Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze • Hacker News Board

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#101

Post by wander_homer » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 5:32 PM UTC

ziziyO wrote: post #34

sdegutis wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with legally limiting artificial price hikes to prevent people from abusing Demand > Supply for the sake of their greed? [Edit] To clarify, they seem to be "artificial" price hikes because they don't in any way necessary to cover costs. People realize they can charge more and get more money, so they simply do. That's inherently avaricious and unethical. Sure, maybe prices work themselves out, so that pri…

Why is greed so bad here? The problem isn’t greed it’s the demand in the face of the lack of supply. Make other places more attractive or increase the supply available in this location.

> Why is greed so bad here? The problem isn’t greed it’s the demand in the face of the lack of supply.

Greed is bad in this situation because you can make more money of luxury apartments than those suitable for people who are somewhere between the poverty line and upper middle class. Hence new apartments in major cities tend to be more and more expensive to satisfy the demand of wealthier people. Greed is also bad when existing apartments are made much more expensive, thereby forcing senior citizens who have been living there for decades and who are barely able to afford the rent to basically leave town, family and friends.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#102

Post by Bombthecat » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 5:32 PM UTC

tempsolution wrote: post #47

hashberry wrote: post #31

If affordable housing is an issue, then perhaps the government should provide it for its citizens, like building huge high-rises in Berlin. I used to rent in an expensive city but bought a cheap house in the suburbs (thankfully I work remotely). Everything is cheaper out here, from gas to utilities to food. But I did experience classism from my friends and family: there is status living in a world-class city. And hav…

Last thing I heard, high buildings are mostly infeasible in Berlin due to the unstable underground. You can't build New York everywhere...

I doubt that high buildings help, no matter how many people you square per cubic meter, in big cities it will never be enough to allow affordable living...

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#103

Post by option » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 5:33 PM UTC

the West is being murdered by populists

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#104

Post by mantas » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

mixmastamyk wrote: post #91

objektif wrote: post #60

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.

Agreed except for last part. Devs want to build homes, as that's what they do.

Nah. Build too much and your margin gets slimmer and slimmer. Build less and get same profit with less work while keeping the market hungry for the future.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#105

Post by option » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

balozi wrote: post #82

Why stop at price controls on housing? Why not just go bravely into the full-blown confiscation and redistribution of private property.

I’m afraid not everyone understands your sarcasm here :)

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#106

Post by innocentoldguy » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 5:36 PM UTC

SomeOldThrow wrote: post #94

vtail wrote: post #3

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.

Anyone who looks at regulations like this and sees the Soviet Union is themselves a lunatic. This is not a planned economy, and people do not need to profit from housing to build it, and housing should be a human right.

If you take the monetary incentive of profit away, what other motivator exists for people to take huge financial risks and expend vast amounts of money to purchase land and construct houses and other living structures?

I guess you do have the right to wander into the forest and build yourself a fortress out of pine cones and moss, but if you want to live in a modern house with modern amenities, there's going to be a profit incentive behind it. It's basic economics.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#107

Post by skohan » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 5:37 PM UTC

georgeecollins wrote: post #14

tmalsburg2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely curious: what do you think would be a better response?

I am not the OP, but based on the point of view perhaps the OP would say: encourage more housing development to lower prices?

Wouldn't this do that indirectly? If you can't buy up existing housing stock and increase rents to gain revenue, you have to build new units if you want to charge higher rent.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#108

Post by djakjxnanjak » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 5:37 PM UTC

supercall wrote: post #36

vtail wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raising prices = Demand > Supply. You can either try to curb the demand (by e.g. creating incentives for companies to build offices elsewhere, move government bureaucracy somewhere else, etc.) or improve the supply by facilitating new construction, which in most places on earth is limited by, again, local government restrictions. edits: grammar

You're assuming the high prices are a result of high demand. Speculators and other bad actors are also driving up prices.

How on earth is rent control supposed to help with that? If anything, rent control makes being a landlord less appealing relative to selling to a Russian oligarch.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#109

Post by Vinnl » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 5:39 PM UTC

vtail wrote: post #10

tmalsburg2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely curious: what do you think would be a better response?

Raising prices = Demand > Supply. You can either try to curb the demand (by e.g. creating incentives for companies to build offices elsewhere, move government bureaucracy somewhere else, etc.) or improve the supply by facilitating new construction, which in most places on earth is limited by, again, local government restrictions. edits: grammar

Hmm, this description made me wonder: wouldn't this measure reduce demand from investors looking to buy houses to rent out? In other words: if the bottleneck for new housing isn't that nobody's buying them, then this would at least lower the prices for people looking to buy a house to live in?

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#110

Post by CPLX » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 5:39 PM UTC

urda wrote: post #81

CPLX wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a person living in New York who thinks rent stabilization has been largely more successful than not at achieving its goals, I disagree.

Except it doesn't work, and has been proven to not actually work.

I read some version of this sentence every time the topic comes up.

Like it's just "proven" not to work, as if there's some kind of objective science that exists independently of values and assumptions.

Rent stabilization is intended to keep permanent residents of the apartments in question from being forced to move by rent increases. It does exactly that thing.