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I need to find an apartment

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Re: I need to find an apartment

#281

Post by [deleted] »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #237
ng55QPSK wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same old lie over and over again. Rent control is limiting the profit you can make with renting out. It doesn't stop profit in the first place. And btw: new built appartments have almost free price setting.

Rent control simply locks in a set of winners when it is implemented (which for the most part stays static and doesn’t apply to new demand), the government then has to promise that rent control won’t be implemented on new supply so developers, businesses, and private landlords just don’t give up on the rental market completely. I don’t see rent control as very useful, but I doubt it is very relevant to the current ho…

[deleted]

Re: I need to find an apartment

#282

Post by [deleted] »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #183
ascar wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're referencing is not a law it's a referendum that most likely will never be adopted as it's illegal. On top of that, how does that referendum affect your friends unless they run a giant business with thousands of apartments (to be exact 3000 or more)? And at that scale it's certainly cheaper to fight in court.

> is not a law it's a referendum that most likely will never be adopted as it's illegal It reflects a political environment that makes renting risky. And illegal laws can still cause hardship while they're being stayed and struck down. The corporate landlords can afford to fight. Single-home landlords cannot. This time the referendum constrained itself to corporate landlords; next time it may not.

[deleted]

Re: I need to find an apartment

#283

Post by [deleted] »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #183
ascar wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're referencing is not a law it's a referendum that most likely will never be adopted as it's illegal. On top of that, how does that referendum affect your friends unless they run a giant business with thousands of apartments (to be exact 3000 or more)? And at that scale it's certainly cheaper to fight in court.

> is not a law it's a referendum that most likely will never be adopted as it's illegal It reflects a political environment that makes renting risky. And illegal laws can still cause hardship while they're being stayed and struck down. The corporate landlords can afford to fight. Single-home landlords cannot. This time the referendum constrained itself to corporate landlords; next time it may not.

[deleted]

Re: I need to find an apartment

#284

Post by sam_lowry_ »

Etheryte wrote: post #192
tromp wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing website https://funda.nl is pretty dominant in the Netherlands. Why would you need to search many agent's websites when nearly all inventory shows up on funda.nl ? I find it much preferable to North American sites like https://realtor.ca that think that number of baths is more important than floorspace (which to my utter amazement is often not even available).

You're right in that most listings eventually end up on sites such as Funda, Pararius etc. However, almost all offers go online on an agent website first, oftentimes considerably so. Your milage will vary of course, personally I started using agent sites after calling an ad that had been up on Pararius for 5 minutes yielded the response that the viewing list is already full. Turned out it had already been up on the a…

Same in Belgium. Agencies first email new offers to their registered users, then publish on agency websites, and only afterwards publish on immoweb.be.

There are sometimes rare jewels published directly by individuals on immoweb.be but the bulk of the offers is trash.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#285

Post by tromp »

Etheryte wrote: post #192
tromp wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing website https://funda.nl is pretty dominant in the Netherlands. Why would you need to search many agent's websites when nearly all inventory shows up on funda.nl ? I find it much preferable to North American sites like https://realtor.ca that think that number of baths is more important than floorspace (which to my utter amazement is often not even available).

You're right in that most listings eventually end up on sites such as Funda, Pararius etc. However, almost all offers go online on an agent website first, oftentimes considerably so. Your milage will vary of course, personally I started using agent sites after calling an ad that had been up on Pararius for 5 minutes yielded the response that the viewing list is already full. Turned out it had already been up on the a…

I can't escape the feeling that if an apartment ends up being bought by a person who learns about it hours or even a few days ahead of others, then it was priced too low and the seller left money on the table.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#287

Post by switch007 »

jean-malo wrote: post #42

In highly competitive markets the good apartments don't even make it to the websites that aggregate listings before someone takes them. The ones that do are either very expensive or will have 20+ people showing up the next day (sometimes the same day) for a visit. It's crazy and while this article is very neat I'm not sure a bot that scrapes listing in batch is the answer.

We only got ours because we were very nice to the agent after losing out on an apartment (thanked her, asked her to keep us in mind if anything else comes up etc).

A week later she phoned us before she listed a new one, and we went to see it 3 hours later and took it.

It goes to show the human aspect still matters, a lot. That one email thanking her was probably worth way way more than eg hours spent on a bot to automate applications.

Many apartments also don’t even make it to an agent because people have friends they promise it to and refer them to the landlord.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#288

Post by ng55QPSK »

koevet wrote: post #276
mschuster91 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post is bordering on propaganda. First of all: the problem at the core is that Berlin is pretty much built out, there is not much space any more to expand to. Yes, skyscrapers could be a solution, but everyone seriously thinking about this gets invited to look at Frankfurt am Main and then forget about the idea because that city is simply hideous. Skyscrapers are very unwelcome in Germany because of that example…

Berlin pretty much built out? The city has a huge "hole" in the center - Tempelhofer Feld. 355 hectares of land that at some point it was decided to leave untouched. Complete waste of space that could be used to build thousands of units.

I really wonder what happens when Manhattan will discuss to put more buildings into central park?

Tempelhofer Feld is needed as greenfield in the central city for climate reasons.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#289

Post by ng55QPSK »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #183
ascar wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're referencing is not a law it's a referendum that most likely will never be adopted as it's illegal. On top of that, how does that referendum affect your friends unless they run a giant business with thousands of apartments (to be exact 3000 or more)? And at that scale it's certainly cheaper to fight in court.

> is not a law it's a referendum that most likely will never be adopted as it's illegal It reflects a political environment that makes renting risky. And illegal laws can still cause hardship while they're being stayed and struck down. The corporate landlords can afford to fight. Single-home landlords cannot. This time the referendum constrained itself to corporate landlords; next time it may not.

From the outside, this sounds scary. But if you look closer how germany works, forced selling to the state or city (at the current market price) is quite often happening in building infrastructure like streets, autobahn, railways or airports. If there is an overwhelming public interest, the rights of owners can be limited.

And btw: it's stated in the constitution, that ownership introduces also responsibility to the society.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#290

Post by ng55QPSK »

dan-robertson wrote: post #222
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent control needs means testing. It suppresses mobility when the googler making $300k doesn’t move to a place they’d rather have because their current unit is so far below market rate, which hurts the minimum wage worker who could have lived there.

Are there many googlers making $300k in Berlin?

Some management positions might do. The average SWE in Berlin is closer to 60..80k€
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