Does this mean that five years of natural price increases will just happen all at once when five years have passed?
And unnatural homelessness surge will just happen over night in 5 years.
Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze
301–310 of 594 posts
Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze
#302Does this mean that five years of natural price increases will just happen all at once when five years have passed?
Price increases in housing are limited in Germany and have been for a _long_ time (and tightened up in the last couple years). This specific Berlin regulation is on top of that.
Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I found the situation in Berlin to be absolutely ridiculous. I totally agree with this assessment. I've never seen a city where you struggle to get a flat even if you have the money or can pay more. The market is absolutely broken with literally everyone competing for the same pool of flats.
I don't know, there's something utopian about what you describe. If the city doesn't have housing for everyone, why should the rich get it first? Leave capitalism at the door, we're talking about a roof over your head for janitors vs. business executives. If an 'ideal' free market means the rich get the houses and the poor are on the street, because developers don't have motivation to build, then I'm happy to see eve…
The opposite of:
"only the rich can get a house"
is not
"everyone gets a fair chance of getting a house",
but
"not even the rich can get a house".
Think of two families that want to get the same house, both having about the same wealth, but one is desperate to get the house and therefore willing to pay more, say because of health problems, while the second family can wait for another property.
You lose a lot when you "leave capitalism at the door".
Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze
#304Why does the national government allow the city of Berlin to implement such short sighted and destructive policies? There should be some guidelines set by the national government about what you can and can't do in terms of housing supply.
Because Germany is a federal republic. There's stuff the federal government just has nothing to say about.
I mean, in case of Berlin, they could help by moving back to Bonn. Lots of real estate, both office and residential, would free up immediately.
Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze
#305As 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…
While it is true, that there are simply not enough apartments the rest of your argument is wrong.
In berlin, the rent limits don't work, because of various reasons, one for example is that companies simply rise the costs that are not rent for appartment, force the people living there out and then raise the rent.
The rent limit is not the only thing that has to be done but it is a step in the right direction.
I always hear the argument about investors and the rent limit, but there are multiple reason why that is a bad argument.
The investors had about 20 years time to fix this issues and make a good living out of it. Instead they raised the rents to exorbitant values and didn't built new appartments.
Investors can still make good money of appartments if they just rent them for a fair amount.
Of course that means they don't get a 200% percent profit, but I don't think that should be the case anyway.
Homes are not up for speculation and profit and they should never have been.
A good chunk of the houses in berlin where owned by the city and state and sold for far too little.
Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze
#306Berlin will be the Lisbon of the 90ies. Well deserved
What happened to Lisbon in the 90s?
Translated from the German Wikipedia article:
In 1947, António de Oliveira Salazar initiated a rent freeze for Lisbon and Porto, which remained in force for over 40 years and ensured that for some old-style apartments in the late 1980s, <5 euros/month had to be paid. After the freeze, rent increases remained limited to inflation until 2006, so that rents remained very low. Many homeowners let their old apartments become derelict because the money was missing for renovations. Sanitary facilities with shower and toilet were missing in many buildings. In the center of Lisbon, about 20 houses per year collapsed at the end of the 1990s due to poor condition.
Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze
#307Earlier 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…
I read today that Fortress Investments purchased over 100,000 affordable units from the Japanese government for 60bn JPY in 2017 and plans to spend about as much on renovation. [1] Apparently firms like this usually expect an 18% return on these kinds of investments.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/fortress-becomes-japans-biggest...
Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I found the situation in Berlin to be absolutely ridiculous. I totally agree with this assessment. I've never seen a city where you struggle to get a flat even if you have the money or can pay more. The market is absolutely broken with literally everyone competing for the same pool of flats.
This is a terse comment with not a lot of context, but I think it is misleading to say the "market is broken" as it suggests that the market mechanism is at fault but in reading these comments it sounds like the government regulations are the source of the problem.
Sorry for the shortcut. You're correct and that's basically my impression, the market is bludgeoned by illogical policies.
Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
Freezing rents is not meant to be a solution for a lack of housing. It’s a solution to the explosive increase of rents of existing ones. There are lots of people where the rents of their current apartment have increased so much, that they had to move out. This solution is trying to fix that. Also freezing rents doesn’t mean Berlin will stop building new houses. If there is big demand for housing in a city one needs b…
Pretty much every western nation has systemically failed to recognize or support the insanely high demand for high density living in the 21st century. That is where the future of economics is, where the future of humanity in general pretty much is, and every democracy is consistently demonstrating the total inability for legislatures to sacrifice the advantage of those lucky enough to inhabit cities as they exist now…
I don't buy any of this. Growing up everyone around me saw the city as somewhere you begrudgingly went out of necessity and only lived there if you had no choice, and I'm inclined to agree. In virtually every aspect I find more countryside-ish living much more pleasant.
Consider virtual reality and remote work. I imagine much of the workforce will move to virtual offices in the near to medium-far future when corporations finally come around to realizing they don't have to waste so much money on rent. There's no need for programmers, graphic designers, reporters, and employees of lots of other professions to work in a physical office. So really, as cities become less of a necessity to certain jobs, I expect a moderate exodus to nicer areas, halting growth or even decreasing population in urban centers.
Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze
#310If 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...
Japan and Korea have managed to build some of the densest cities in the world on active fault lines. For a first world world power economy like Germany reinforcing prime real estate in their capital in the 21st century is not an infeasible economic obstacle.