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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

#201

Post by southerntofu »

EdwinLarkin wrote: post #163
southerntofu wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A rent cap is a clear sign that the capitalist system is broken and we need a better system to match the housing needs and supply without feeding into heartless vampires who'd rather have empty apartments than rent them at a reasonable price.

Quite the opposite actually.Increase capitalism and reduce government control and you get more housing.

Yes, as we can see from the very great examples of where this approach worked perfectly. Now every one is perfectly housed in decent conditions and for cheap in United States or South Korea. We all know the dozens of thousands of homeless folks in San Francisco and around really want to live in slums or on the streets, and their situation has nothing to do with speculation, gentrification and AirBNB. /s

Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court

#202

Post by 0xfaded »

killtimeatwork wrote: post #148
lqet wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not make it a multistory building with apartments on top of the supermarket and skip the parking space or put it underground? That's exactly what they are doing at a few places in my city (also with a massive housing problem). We recently found a new apartment here, the process was as follows: (1) We found the apartment online. It was online for exactly 6 hours, listed by an estate agent. (2) Inside the listing…

I'm always baffled by stories like this. If there's indeed so much interest in an apartment, why not increase the price to the point where 90% of contenders lose interest? The owner must have been in a huge hurry, or doesn't care about money?

Equally, why not build more housing until there is a 4% vacancy rate? This seems to have worked wonders in SF.

Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court

#203

Post by corty »

dgellow wrote: post #69
frereubu wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine this might be implicit in your comment, but it's politically much easier to bring in a rent cap ("protecting the hard-working families of Berlin") than hand out building permits ("overdevelopment!") Issuing more building permits also takes a long time to have any effect on rents, so by the time it takes effect the politician who brought it in is likely to be long gone. More permits will only happen if polit…

I'm not convinced that it is politically easier, the rent cap is a very controversial topic (for good reasons, it's really an extreme measure). A fringe may like that talking point, but that's not how you do effective policies.

In Berlin, rent control isn't a fringe topic. Half of Berlin was formerly communist (the east) with the non-conformists being sent out to the sticks. And the other half has a higher proportion of (partly radical) leftists due to the federal draft not applying in Berlin (so young, mostly left-leaning, males moved to west Berlin to avoid serving in the military). So the general population in Berlin is rather more friendly to ideas such as communal property, rent control and generally sticking it to the evil capitalist man.

Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court

#204

Post by lqet »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #176
lqet wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why not increase the price to the point where 90% of contenders lose interest Because that's illegal, even without the rent cap in Berlin.

A market response to supply and demand is illegal? What law would do that if not a rent cap?

§556d, 1 of the German civil code.

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__556d.html

It's illegal here to demand a rent more than 10% higher than the "ortsübliche Vergleichsmiete", which is approximately the local rent averaged over the last 6 years (exactly defined in §558)

More generally, you cannot simply ask for astronomical prices for anything in Germany just because you know that people are in a position where they have to pay them, that's "Wucher" (racketeering) and against public decency, which is generally illegal according to §138.

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__138.html

Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court

#205

Post by feuermurmel »

killtimeatwork wrote: post #148
lqet wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not make it a multistory building with apartments on top of the supermarket and skip the parking space or put it underground? That's exactly what they are doing at a few places in my city (also with a massive housing problem). We recently found a new apartment here, the process was as follows: (1) We found the apartment online. It was online for exactly 6 hours, listed by an estate agent. (2) Inside the listing…

I'm always baffled by stories like this. If there's indeed so much interest in an apartment, why not increase the price to the point where 90% of contenders lose interest? The owner must have been in a huge hurry, or doesn't care about money?

In many places, a landlord can't just decide to raise the rent. When I signed the contract for my current apartment, the landlord needed me to sign an official form they had to send to the city. The form informed me of the rent the previous occupant paid and stated the applicable laws that regulated by how much the rent could be raised (based on inflation, changes in interest rates etc.). What I don't know, but assume, is that it's easy to fight for the rent to be lowered to the legal limits even after accepting signing a contract with rent above the legal limits.

Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court

#206

Post by southerntofu »

crumbshot wrote: post #199
EdwinLarkin wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite the opposite actually.Increase capitalism and reduce government control and you get more housing.

That's not how it turned out in the UK. As this graph illustrates, when the local government authorities were prohibited from building more housing, from the 1980s onwards, the private sector didn't pick up any of the slack: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MmJ5N.png The capitalists instead decided to optimize for steadily increasing the price of housing by restricting supply, so these are now primarily seen as an investmen…

Another piece of data, from the Netherlands, where office space vacancy has significantly increased since making squatting illegal back in 2010: https://en.squat.net/2016/05/27/netherlands-housing-crisis/

Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court

#207

Post by pitkali »

lqet wrote: post #105
adrianN wrote: post #11

I 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…

> Why not make it a multistory building with apartments on top of the supermarket and skip the parking space or put it underground? That's exactly what they are doing at a few places in my city (also with a massive housing problem). We recently found a new apartment here, the process was as follows: (1) We found the apartment online. It was online for exactly 6 hours, listed by an estate agent. (2) Inside the listing…

I think I prefer the Swedish queues.

Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court

#209

Post by durnygbur »

bellyfullofbac wrote: post #169
f6v wrote: post #126

Berlin is a weird place. If you're an art student working as a barista, I don't think you can expect to live in a hip neighbourhood. Certainly not 15 minutes away from Alexanderplatz(city centre). And you certainly can't expect that if the city is a self-proclaimed "startup capital", with thousands of tech workers who enjoy 80k+ salaries.

Good old gentrification... "Look at that hip area with the art students working as baristas, let's live there.". A few years later, the neighborhood cafe is just full of tech workers coding the frontend framework for the next food delivery app and you wonder where the soul went.

You hate us cause you ain't us. No worries we don't pass through the apartment applicant selection either. Now you need to be young attractive woman with a partner, Western sounding names and surnames, both employed with high salary. All documented.

Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court

#210

Post by llampx »

pitkali wrote: post #207
lqet wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not make it a multistory building with apartments on top of the supermarket and skip the parking space or put it underground? That's exactly what they are doing at a few places in my city (also with a massive housing problem). We recently found a new apartment here, the process was as follows: (1) We found the apartment online. It was online for exactly 6 hours, listed by an estate agent. (2) Inside the listing…

I think I prefer the Swedish queues.

Those are great if you can wait years
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