Berlin will be the Lisbon of the 90ies. Well deserved
What happened to Lisbon in the 90s?
Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze
251–260 of 594 posts
Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's just thing this through: I have the option to buy a rental property in Berlin, I can either buy an old rental property and not be allowed to increase rents for 5 years. Or I can buy a new build rental property (which already sell for above market value in most places), and can charge more rent but I will be less able to find renters as they are looking to lock in 5 years worth of zero rent increase. I really do…
Berlin doesn't need landlords. It needs homes for people.
This.
Cities don't want or need more landlords. It needs more landOWNER residents.
Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze
#253Symptom: rents are too high Cause: insufficient housing supply Solution: disincentivize new construction?
Rent control does not disincentivize new construction.
Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze
#254As 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.
That's true for, say, bread . Or really any fungible good where labor makes up most of the price of the product. If you artificially suppress those prices, there isn't enough money to pay the farmers and bakers, and no bread will be made. This freeze actually exempts new construction, so the whole problem is mood. But it's still interesting to think it through, and the result is different than simple economics may ma…
> This freeze actually exempts new construction, so the whole problem is mood.
_This_ freeze excepts new construction, but it exposes the risk of a future freeze. Now, being a landlord in Berlin means being prepared for a rent freeze being applied in the future. That must be taken into account for projections of future income, and will either reduce your projected profit, or require raising rents on new construction to keep your projected profit.
Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze
#255As much as I can sympathise with the predicament, this decision, and the Berlin housing market in general, absolutely baffles me. When I moved here I was warned of 100 people turning up to a flat viewing, and laughed it off as some hyperbole. Only later did I find out that it actually happens , albeit the maximum viewing I went to was around a meagre 50. Having come from the UK, I found the situation in Berlin to be…
Rent control never works, but that never dissuades governments from trying it again and again.
Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze
#256If 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…
The pay for "lower paying jobs" will rise, assuming the city actually needs them.
Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze
#257If 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 I did experience classism from my friends and family: there is status living in a world-class city.
Can you go more into depth on that because I've never seen that and some of my extended family lives in small cities/farms in the midwest. If anything, they laugh because I pay $300 a month for parking. Then again, maybe chicago/seattle/san francisco aren't status bearing world class cities.
Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze
#258This is totally wrong! The government should never intervene market!
Nope, because the market doesn’t care about you. It doesn’t care if you have a place to live, if you are healthy, if you are safe…
Not restricting "the market" at all leads to a worse life for humans.
Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze
#259If 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…
That's one of the things being done. Problem is that for a while they didn't (that's what happens when you get people who think the market magically fixes things in power) and building new ones takes time. To get that time a stop gap measure was needed, hence freezing prices for five years for existing houses, no price freeze on new houses.
Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish someone with a deeper understanding would go to Japan and study how they got this so right. Their zoning laws don't separate uses, only nuisance levels, so you often see residential in commercial areas and small shops in residential neighborhoods. It's amazingly effective at reducing how far you need to go to get places, and gives the whole city a much more organic feel. Plus, there is actually housing if ther…
It’s actually pretty simple: housing isn’t an investment vehicle like it is in many parts of the West. The social and historical reasons why this is so in Japan are complicated, but the overall circumstances are not. You can either have affordable housing that’s not an appreciating asset or let finance/real estate Capital run roughshod over everything in speculative flurries, leading to the insane state of affairs in…
Wait, housing is socialized in Japan? Or is there some kind of non-socialized-but-non-privatized ownership situation? Do you have any further reading on this?