Live data from Hacker News

Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

reuters.com

461–470 of 594 posts

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#461
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. Build too much and your margin gets slimmer and slimmer. Build less and get same profit with less work while keeping the market hungry for the future.

> Build too much… Thankfully, that's not a problem anywhere in places with skyrocketing rents.

It actually is, otherwise you would have seen Manhattan skyline reach the end of earth but it does not. Premium condos demand such high prices that developers dont have incentive to over supply the market.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#462
post #452

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…

Freezing rents to fight increasing costs makes as much sense as limiting the maximum reading on thermometers to fight increasing temperatures. Prices aren't just arbitrary numbers attributed to goods. They convey information. Information that cannot be captured by any one group alone. That's the point of prices. Freezing rents will create a lot of unintended consequences, as price controls normally do. I imagine that…

Freezing rents to fight increasing costs makes as much sense as limiting the maximum reading on thermometers to fight increasing temperatures.

You realize that, logically speaking -- there's no analogy to be made here.

Right?

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#463
post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The lottery of having already lived there? Only in the same sense as if I have a doll, you're screwed out of having that doll.

Rent control diminishes the incentive to make new housing, and causes rents on remaining housing stock to rise, generally. It privileges the people who have held onto their apartments for a long time at the expense of everyone who has had to move recently, at least as it’s been implemented in American cities.

Doll ownership isn’t a great analogy for housing.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#464
post #444
post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Agreed. I'm still shocked about how pervasive it is. New York, San Francisco, Denver, Austin, Vancouver, Montreal, London, Paris, Berlin, Warsaw. It seems like a complete binary: cities are either dying or in the midst of a "housing crisis".

[deleted]

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#465
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…

And who would build new rental properties under those conditions?

They wouldn't, and that's the point. They would build housing for purchase and make their profit on the sale. Pretty simple.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you'll force tax payers to pay for it? Government doesn't have free money. Why should people be forced to pay for the construction of such housing?

Tax payers wouldn't have to pay for anything, the only impact would be potentially on credit ratings of the government and possibly also certain interest rates in a minimal way. You can create market rate housing with government subsidized loans that don't come from tax coffers. Hell, the US federal reserve is technically the backer of hundreds of billions worth of mortgages.

We know how the mortgage crisis went. Government isn’t a magical solution.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#468
post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

I don't buy any of this. Growing up, everyone around me saw the suburbs 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 urban living much more pleasant.

Funny how that works.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#469
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…

If you tax rent, landlords will pass the tax on to renters. All you are doing is making renting more unaffordable.

But buying will be cheaper than renting, so it seems just fine that rents would go up.

Re: Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze

#470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 I assume you grew up in the United States?

Yes, upstate NY.

Where? I ran screaming from the Albany area first thing I could when I turned 18.
Post reply on HN