhattan. The NYC Metro has added 10 million since 1940.

Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution

#159

Post by berlinerluft »

pell wrote: post #142
berlinerluft wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not entitled to it, they PAY for it. Amazing concept, I know.

I don't understand why you need to be obnoxiously sarcastic here. There are quite a few situations where governments set limits on how much a good can be priced at. It definitely is entitlement to be able to rent to the highest bidder.

It's only entitlement if you come from a socialist perspective and think property is a frivolous concept.

Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution

#160

Post by wbl »

TomMckenny wrote: post #84
choeger wrote: post #17

Everyone and their cat wants to live as close as humanly possible to the hip center of the hip city. But of course, they literally do not want to pay the price. Why is there a vegan bakery specialized in Afghan Bagel[1] around the corner? Because there are enough hip, young professionals to pay for even the most unlikely specialty. Business can afford to cater to the most extraordinary taste, but only because there a…

Rents out pace wages in suburbs and rural areas too. They rise in SF, Fresno and Anchorage. Even places people flee like Flint Michigan, land costs rise. They are unbearably high even in tiny apartment Tokyo where a 4m ceiling means you have no roof. They rise in places with bad public transportation and good. The rise in supposedly under-priced Berlin and supposedly over priced San Francisco. Land is not a normal co…

It did fix housing prices in LA. That's why for the past 50 years LA has frozen its zoned capacity which used to be staggeringly high.
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