Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 594 posts

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#151

Post by sdegutis »

vtail wrote: post #45
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…

You are using emotionally charged words ("artificial", "abuse", "greed"), which makes a bit hard to have a constructive argument, but let me try :). One way to think about prices is as a signal . When greedy landlords raise prices, they send two signals: (1) To other landlords and wanna-be-landlords, saying it's an attractive market which would justify new construction or cleaning up your spare bedroom and putting it…

I just edited the comment to clarify what I meant by those words. And they should be used because they are accurate in this context. Although I did convert "greed" to "avarice" in my clarification since I think it's more accurate here.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#152

Post by cyrksoft »

wander_homer wrote: post #116
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…

> But many people want the status without having to pay the $$$ It's not just about the status. Every city needs people who do lower paying jobs. Someone has to clean those office buildings, someone has to take care of sick people at hospitals, someone has to drive taxis, buses, ... By not supplying those people with affordable housing within the city they're lives only become worse (more money and time spent commuti…

> Every city needs people who do lower paying jobs. Someone has to clean those office buildings, someone has to take care of sick people at hospitals, someone has to drive taxis, buses, ... By not supplying those people with affordable housing within the city they're lives only become worse (more money and time spent commuting, less time spent with family and friends).

They can live in the suburbs. Nobody has a special right to live in a specific place. They can commute like everybody else.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#153

Post by 2ion »

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.

It's a running joke that the country and Berlin in particular is turning into GDR2.0. Which is why there's lots of dissent especially among the former East-Germans who feel reminded of something.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#154

Post by bpfrh »

vtail wrote: post #125
johnnyfaehell wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, this isn't their first or only response. They're building housing as fast as possible. Within a 5 minute walk from my apartment in the last year there has been 5 brand new housing towers built. 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…

People buying apartments to rent out via Airbnb is not inherently a bad thing - it just indicates there is existing unsatisfied demand for short term rentals, which cannot be fulfilled by hotel industry. And guess what - hotel industry is another example of an industry heavily regulated by government (zoning laws, construction permits etc.). So the Airbnb problem most likely has the same underlying root cause.

No it is an indication that people are cheap and a person who bought a apartment as an investment now makes 30-60€ a night vs about 600 a month. There is a reason hotels are expensive. Airbnb does the same as uber. They start a business with either exploits a loophole or is illegal. Btw. at least in austria, if you want to rent your apartment on such a plattform you have to clear it with everyone who lives in that house. Of course nobody does that and of course the plattforms don't verify that, because they are "just a connecting plattform, we don't give any warranty but of course we get millions of of this"

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#155

Post by lostdog »

andy_ppp wrote: post #26
chmod775 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would only be true if rent wasn't already (relatively) way above the cost of new construction and if the freeze applied to new buildings too.

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…

We should consider a 75% capital gains rate on land value increases. After all, the owner typically had little effect on their own land value. A big effect comes from their neighbors building shops and offices and the biggest effect comes from the city building roads and transit and other infrastructure. Land "investment" is the least productive form of investment. If you built a building, then yes, profit from that, but benefits from increases in land value should go to the city.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#156

Post by kaybe »

rolltiide wrote: post #58
tmalsburg2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think there could be a better way to regulate how rents are determined, for example: One symptom is that current tenants are subject to arbitrarily high rent increases, masquaraded as "market rate" But when they finally evict, the landlord has to actually change the rent to something different until someone bites. Often times it is much lower or has some other concession. If there were some way to regulate this beh…

> Often times it is much lower or has some other concession.

No, it's going to become higher than a rent increase would allow (those have a limit by law, new contracts don't (yet)), that's the problem.

As long as you stay put you're mostly fine but if you have to move.. urgh.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#157

Post by 2ion »

cyrksoft wrote: post #152
wander_homer wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But many people want the status without having to pay the $$$ It's not just about the status. Every city needs people who do lower paying jobs. Someone has to clean those office buildings, someone has to take care of sick people at hospitals, someone has to drive taxis, buses, ... By not supplying those people with affordable housing within the city they're lives only become worse (more money and time spent commuti…

> Every city needs people who do lower paying jobs. Someone has to clean those office buildings, someone has to take care of sick people at hospitals, someone has to drive taxis, buses, ... By not supplying those people with affordable housing within the city they're lives only become worse (more money and time spent commuting, less time spent with family and friends). They can live in the suburbs. Nobody has a speci…

The suburbs (literally "bacon belt", wealthy exurbs) are even more expensive (after rapidly getting cheaper after 40-50km out from the city, but 2 hour commutes one way are very hard to sell at German salaries). Plus there's insufficient transport for getting the masses into the city already. Moving people more outwards won't work because these issues may get addressed after 10s of years.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#158

Post by jupp0r »

vtail wrote: post #139
jupp0r wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they just declared housing to be affordable (in the $20/month ballpark region) and people had to apply 10 years in advance to move to a larger apartment. This is my parent's experience in east Germany, should be similar to Soviet Union.

It was! Also, in early 1990s we had food shortages and long lines in stores for basically everything (in Moscow! things were much worse in the regions), which was a direct result of the government controlling the economy for many years through directives and completely ignoring the basic laws of economy. Sadly, the examples of economies of Soviet Union, and Cuba, and Venezuela, and North Korea etc. are somehow not su…

Exactly, it was really good if you happened to live in an appropriate apartment already, but was an absolute nightmare if you wanted to move. The same will happen (to a much lesser extent) in Berlin now.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#159

Post by WalterSear »

lostdog wrote: post #124
Causality1 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same thing will happen there as has happened in California. Landlords exit the market, developers stop building new housing, and ten years later you have a housing crisis twice as bad as the current one.

Rent control doesn't apply to new construction in California.

Requiring a portion of builds be below market rate is an equivalent disincentive from builders perspective.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#160

Post by bko »

baron816 wrote: post #129
CPLX wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal of rent stabilization is to make neighborhoods more stable. The concept is right there in the name, and that's exactly what it does. It's not built to stop shortages, or to increase the availability of apartments for people moving to the city.

The problem with these types of price controls is that it’s inherently unfair. If you’re on the inside and lucky enough to get a rent controlled apartment, you win. Everyone else loses.

I would also note that it promotes illegal behavior as people who are lucky enough will often illegally sublet the home at the market price.
Post reply on HN