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Rent controls have split housing in Berlin into two distinct markets

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Re: Rent controls have split housing in Berlin into two distinct markets

#441

Post by austhrow743 »

freyir wrote: post #423
Xylakant wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A counterexample is Vienna, which utilizes a well balanced system of rent-control and social housing to have incredibly low rents and still a stable supply of flats. One tweak they apply is that rent-control does not apply to new developments, so creating new flats is more lucrative than turning old buildings into luxury developments. The city also acts as a competitor, driving prices down by offering cheap flats. Th…

San Francisco also applies rent control only to older buildings. The effect is that developers only build top-of-market “luxury” housing (often cheaply constructed it rented at luxury rates). This helps them recover their development costs, which they couldn’t recoup on affordable housing.

I don’t understand how those things impacts each other. Are you saying that if old buildings didn’t have rent control then developers would build less profit maximising buildings?

Re: Rent controls have split housing in Berlin into two distinct markets

#442

Post by chipsa »

sudosysgen wrote: post #296
bluGill wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not possible to create an insane level of supply for appartment rentals This is technically true, but not for the reasons you list, and it isn't the case here. You can always build up. 150 floor buildings are not possible - if rent goes high enough they are worth building. Nobody is going to build that if they don't expect a return on investment though. It isn't a problem in reality because jobs face the same…

You are assuming that the only reason anyone would build is to rent things out. This ridiculous. A great many constructions are for people that own their houses. That alone solves the conundrum.

It doesn't in SF, because the problem there is that they can't reasonably build anything. Whether it's a house or an apartment building, it's not really getting built. And building a new house to replace an existing house (which is happening), doesn't increase housing stock. It just makes it newer.

Re: Rent controls have split housing in Berlin into two distinct markets

#443

Post by exporectomy »

latchkey wrote: post #316
e40 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I experienced exactly this in the early 1980's. In Berkeley, CA. Apartments were scarce because of rent control. I had a coworker that lived in his apartment from late 70's until late 90's. He paid less than $300/mo. It was great for him. He saved a ton of money and bought a house in Berkeley in the late 90's. But, as a student I had to live in Oakland and was never able to find an apartment. Every time I went to loo…

Around 1994/5 I wanted to move to Berkeley. I had a very hard time finding a place. I looked at so many attics turned into bedrooms and other crappy places. Eventually, I found an ideal (relatively) place and there was a good 50+ people looking at the same apartment during a showing... I walked up to the landlord (who was a lawyer in his day job) and said... "I know you can't pick favorites, but I have a good salary…

> I really don't think there is a good solution.

There is a good solution - for outsiders like you to go away and not come back. That leaves more housing for long term residents who are the people it's protecting. It sounds nasty but people everywhere can't stand outsiders coming into their place. Xenophobia.

Re: Rent controls have split housing in Berlin into two distinct markets

#444

Post by zamfi »

heterodoxxed wrote: post #434
zamfi wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take a very SFBA perspective here, but... > Without it they would have been displaced even earlier This is mostly hypothetical. In functioning housing markets that don't manipulate prices or limit new construction through policy, speculative bubbles make little sense -- why would housing become more expensive if it's easy to build lots of it? The argument that removing just rent control would make folks worse off -…

| I take a very SFBA perspective here I don't know how useful an SFBA perspective is, given that area is dealing with factors that very, very few other places in America are: Namely, an historic single industry boom and a lack of expansion area. The only real comparable place in America is Manhattan.

Yeah, you're right that there are a number of SFBA-specific factors that don't apply elsewhere. But people aren't really making the rent control argument about Peoria, IL.

Any place that caps both rents and housing supply through policy amid increasing demand (like Berlin, the titular locale), is going to have a ton of politics around rent control, density caps, etc., because they are choosing to allocate scarce resources by policy instead of market -- and the way to affect policy is politics.

Re: Rent controls have split housing in Berlin into two distinct markets

#445

Post by phatfish »

justapassenger wrote: post #321
omginternets wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might not be their apartment (or house or whatever), but it damn-sure is their home . First-world jurisdictions (including all 50 US states) universally recognize that eviction is a big deal, and that it is not equivalent to forfeiting any old rented property. Accordingly, landlords cannot do whatever they please just because they own four walls, a floor and a roof. Of all the things you could nit-pick, I can't ev…

Woah, slow down. I’m not arguing that eviction isn’t a big deal, or that renters have no rights. By renting you’re in a (heavily regulated) business relationship with an owner, and they own the property. Growing overly attached to something that you don’t own, and calling it yours is risky. I know that tons of people don’t have luxury of owning their places, but that’s how our capitalism world works - ownership is ki…

It depends on the property.

A purpose built apartment building owned by a property company (of which there are many in European towns/cities) can easily be a home for large part of person (or families) life. There are also fairly strong renters rights in many European countries, unless the tenant wants to move they don't have to.

Renting a converted property or whole house from a small landlord could mean they decide they want it back with short notice, at least that is the situation in the UK. Assuming that will be a home long term is a bad idea.

Re: Rent controls have split housing in Berlin into two distinct markets

#446

Post by sudosysgen »

imtringued wrote: post #419
sudosysgen wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not speculating at all. The article has the data to back the facts : house prices went down in Berlin. Yes, homes can go up on speculation alone, but this is a bubble that will pop. In North America, rising rents act as a backstop that prevent the bubble from popping, because of guaranteed rental incomes that protect you. It's not possible to create an insane level of supply for appartment rentals. There's two re…

>Secondly, studies have shown that 10% increases in supply lead to 1% decreases in price, more or less. That's more than enough to justify building an infinite amount of housing.

Is that a joke? You... can't build an infinite amount of housing. That's the reason why land is a separate asset class.

Re: Rent controls have split housing in Berlin into two distinct markets

#447

Post by u678u »

cassepipe wrote: post #24

The alternative proposed by the article is basically : let it unregulated, the market will provide. Which is how it was before. Was the problem solved? No. Maybe it is not the right solution but I doubt very much the author is concerned by the problem. The article says only some places have their rent capped so the rents of the uncapped ones are skyrocketing. I am not convinced it is a solution cause I don't claim to…

> Which is how it was before. Was the problem solved?

One of the problems is that when Berlin was partitioned it was a showcase for Eastern and Western Germany and lots of money flowed in for construction without really enough people to fill it. Now people are moving there and no one building.

Re: Rent controls have split housing in Berlin into two distinct markets

#448

Post by readams »

foota wrote: post #403
imtringued wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent control only exists for one reason: to keep tenants in their apartments. It's not a tool that is solving a shortage of housing but lots of politicians will insist that new housing isn't needed. You just need to manipulate the useful fiction that is the market and fake everything. At least that's what the politicians think. Even if it means that the market is no longer useful.

Rent control, when coupled with other means of ensuring housing is built for those that can afford it, is a reasonable way of ensuring housing for those that can't afford it at the market price. That is, globally applying a cap on rents would be a bad idea, since there would be no incentive to build new housing. However, when coupled with restrictions such as requiring only some fraction of new housing construction t…

Below market rate housing is, by definition, always in short supply.

Re: Rent controls have split housing in Berlin into two distinct markets

#449

Post by cool_dude85 »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #367
tehjoker wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing a larger point: why should people be forced to move? There's no natural law that says people should be ceaselessly pushed around by market forces.

If you define natural laws as the things that happen when you remove actual laws, then I would say people being forced to move would be exactly what happens.

Yes, if you define natural laws this way, people being forced to move by roving bands of gun toting warlords would be exactly what happens. Or maybe "forced to move" isn't quite strong enough to describe it.

Seems like this way of defining natural laws is a bit silly.

Re: Rent controls have split housing in Berlin into two distinct markets

#450

Post by readams »

exporectomy wrote: post #443
latchkey wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around 1994/5 I wanted to move to Berkeley. I had a very hard time finding a place. I looked at so many attics turned into bedrooms and other crappy places. Eventually, I found an ideal (relatively) place and there was a good 50+ people looking at the same apartment during a showing... I walked up to the landlord (who was a lawyer in his day job) and said... "I know you can't pick favorites, but I have a good salary…

> I really don't think there is a good solution. There is a good solution - for outsiders like you to go away and not come back. That leaves more housing for long term residents who are the people it's protecting. It sounds nasty but people everywhere can't stand outsiders coming into their place. Xenophobia.

Also, nobody should have children.
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