221–230 of 724 posts
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> Berlin can't grow forever That's not self-evident to me. Why not?
Germany is a federal system, Berlin is one of the (city-)states within it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_of_Germany
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Giving people "incentive to move" – aka forcing them out of their homes – doesn't increase supply. Unless they're "moving" onto the streets in which case you did free up a flat.
> aka forcing them out of their homes They aren't theirs. They're renters.
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Berlin is a small city on the global scale. It doesn't need to grow forever, it needs to grow to meet its local demand, which is apparently larger than the existing housing stock.
It’s the biggest city in the EU, now that London isn’t.
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"I'd like to move out of my rent-controlled apartment in Spandau because my job is in Eberswalde, but I don't want to walk away from this rate."
For every one person in that situation, there are nine who can't move out of their rent-controlled apartment, not because they don't want to walk away from their rate, but because they can't afford to. Well-off-techies who somehow stumbled into both getting a grandfathered rent controlled rate, and a job in the next city over might be a majority of posters on HN[1], but are a tiny minority of the population. You prob…
An issue that many commenters here are missing is that the problem with rent control will manifest more sharply in the future. Sure, the impact today seems relatively equitable: a windfall for people that rent today coupled with a small drop in supply. But fast forward 10 or 20 years and the situation looks far worse: everyone who got a windfall today is still living in the same apartment, whereas anyone trying to en…
Kicking people out of their homes doesn't solve the supply problem, because it doesn't create new housing. It just shuffles around who lives in existing houses. If you have a housing problem, and you want to solve it, you need to do two things. 1. Not kick people out of housing that they have. (Because it is incredibly disruptive to people's lives.) 2. Build new housing, until demand is met. Rent control accomplishes…
The question is how much should existing tenants be entitled to their apartments just because they lived there for a long time, balanced against the impact on investment in new real-estate because of lack of incentives due to earning caps.
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> Berlin can't grow forever That's not self-evident to me. Why not?
Germany is a federal system, Berlin is one of the (city-)states within it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_of_Germany
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I moved to Berlin two years ago and the finding a house was incredibly exhausting. As the article mentions, there are two categories, rent capped apartments and non rent capped apartments. For the first category, there are 2000+ applicants per day per apartment, making it impossible to actually have a chance to get the apartment. The odds getting that apartment as a foreigner that do not speak German is non existent,…
>"The second category is the overpriced apartments, the "landlords" (mostly the same three evil companies) are asking stupid amounts of rent for small apartments (1100 - 1200 cold rent for 50sqm ??)." Which companies are these? >"The first category are mostly expats, who are being screwed by landlords who do not want to rent to foreigners (especially if you are not from Europa)," Unless I'm reading this incorrectly d…
1.5 years to find an apartment, that is not cheap but bordering the acceptable rent. Nobody should suffer this in their lifetimes.
I am not going to name the companies and get sued. Stuff like that are serious in Germany.
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> The caps represent a windfall to one group of tenants: those, whether rich or poor, who are already ensconced in regulated apartments. Simultaneously, they hurt all other groups — especially young people and those coming from other cities — by all but shutting them out of the market. That’s not success, that’s picking winners and losers. Same as with SF Bay Area, Santa Monica (in LA) and any other place with rent c…
I think that quote refers to American style of rent control that is tied to the tenant, as opposed to the German style that is tied to the building.
That was my experience, anyway. I eventually found a house share to get started, and after I arrived a hooked up with someone who happened to already have a place big enough for me to move into.
If I move within the city again, it will have to be by buying a place.
An issue that many commenters here are missing is that the problem with rent control will manifest more sharply in the future. Sure, the impact today seems relatively equitable: a windfall for people that rent today coupled with a small drop in supply. But fast forward 10 or 20 years and the situation looks far worse: everyone who got a windfall today is still living in the same apartment, whereas anyone trying to en…
not just in 10 or 20 years, more like in 9 months! The supreme court will probably rule that the Mietendeckel is unconstitutional in November, which will lead to a nasty situation for many renters with old contracts. If the tenants are lucky the landlord will just ask for the money "saved" to be paid back, but the unlucky ones will be evicted, as being in arrears of more than one month is grounds for termination rega…
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Unclear on how claimed price controls would ensure equitable distribution of bread. Why is the price of bread being capped making it so that more people get bread? If I’m rich and the price of bread is artificially low, maybe I’ll just buy up even more bread and now fewer people get bread.
Because you can define the cap so e.g. it only applies for one apartment per person, so you can't use it to get multiple ones cheap.