91–100 of 594 posts
I think the only solution to high rents and home prices is to build more and more supply. But strangely there is opposition to this from both sides of the political spectrum. Left opposes it in the name of “preserving neighborhoods”, conservative wealthy home owners dont want new inventory to reduce their real estate valuations, and developers oppose it because it will eat into their profits.
As a person born and raised in Soviet Union, I strongly believe that whoever thinks that a proper economic response to raising prices is literally to order them to stop raising , is a lunatic.
They've also introduced laws to stop people from buying up apartments to rent out via Airbnb.
Considering even with the law that limits how much they can raise their prices, they're just doing unneeded renovations to get around that law and increase the rent 40%.
This law in combination with the housing construction going on throughout the city and the Airbnb law I think it's the right direction.
As a person born and raised in Soviet Union, I strongly believe that whoever thinks that a proper economic response to raising prices is literally to order them to stop raising , is a lunatic.
Good luck finding a flat if you are moving to Berlin ...
Finding a real apartment where you cannot be kicked out any moment is hard though. The best way in Berlin to find a decent place is to be low-income for several years, get on a waiting list and then finally get one of the luxurious subsidized places.
No chance otherwise.
As a person born and raised in Soviet Union, I strongly believe that whoever thinks that a proper economic response to raising prices is literally to order them to stop raising , is a lunatic.
Genuinely curious: what do you think would be a better response?
I think the main reason why this makes me so angry is because it's Berlin, again, doing something fiscally irresponsible that the rest of the country is going to have to finance in the long run. How I imagine it to go down would be like this: Today the politicians pat themselves on the back for their progressive stance on this topic. In year 2 of the rent freeze most of the property investment will have seized, new c…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're assuming the high prices are a result of high demand. Speculators and other bad actors are also driving up prices.
I would imagine, but obviously can't speak for the parent poster, that if you suggested limiting speculation they could agree on a sensible implementation of that policy. I have not met anybody so far who thinks wealthy foreigners should be able to use real estate to launder money, store value, hide wealth, or otherwise not use real estate for what it is meant for, that is to say as places for people to live, play, o…
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Land values rise to make the margins developers work within very small. Land is a problem everywhere and someone owns it and will always try to extract the best price if you have planning permission for it. So maybe capping land prices and forcing sales for desirable schemes would work better. It will of course never happen as ownership is fundamental to our thinking in the west. I actually find the idea of the gover…
The problem isn't developers at all - they make only a small margin. The people who are abusing the system are equity investors who demand a return on their investment within as little as 2-3 years, leading to unrealistically high rents. All rent control is doing in this case is forcing investors to take a longer period of return.
Symptom: rents are too high Cause: insufficient housing supply Solution: disincentivize new construction?
Nope. New buildings are exempt.