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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

#291

Post by varispeed »

radu_floricica wrote: post #144
jonathanstrange wrote: post #78

This 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…

This reminds me of the dispute on liberalizing parking space prices. An uber driver last week was super against it, saying it's not fair. His main argument? He has a price protected one. Meanwhile I do the 10 minute parking dance every evening, while going past paid, reserved and unused parking spots. (Bucharest btw, and they'll likely stay this way)

For two years I had to drive for 1-3 hours after work each working day to find space, just because our local authority decided to make paid parking as a pilot on most streets in the area and mine was not included, so everyone tried to park on those limited free streets and I couldn't get a permit for pilot ones. The paid ones of course were mostly empty and that put enormous stress on the few free ones. Complete lack of imagination from people who planned this and residents were not consulted.

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

#292

Post by durnygbur »

Tenoke wrote: post #258
durnygbur wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What? Non-Germans have it much harder finding a place here even if their names are western.

Depends on nationality preference of the person selecting the candidate ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Either way Germanic surname will always win over Polish one.

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

#293

Post by yokaze »

jurip wrote: post #249
yokaze wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've heard, the problem here is a bit with expectations. Institutional investors have higher expectations of return of investment and are more likely willing to forego a small rent in the hope for a larger future rent. They have more deep pockets. And on top of that, expectations from an international market, which Berlin did not match. Investors are expecting that to change in the long run. And the funny t…

Ah, all right. A significant stock of empty apartments would certainly be suboptimal in a city like Berlin. I'm not a big fan of bans on things that don't cause direct harm to people, but I don't see any reason to not heavily tax apartments that are kept empty.

Sparked from the the post, I read a bit up on it, and actually 0.8%-2% is actually on the lower side. 2-3% is supposedly the right amount for a well functioning market according to a local government source.

Keep in mind, what I wrote about investors is what I heard from people living there complaining about. So more a reflection of the emotions there, then necessarily factual.

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

#294

Post by varispeed »

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…

7. Why should the other 50% pay more? This is what I am uneasy about - if you work hard, live a modest life to save for a place to live, sacrificing hobbies, socialising, happier life in general and then you have other half who just don't care because they think they should receive everything from the state. This is extremely demotivating and make people question whether they were correct about saving and making sacrifice. I personally know people who became homeless on purpose as they found they could get a house much quicker this way rather than through working their bottoms off. Don't get me wrong - there are people who genuinely need help and I wholeheartedly support that, but I don't think the number is 50%.

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

#295

Post by varispeed »

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #275
axiosgunnar wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

This won't work, as investors can hire people to live in the property and it will make it more expensive as a result, as someone will have to pay for that extra admin.

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

#296

Post by jonp888 »

nocobot wrote: post #222

This is a disaster for lots of people who signed a "shadow rent" contract and now owe their landlords. I know quite a few friends who won't be able to pay. In many cases this essentially doubles their rent.

TBH I struggle to have sympathy for people who signed a shadow rent contract in the full knowledge that they could not afford to pay the shadow rent.

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

#297

Post by Darmody »

qayxc wrote: post #255
Darmody wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is the solution, why doesn't it work wherever they have tried?

Because people are good at gaming the system.

What about investors not wanting to invest a single cent into building new estate because it is not economically viable anymore? Is that gaming the system?

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

#298

Post by CryptoPunk »

goodpoint wrote: post #280
DangerousPie wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>>You are simply rehashing the idea that free market is holy and magic. Instead, housing is inelastic.

Housing is not inelastic at all. Economists have studied the effects of laws reducing land-use rights, and have found they impose massive social costs, in the form of less housing construction, that leads to less affordable housing.

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20170388

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

#299

Post by durnygbur »

cbqfund wrote: post #125
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…

And (2) means that privacy oriented persons no longer can get an apartment in Germany. BTW, 10% of these data collecting advertisements on the real estate websites are from identity thieves.

I cannot wait for a massive data leak containg apartment application documents, especially from high demand locations like Munich or Berlin. People simply send it all over the place and they contain everything. It would knacker out many people in various ways.

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

#300

Post by southerntofu »

pharmakom wrote: post #119
southerntofu wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why build more? There's plenty of abandoned/empty housing everywhere in big cities? Unfortunately i don't speak german so i can't give you stats about Berlin, but in Paris alone it's >200 000 empty housing units according to official statistics. Building more is definitely the wrong solution to housing. Just remove the capitalist vampire landlords making a profit on basic human needs, and let everybody enjoy free hou…

How is it that rents are so high and yet there are empty housing units? Don’t landlords want the money?

> How is it that rents are so high and yet there are empty housing units?

Rents are so high BECAUSE there are empty housing units. If all available housing units went on the market, rent prices would collapse along with the real-estate speculative bubble, which is precisely what landlords are trying to avoid.

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