Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rent controls have split housing in Berlin into two distinct markets

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

621–630 of 724 posts

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

#621

Post by jiriknesl »

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…

It has a couple of issues:

1. There's no right to live somewhere. If you cannot afford it, it doesn't matter you grew up in the place or that you like the place a lot. 2. No place is inflatable. You can increase density, but only to some point. 3. Have you seen how housing built in this style looks like? Most of them are concrete cubes. You can find them anywhere in Eastern Europe. It's not desirable.

Let's imagine a beautiful town on a small island. Neat houses and everything. Place for 100 houses. But now, 1000 families decide to live here. So the politician replaces those 100 family houses with a five huge 100 unit buildings. Locals get units, living is more affordable for everyone. The place is destroyed. Nobody wants to live there anymore.

So those 1000 people find another beautiful island with 100 neat houses...

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

#622

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

rayiner wrote: post #532
Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a national problem requiring a federal solution. Anything less will be exploited by desperate people. Don't hate the poor players. Hate the rich exploiting them for profit.

No, it’s the definition of a local problem. Housing where I live is affordable. I sure as hell don’t want voters in San Francisco mucking with my housing policy through a federal solution to solve their own self-inflicted problems. It’s a recipe for exporting insane SF/NYC housing policies to the rest of the country.

Housing affordability is a nationwide problem[]. You're merely aloof to how widespread and severe this problem is.

[] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/great-affo...

These policies you mention are already everywhere. You just haven't been obviously effected by them. Perhaps you're even a beneficiary.

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

#623

Post by openfuture »

islandlordingok wrote: post #387

One thing I've always wondered is why we as a society even let real estate be a thing that people can buy a lot of. Why does an individual get to buy, say, 10 buildings and rent them? The title "land lord" even seems like a holdover from some feudal time. Not that I think you completely outlaw the practice, but why not start taxing after, I don't know, you own 20 units or something. Just figure out some sort of schem…

Read up on Georgism, this is not a new idea.

Rent seeking is hard to eliminate, there has to be some way for lazy aristocrats to feel safe in their complacency. Try to remove it and the sleeping dragon gets very angry.

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

#624

Post by robertlagrant »

ahoy wrote: post #74
robertlagrant wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true. Same logic goes for anti-vaxxers and doctors. Of COURSE doctors recommend going to doctors. They WOULD say that.

The difference is, of course, doctors provide healthcare services and landlords provide middleman-who-makes-housing-more-expensive services.

This wasn't about landlords. It was about a business publication being pro the rules of economics.

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

#625

Post by porb121 »

blub wrote: post #605
porb121 wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't find it particularly compassionate or empathetic to subsidize someone's apartment just because they were living in it when a rent control bill was passed. yes, that person has a claim to some kind of housing, but why should they have a claim to the exact same kind of housing in perpetuity?

Supporting pushing them out while not offering any solution besides saying they have "a claim to some kind of housing" is essentially supporting throwing them out on the street in their 70s period.

that's not what i said. we should have good housing policies, but rent control is a bad housing policy.

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

#626

Post by porb121 »

blub wrote: post #604
porb121 wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should they be forced to find a new flat way outside the city because the rent triples over the course of a few years so young tech workers relocating from London can have a place in the cool part of town? yes why should they get to stay in berlin and have their housing subsidized?

Because they lived there half if not all their lives and want to continue to live there. It's as easy as that and it's a legitimate reason. In the end, the Senate of Berlin is looking out at least in theory for the people of Berlin, not nomad developers or other people looking to move there.

being enabled to continue doing something (at the cost of others!) just because you want to keep doing it is not a particularly legitimate reason

also, if people move to Berlin, they also become the people of Berlin.

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

#627

Post by chii »

jetrink wrote: post #269
briffle wrote: post #160

In Oregon, they passed a statewide rent control. They pointed out repeatedly at how rent had gone up 30% over five years. The solution, is that now landlords can only increase rent 7% (plus inflation) per year. This year, its something like 9%. Apparently, someone forgot to figure out what >7% per year for 5 years is..... Its 40%, before the inflation numbers are added in.

Potential math illiteracy aside, is this such a terrible policy? This seems to me like a nice compromise that provides some stability to the renter while still allowing the landlord to raise the rent substantially over several years. Downsides that come to mind (but that don't seem too serious): * It incentivizes landlords to keep empty apartments on the market longer before lowering rents to the true market price. *…

> encourage landlords to regularly raise prices more than they otherwise would, lest they forego the limited opportunity.

if they raise the price too much, they will not get tenants as long as there's competition between landlords. So all this is basically just another way of saying there's not enough supply for the demand. So policies should target the supply problem directly, such as subsidies for new buildings, or tax incentives, etc.

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

#628

Post by skohan »

porb121 wrote: post #626
blub wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they lived there half if not all their lives and want to continue to live there. It's as easy as that and it's a legitimate reason. In the end, the Senate of Berlin is looking out at least in theory for the people of Berlin, not nomad developers or other people looking to move there.

being enabled to continue doing something (at the cost of others!) just because you want to keep doing it is not a particularly legitimate reason also, if people move to Berlin, they also become the people of Berlin.

> being enabled to continue doing something (at the cost of others!) just because you want to keep doing it is not a particularly legitimate reason

We are not talking about getting tickets to an NBA playoff game, we are talking about housing. If someone has been living in a city for their entire life, it's not reasonable to expect that due to "market forces" they should have to pick up their entire life and move to an unfamiliar place because they can't continue to compete in the market into their golden years.

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

#629

Post by dfgdghdf »

Rent controls provide a strong disincentive for people to move, which prevents people taking jobs they might otherwise have taken. It's hard to estimate the overall economic cost of this, since the effect is diffuse, but it is likely significant.

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

#630

Post by chii »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #354
jkingsbery wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practice, this almost never happens. There isn't a fixed supply of bread. When the price of bread goes up, the following all happen: - Bakers will bake more bread - People from an area with cheaper bread will travel farther to sell bread where it's more expensive - Individuals will decide to bake bread for themselves - Companies that don't bake bread but that have the capability of baking bread (either directly, o…

Except when you have a bad crop season on an entire continent. No grain - no bread, so bakers will NOT bake more bread.

which is why world trade is so important - you can import bread from other places that didn't have a bad crop season.

Prices are signals; it's information that's embedded in the price that directs all actors, causing the flow of resources to be correctly placed.

Post reply on HN