Housing situation in Germany for anyone born after 1980 is so fucked.
Depends where you live, I guess. Gentrification is a problem, so, I agree.
It doesn't matter where you live. The jobs are in Munich, Berlin, Wolfsburg, etc.
Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
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Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#72The Berlin senate knew the Mietendeckel was on the balance of probabilities unconstitutional, but they went ahead with it anyway. Not a single new apartment was built with this law. Total and utter waste.
Per another comment in this thread, this isn't true. Many apartment buildings are indeed being built: https://taz.de/Mehr-Baugenehmigungen-in-Berlin/!5706294/
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#73"Buy land, they're not making it anymore"
- Mark Twain
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#74Housing situation in Germany for anyone born after 1980 is so fucked.
Housing situation in Germany is so fucked
Housing situation in London is so fucked
Housing situation in Spain is so fucked
Housing situation in Canada is so fucked
....
I'm not an expert, but I see a pattern there...
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Irrelevant unless compared to local salaries, which as far as I know, are still lower than the rest of German cities.
Berlin has less than 1% of empty rental apartments which is extremely low. This means that the rents do actually reflect the real market. And there is simply no right for a cheap apartment in the center of Berlin.
Rents pretty much always reflect the "real market". There can be speculation on property but there is no speculative gain to be made on renting and the demand for rental properties reflects the actual demand for housing.
Obviously when more people want to rent than there are properties available rents go up.
This is why rent caps do not solve problems. They ignore and do not address the cause of high rents and they may make things worse by reducing supply and making tenants stay put.
And as you say not everyone can live in the most desirable areas, which will always be pricey.
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#76Housing situation in Germany for anyone born after 1980 is so fucked.
Yup, same in my country. I was able to buy a home recently, but my method of accumulating capital enough is just about mission impossible for normal peeps. It is really unfair. Government regulation and control of housing prices is the solution.
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#77It 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.
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Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#78This is a catastrophe and very disappointing.
Here is a little personal anecdote: I used to live in the center of Berlin Mitte when I was a student, had rented a Penthouse apartment for 450 Euro/mo incl. additional costs (but without water, gas, electricity). It was affordable. Then a Bavarian multimillionaire bought the house from the original owners. I was already abroad most of the time, so I didn't experience the loud works his people conducted to get old renters out. However, he did cut off my telephone cable, something the phone technician realized when I returned and was able to fix.
Later he threatened to build a balcony - "and this might take a long time" - unless I agree to pay a higher rent. The classic ugly move. I negotiated with him for a while and in the end the raise was not so bad. However, I realized that I have to get out anyway - he wouldn't stop until I'd have left, you cannot fight a landlord with evil intentions in the long run even if you're a member of renter protection like I was. So I left Berlin and never returned, not even for a visit. I never asked but would estimate the same apartment at around 1600 EUR/mo today, with an ever increasing tendency.
Now I live in another country, ten years have passed, and the same happens in the city I live in. Rents are rising continuously, I've already seen people photographing the houses in our street, several of them are being totally renovated, new apartments are always "luxury apartments" as if any local could afford these (it's a poor country, ca. 800 EUR average income), and an agent from Sotheby's Real Estate rang my doorbell recently to ask if I'm the owner of my apartment.
You cannot escape this trend unless you want to live jobless on the countryside. I'd buy an apartment like most of my colleagues if I had the money, but it would mean having liabilities for the next 20 years and I only have time-limited contracts in Academia.
It's frustrating to know there is a real risk I'll have to spend my later years in the most ugly suburbs and slums of an otherwise beautiful town, even though I have a rather decent salary in local terms, while most of these houses with unaffordable "luxury apartments" are bought by foreign investors. By the way, many of the new apartments are empty, apparently only serve as investments.
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I wish Berlin would just build more housing instead. The problem is: Berlin can't . There is not much free space for new construction in Berlin proper, with the exception of "Nachverdichtung" such as you propose with apartments over parking lots - and these have the downside that they are horribly expensive, simply because it costs potential developers a lot of money to acquire the land! The solution would be to bu…
Please no suburban sprawl while Berlin still has such low density compared to other cities. There are still lots of fairly central areas with single family homes. Just upzone them and let people get rich selling their land to developers.
> Please no suburban sprawl while Berlin still has such low density compared to other cities
A city should be worth it to live in and provide enjoyment for the citizens, not be a glorified chicken coop for people.
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#80I 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…
They're building housing all the time. There are 3-4 housing blocks being build near me. One office building being built. Everyone keeps acting like they can just build new housing over night. To be fair, construction work in Berlin is super slow.
Well in recent months the Tesla Giga Berlin factory has shown just how fast construction can take place if the people in power actually want it to happen. Building new housing units in the city slows the increase in value of existing real estate, which is why property owners are not rushing to allow the construction of new structures. Lobbyism is a powerful force in real estate.