Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by rorykoehler » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 10:43 AM UTC

yokaze wrote: post #270

rorykoehler wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> They should build up instead of sprawling like the most terrible cities in the world do When I was in Berlin, it seemed to me people in Berlin wanted the impossible combination: - Continue to afford to live in the city (ergo more housing in the city) - No sprawl to keep the car traffic down (ergo still more pressure on housing in the city) - Keeping the green spaces (so no denser housing) - No higher buildings, or…

Yes this is a problem. Berlin is full of people who think it is their duty to be against everything.

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

#272

Post by llampx » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 10:43 AM UTC

oleganza wrote: post #40

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…

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…

Berlin needs much more new housing. I keep an eye on the market both for buying and for renting , and the prices for buying have exploded upwards at the same time as the number of flats for rent has steeply declined.

Empty ugly spaces (not Parks or Public squares) are a symptom of a lethargic bureaucracy, not a healthy thing.

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

#273

Post by southerntofu » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 10:43 AM UTC

EdwinLarkin wrote: post #218

southerntofu wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Are you South Korean? What do you know about South Korea's real estate? Either way I would say housing in Japan (considering all the constraints) seems to work great.

> Are you South Korean? What do you know about South Korea's real estate?

No. Very little. Just read articles over the years saying they are facing similar issues of real-estate bubble and speculation and that prices in Seoul are getting close to those of New York.

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

#274

Post by llampx » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 10:44 AM UTC

EdwinLarkin wrote: post #218

southerntofu wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Are you South Korean? What do you know about South Korea's real estate? Either way I would say housing in Japan (considering all the constraints) seems to work great.

And what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

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

#275

Post by schnitzelstoat » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 10:45 AM UTC

axiosgunnar wrote: post #197

throwaway85858 wrote: post #151

Here are some examples of ways berlin could have increased the amount of affordable housing: 1. Build more housing on land that is already owned by Berlin State 2. Increase the amount of housing support available to low income families 3. Prevent the migration of social housing units to the private market by extending existing contracts. 4. Close loopholes in the Mietpreisbremse that allowed landlords to dramatically…

Only #1, #5 and #6 would actually improve the situation and not be a zero-sum game, the rest is socialism, just rehashed.

Socialism is the worker's ownership of the means of production not "when the Government does stuff"

Taxing unoccupied properties could help to ensure existing properties were actually used and not just held empty by speculators.

But yeah, the main solution is building stuff - I think we need to build residential skyscrapers in the West like they have in Eastern cities, otherwise the urban population densities we are arriving to are unaffordable for most citizens.

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

#276

Post by jashmatthews » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 10:46 AM UTC

durnygbur wrote: post #137

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.

> 80k+ salaries. Last time I intensively job searched in Berlin there was a clear salary ceiling at 70-75k EUR annually for software roles.

Startups with no money yes but places like Zalando pay ~100k total comp. People working for places like Microsoft or GitHub more like ~150k.

https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/Berlin-Ger...

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

#277

Post by llampx » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 10:46 AM UTC

throwaway4good wrote: post #26

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…

But they won't. What does that tell you about the politicians promoting this rent control policy?

That all they care about is getting reelected by people who live there and want free stuff, rather than solving real, hard problems?

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

#278

Post by llampx » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 10:50 AM UTC

throwaway85858 wrote: post #187

An example of how bad the government in Berlin is would be the Pankower Tor project: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/froschlurch-muss-umgesied... 34 hectars (>90 acres) of waste land in a prime location can't be bulldozed to build 2000 new apartments because a rare species of toad was found to be living there, which can't be relocated because no state agency is responsible. The court case has been running for over…

The government in Berlin is hardly an exception. The rot goes to the top. The entire government is composed of incompetent Beamter biding their time till their fat pension, stuck in the good old days when you didn't have to do any work until the Oberstleutnant gave you an order.

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

#279

Post by amelius » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 10:51 AM UTC

stareatgoats wrote: post #133

kuu wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Sweden too. Not an expert either, but isn't the privatization of housing all over the industrialized world at the root of this, coupled with the currently ubiquitous need to crowd together in the cities? People have been able to buy properties in the city centers at fantasy prices, because of low interests and favorable mortgage arrangements and with the expectation that the prices will go on rising forever. Which -…

> Which - spoiler ahead - they won't. Cities will within a decade or two have lost their luminosity, with the giant shift towards remote work that is about to take place, in parallel with the wiping out of brick-and-mortar businesses. Prices will reflect this, sooner or later.

That's the question as those in power wouldn't want to suffer the consequences.

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

#280

Post by goodpoint » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 10:51 AM UTC

DangerousPie wrote: post #250

goodpoint wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This mismatch of supply and demand is exactly the kind of thing that would be solved through pricing in normal markets. The very opposite. The market optimizes for maximum profitability, not for maximum savings for renters or best quality of life. There's a reason why governments have been building cheap housing across the last 100 years in most developed countries.

The market is how we find a compromise between tenants' desire for low rents and landlords' desire for high rents. I don't think you can say it optimizes for landlord profitability but it obviously also doesn't optimize for savings of renters. I agree that this is not perfect, but I think it's the fairest proxy we got. Attempts at regulating rents directly usually end up causing all sorts of unwanted side effects and…

> I think it's the fairest proxy we got

You are simply rehashing the idea that free market is holy and magic. Instead, housing is inelastic. Also, apartments are non-fungible goods.

Furthermore, they have a ton of externalities. (e.g. access to transportation, shops, workplaces, schools)

All of this breaks every assumption around free market theory. Unsurprisingly, governments intervene heavily in the housing market almost in every developed country. The only exceptions lead to a combination of slumslords exploiting the poorest people and gated communities for the wealthy.