Keep in mind that when they say Berlin's rents are soaring, it's still comparatively cheap for large cities in Germany.
Irrelevant unless compared to local salaries, which as far as I know, are still lower than the rest of German cities.
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Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
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Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#52why does society consistently insist on funneling it's wealth to an unproductive class of elites? i want answers
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Berlin with its Red-Red-Green government is hardly a city governed by xenophobia. OTOH, the German left is even more pro-immigration and pro-multiculturalism than an average European leftist party. This law was probably meant against big housing corporations like Deutsches Wohnen, which bought a lot of the housing stock during previous privatizations, and so have some power on the housing market. IMHO Berlin (just li…
Tempelhoferfeld is the best park in Berlin. Parks provide value too. They should build up instead of sprawling like the most terrible cities in the world do.
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Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#54It is unconstitutional because it treats people unequally. New people will not find any rentable properties, and will have to stay in hotels paying 10x more. It is just another form of xenophobia.
I don't follow you. Why limiting the prices for renting, will be less rentable properties, the point of this is to make rentable properties have a price where people can rent a property to live.
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#55The rental situation is bleak. There's a two class system of people who got cheap housing 20 years ago and can never move (like in New York). If they move, they keep the apartment and sublet it.
Then there is a massive indiscriminate sellout of property to very rich foreigners. In some top locations you hear more Russian than German in the streets.
Otherwise, in the lower segments there is enormous pressure from refugees, who get government aid while low income Germans do not.
The people who decide everything (Red/Green party) most have cheap apartments that they got 20 years ago. They don't suffer from their own policies.
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#56This will hurt the normal people and benefit big housing corporations only...
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#57Will this affect people who have started living in Berlin under the rent cap-system? I hope they won't have to move out all of a sudden, facing sudden, higher rents.
most contracts drawn up during the "the law is being challenged" period have a "shadow rent" where you agree to pay the difference to what the rent is without the cap.
I.e: "it's x euros _now_, but if/when it's repealed, you'll pay y euros, and the difference between the two"
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#58Housing situation in Germany for anyone born after 1980 is so fucked.
Depends where you live, I guess. Gentrification is a problem, so, I agree.
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#59I wish Berlin would just build more housing instead. For example when I cross the street there is a supermarket. It's a single story building with a huge parking lot around it. Why not make it a multistory building with apartments on top of the supermarket and skip the parking space or put it underground? Why does the city give out building permits for such buildings? There could easily be room for thirty families on…
Same here. The city itself should build as many cheap rental apartments as possible, also in more higher-priced areas to keep the pricing there in check. Building more housing is the only way out of this soaring pricing.
EDIT: not only rental apartments of course but more housing in general.
A second step would be, to make sure that rental housing is used for that instead of AirBNB or any other investment. It would also help to reduce land transfer tax if someone then lives in the bought flat. Speculators and builders anyway get around it in the long term by founding businesses that buy apartment blocks (pay the tax once) and then later only trade the shares of these businesses.
And last but not least, they should stop to discuss dispossessing property. It does not solve anything but wastes time and energy.
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#60I wish Berlin would just build more housing instead. For example when I cross the street there is a supermarket. It's a single story building with a huge parking lot around it. Why not make it a multistory building with apartments on top of the supermarket and skip the parking space or put it underground? Why does the city give out building permits for such buildings? There could easily be room for thirty families on…
My impression of Berlin (living there for the last 2 years) is that there's plenty of space, plenty of new housing already built and plenty of new construction still going. SF, NY, Paris and London are way more crowded and under-housed in comparison. Shitty one-story supermarkets are really just a sign of abundance of space and not enough demand (yet). Among big European cities the rent seems low. You can buy an supe…
Surely a rent cap is a clear sign that there is demand though?