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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

#631

Post by chii »

konjin wrote: post #430
ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #417

There is no reason why housing cannot be much much cheaper than it is now -- so cheap that it is nearly free. Larry Page, in an interview in 2014 discussed how. "Rather than exceeding $1m, there’s no reason why the median home in Palo Alto, in the heart of Silicon Valley, shouldn’t cost $50,000" [1] and attributed this entirely to a policy problem. The answer is continuously increasing supply in a manner that outpace…

Housing can at most grow as l^3, population can grow as e^n. If you want to be withing t hours of place x then you need transport systems that travel at l/t km/h. Until people have two children or less population will always outpace housing. Anything else is wishful thinking.

that's funny because many cities have a replacement rate less than 2, not counting immigration.

And even with population growth at e^n, the constants matter in the analysis. l^3 growth may be enough until humans reach space faring.

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

#632

Post by robertlagrant »

cassepipe wrote: post #29
robertlagrant wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about how much money a landlord has to invest with in keeping a property attractive to renters. What's the point?

Time to sell for a reasonable price then.

Phrases like "reasonable price" are meaningless. There is only "what someone's willing to pay". Property is the one place where people tend to actually get that.

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

#633

Post by rayiner »

smnrchrds wrote: post #543
rayiner wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seattle now has an ordinance that they must rent to the first applicant who qualifies. This is to prevent discrimination against minorities. Isn’t it already illegal to discriminate against minorities in renting housing?

Yes. But it is impossible to prove, so the law never gets enforced.

So Seattle entirely removed the ability of landlords to pick their tenants? Imagine applying that to anything else—must hire the first qualified job applicant, etc.

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

#634

Post by robertlagrant »

dahart wrote: post #56
robertlagrant wrote: post #13

> In a food shortage, for example, regulating the price of bread only trades one expression of scarcity (high prices) for another (empty shelves). This is the key statement to refute if you want to argue for rent control.

Why? That argument doesn’t address the fact that many cities have an absolute limit on supply in the form of space, and no amount of construction that starts today will bring prices down today. Here are some arguments to refute if you want to oppose rent control, particularly the first one (copied and pasted directly from investopedia): “Rental prices in many U.S. cities are rising far faster than wages for moderate-…

> Why? That argument doesn’t address the fact that many cities have an absolute limit on supply in the form of space, and no amount of construction that starts today will bring prices down today.

You mean... scarcity? That the argument specifically mentions as the thing that price controls doesn't fix? Are you _sure_ it doesn't address it?

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

#635

Post by bluGill »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #382
bluGill wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which can be good or bad. If land prices are increasing faster than inflation it is bad unless they can get out before the bubble pops. Obviously if they bought too high that is a bad investment. Lets ignore this and assume a sane market where values mostly are similar to inflation. While property increases with inflation are not nearly as good an investment as investments that do better than inflation, it isn't as b…

Technically, for many owners their carrying costs do increase year over year. Property taxes, HOA, maintenance, etc all tend to increase over time. Depending on where you live, these non-mortgage costs can be thousands of dollars per month and they don't go away when the mortgage is paid off. If you look at it in terms of portfolio construction, you would never want more than 10-20% of your net worth in your home, mu…

Carrying costs are important to this consideration. They shouldn't be significant compared to rent or the payment, but in some areas they are.

I fully agree that 50% of net worth in a home is too much. Though I doubt that the people you are thinking of actually have that much net worth in a house - the house might be worth that much, but odds are they only own 5-10% of it, and the rest is net worth of the bank. By the time your house is 50% yours you should have seen enough decrease in carrying costs - compared to inflation - that you have more investments elsewhere to pay it off.

The analysis of lost money vs investing needs to compared over a lifetime not a shorter span. Your payoff comes at the end when you need much less invested in the first place to pay for the rent you no longer owe at all. If God hasn't told you the future in detail you can't know: how much will inflation be, when will you die, and other such things that affect how your lifetime investments play out.

That last also gets into life goals. if your plan is to live cheap and work for the rest of your life to leave a large sum of money to your heirs that means a different investment strategy vs someone who wants to retire early and leave nothing behind when they die. For the latter there is a difference between someone who wants to retire and spend all their time in the shop building something vs someone who wants to retire and travel the world.

Only you know your life goals today (and you don't know how they might change in the future!) so you need to make the right decisions for your. Renting and buying a dwelling both have pros and cons so there is no right decision for everyone.

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

#636

Post by throwaway6734 »

asdff wrote: post #524
whatshisface wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent control could technically be done by handing money to tennants to then hand to landlords, but in practice it's done by taking money away from landlords. Obviously, that's going to keep landlords from being able to give that money to construction companies. Another possible solution would be to take money away from tenants and landlords both to give directly to construction companies. That's socialized housing. H…

Is that how rent control is done in Europe? In the U.S. at least, rent control isn't taking money away from anyone. All rent control stipulates is that for the duration of your lease you cannot raise rent a certain percentage, such as 4% a year. Not having rent control allows rents to exceed earned wages for working people and pushes them to the street sooner than it pushes them out of the city.

If rental prices are rising faster than 4% a year than certain landlords are losing profit aka bearing the cost.

It's absurd to make certain individuals pay for others housing in a random way.

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

#637

Post by thamer »

jboog wrote: post #498
freyir wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

SF also has some of the most ridiculously onerous zoning laws in the country. A HUGE portion of the city is just giant single family homes or 2-3 story buildings and you are absolutely forbidden from redeveloping them into dense, affordable housing. Change the zoning laws and developers will gladly build affordable market-rate housing.

Yes, the zoning laws in SF are a disaster. This map[1] shows the extent of the problem.

And it's not like people can easily find housing outside of SF and commute in, about 80% of the Bay Area is zoned for single-family housing as well. There was a damning report[2] from UC Berkeley on this just a few months ago.

[1] https://sfzoning.deapthoughts.com/

[2] https://belonging.berkeley.edu/single-family-zoning-san-fran...

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

#638

Post by iamsaitam »

This article is a joke, starting with "If populism on the political right corrupts democracies, populism on the left ruins economies.". It really sets the tone and bias.. Maybe someone should introduce to Bloomberg the concept of gentrification.. The only difference between the rent cap and no rent cap is that now there are affordable places.. the prices were already ridiculous pre-rent cap.

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

#639

Post by anoncake »

jamesliudotcc wrote: post #265
callmeal wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would be able to if apartments in Mountain View were also rent-controlled.

Huh? Give one example of a working transfer of the rent controlled apartment from one jurisdiction to another. Even if there was rent control both places, you'd have to find a rent controlled apartment in the new place. And in reality, you can't, because nobody is willing to leave their rent controlled apartments in the next place either.

What does "transferring an apartment" mean? We aren't talking about rent-controlled caravans.

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

#640

Post by anoncake »

pertymcpert wrote: post #201
anoncake wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about Berlin.

It's just a temporary short term fix. Like opioid pain killers, over time the downsides massively outweigh any benefits.

It's not that simple. Opioids are used all over the world, only in the USA did they cause a crisis. Countries with saner political systems shouldn't judge policies by how they worked in the USA.
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