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Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

reuters.com

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Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#411

Post by llampx »

odiroot wrote: post #268
blub wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding 1: Germany's economy is doing well compared to the surrounding countries, so they're attracting many foreigners, especially in Berlin. These foreigners need a place to live, which is one big driver of rent increases. Regarding 3: landlords are successfully invoking the "right of own use" to evict tenants. They are basically claiming that they need the apartment for themselves, a relative, etc. [1] Furthermo…

> so they're attracting many foreigners, especially in Berlin. Which is very ironic because Berlin is one of the least prosperous cities in the federation.

Ironically one of the factors attracting foreigners to Berlin is the cheaper cost of living.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#412

Post by max_hoffmann »

seunosewa wrote: post #383
max_hoffmann wrote: post #249

Earlier 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…

Why must people currently living in a city be able to do so in the future? I think it makes sense to allow people whose skills are more valuable to a city to take the place of those whose skills are ... more valuable elsewhere. Cities evolve. Do I deserve to continue living in a city in perpetuity just because I happened to get to the city before others?

Why should we exclude some people from living in attractive cities?

Being less wealthy doesn’t mean a job is less valuable. Police officers, firefighters, bakers, artists, nurses… currently struggle living in attractive cities because they cannot afford it. This makes these cities less liveable for everyone.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#413

Post by jimmaswell »

fzeroracer wrote: post #394
jimmaswell wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 corporat…

Where I grew up it was the exact opposite. I lived in a small suburbanish town which was 50% college students and 50% retirees. Almost all of my friends and fellow graduates left for the larger cities where job opportunities were far more abundant and where there was generally a lot more to do and see. Which also seems to be supported by the general population trends. Rural cities are dying, with the younger generati…

What do you mean by "nothing to do"? What is there to do only in the city that's supposed to be so attractive, clubs, modern art galleries? I'm genuinely curious because this never resonated with me.

Things to do in the Hudson Valley, the example I have in mind of a non-city area: expansive hiking trails for walking/biking, a river for rafting/skiing/boating/fishing, great family-owned restaurants all over, lots of nice historic sites such as the FDR estate and Vanderbelt mansion, a drive-in (unfortunately a rare institution these days, and obviously there are tons of normal movie theaters around), lots of good thrift/antique stores, hunting, tasting the fresh cider/whatever from local orchards (and getting great meat/produce from farmer's markets along with that), some concert halls around that play orchestras, horseback riding. If you want some stuff like classic theater/art galleries/etc you can find those around too, and a lot of stuff done by colleges. I'm sure I've missed a lot but this should be enough to make my point.

The city has some good stuff like the Museum of Natural History but not enough for me to want to live there.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#414

Post by jimmaswell »

EliRivers wrote: post #352
jimmaswell wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 corporat…

Depends on what you want, I suppose. High density humanity simply makes practical and economically viable gatherings, grouping and other activities that just don't work in low-density populations. Classes, meetups, specialist stores, hobbies, clubs, shows, lectures, institutions and just plain bubbling, embryonic interactions; all of it an order of magnitude more intense in a big city. Travel even fifty miles away fr…

Almost all that stuff exists just fine outside major cities in my experience. I went over some of the great stuff around where I'm from in NY here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20218742

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#415

Post by llampx »

ido wrote: post #243
codedokode wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that. In old cities like Berlin the best places are in the center because everything is there and there is good public transport access. And new houses are probably built somewhere in suburbs where there is no good transport, no subway, no train stations, nothing except for houses.

have you ever been to berlin? plenty of new construction in central areas. either by razzing older, lower-rise, buildings or by filling in unbuilt or blighted areas (fewer of those as time goes on but there were vast areas where the walls & no-mans zones used to occupy).

As others have said, a lot of new construction is hotels, shopping centers, and office space.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#416

Post by fzeroracer »

llampx wrote: post #405
nerfhammer wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you're actually in favor of higher rents. Why not mandate rent increases?

This is silly. Your counter-argument is basically also meddling in the market.

There is no such thing as not meddling in the market, because people that move to cities will work to enact policies to ensure that they can continue to either live in those cities or grow their own property value.

In SF it swung hard in favor of landlords with the outcome of it being unaffordable for tenants and anyone except the ultra rich. Berlin seems to be swinging in the opposite direction and is attempting to fix things for tenants.

And realistically, anyone not taking action to secure their home or investment would be considered an irrational actor by any free market standard.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#417

Post by Xylakant »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #408
hokus wrote: post #398

Its really simple. We should tax property AND rent to the point where it becomes unprofitable to hoard it for purposes of unproductive wealth extraction. Then change all rent contracts into lease-buy contracts. You would accumulate a good percentage of madly overpriced rentals that no one wants then they go bankrupt one by one. You get those delicious market dynamics we [apparently] crave more than any social convent…

Can you clarify what problem you are trying to solve with this proposal? No one is obligated to rent a property from someone else. You rent if you believe it's in your interest to rent, instead of buy. Why stop two consenting people from entering into rental agreements, both of whom believe it's in their interest? Some people prefer to rent: they don't want to be obligated to live somewhere for 10 to 30 years. They p…

> No one is obligated to rent a property from someone else. You rent if you believe it's in your interest to rent, instead of buy.

Ok, how does this work. In germany, you usually need to pay 20-30% of the full price from your own saved funds when buying property. 100% financing is rare and usually only available for people that have sufficient assets. So people that have a low income basically never have a chance to buy. They don’t choose to rent. Their only alternative is living in the street.

Rents in Berlin have been rising substantially faster than wages for the last decade or so, turning this into a vicious circle that even the middle class cannot escape from.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#418

Post by bpfrh »

llampx wrote: post #403
bpfrh wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Do you have examples of this happening? Nebenkosten are controlled by the government or the responsible agencies as well, and you get a detailed invoice of any costs so the landlord can't just bill what…

Afaik there was a winter service which was billed and nobody ever saw that winterservice happening. Or there were addons built to the house that where not necessary and would force the people out.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#419

Post by ericd »

acchow wrote: post #375
tomatocracy wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It "works" (in that it doesn't cause problems like rationing by other means like queueing, under the table payments, subletting, or any one of the myriad other problems rent control produces) because it actually does nothing - it results in rents which are equal to what the open market price would have been. Ultimately, if you want to reduce rents AND have a functioning market, you have two options (or a combination…

> it actually does nothing - it results in rents which are equal to what the open market price would have been. Lots of people living in rent-controlled apartments around the world would disagree.

And it screws over anyone who wasn’t lucky enough to win that lottery.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#420

Post by toper-centage »

bronzeage wrote: post #361

the only scalable solution is to reduce demand, not increase supply. cities are already getting pretty saturated, and building more houses isn't going to solve a thing. what is really needed is very fast public transportation from outside cities to the cities themselves, and incentives for workplaces to split into sub-branches in other nearby locations instead of endlessly expanding within the same city. most people…

As someone who rides the S-Bahn for 30 minutes, having an express S-Bahn that takes me straight to the center would be really nice. But there are only 2 S-Bahn tracks most of the time :/
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