421–430 of 594 posts
As 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…
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It works reasonably well in the rest of Germany. As for it not working in Berlin, I have a hard time to come up with _anything_ that works there, so my hunch would be that the housing market in Berlin is broken not because of rent control, but because it's Berlin.
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…
I know if done in excess it could lead to fire code violations, landlords dislike not getting an increased share/concerns about increased maintenance, and would turn controlled rent holders into beneficiaries of a free cash stream over others not privledged but those are either technically separate issues or already in place really for the last one without subletting.
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> Berlin at its peak (1944) had still more than half a million more people. Yes, with 2 - 3 times more flats per every floor in a building. And with whole multi-generational families living in every one of them. Don't forget sharing one bathroom between all this families and sometimes toilets just being wooden huts outside. Try visiting Mitte Museum in Gesundbrunnen, you'd see how miserable pre-war housing was, yes e…
Sounds like Britain. Today.
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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.
As 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…
[flagged]
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: we've had to warn you about this before. Please don't do it again so we don't have to ban you.
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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 corporat…
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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…
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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…
That's odd because it it's pretty much the polar opposite of what I've experienced. Everyone wants to move to the big cities, especially Berlin, as they provide culture and a sense of freedom. You are able to meet like-minded people and are able to experience culture and infrastructure that simply does not exist in rural areas. This of course makes makes the situation for the villages worse as many young people move…
Why stop at price controls on housing? Why not just go bravely into the full-blown confiscation and redistribution of private property.
There are a lot of factors at play here: 1.) Supply is inelastic because construction work and building approvals are limited by current capacity. It is not feasible to expect the market to react as quickly as 600,000 new inhabitants over 10 years required. 2.) A lot of policy is still considering this to be a fad before cities become less popular again. Berlin's plans had for instance foreseen falling demand for sch…
> a fad before cities become less popular again The only way this happens is if cities like Berlin putting rent freezes prevent construction that would increase capacity and lower prices to allow people to live in cities. There will be no new economic growth where people are spread thin - all future productivity will only emerge where people are. Any country trying to do anything but centralize their human capital in…