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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

#311

Post by corty »

qayxc wrote: post #227
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…

A few years ago I would've agreed. Today I'm leaning more towards - "so what?". As long as there's obviously enough space to waste on detached houses and land speculation in the middle of the city, it can't be all that bad. If it was really such a big deal, "someone" would've paid "somebody" already to relocate the animals "after business hours", if you catch my drift. There's more going on behind the scenes for sure…

> If it was really such a big deal, "someone" would've paid "somebody" already to relocate the animals "after business hours", if you catch my drift. There's more going on behind the scenes for sure that we just don't know about.

Doesn't work, the next thing that will happen is the tree-huggers (B.U.N.D. and others) will get public money to re-establish the population and impose stricter protection measures. In Germany, the environment gets far far better protection than the people.

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

#312

Post by kmmlng »

fluiux wrote: post #30
redmeatforchina wrote: post #3

I don't even live in Germany or Europe, so why am I happy about this?

It's not necessarily good news for a lot of people. It's only good for people who like to speculate with real estate. So why are you happy about this?

The issue with an approach like this is that it's merely fighting the symptoms of the underlying problem. The underlying problem is that you have more demand than supply and something is preventing the market from rectifying this problem. Capping rents can only make the underlying problem worse, because there is now less incentive to create new housing.

Now, of course, you might say the thing that is preventing the market from rectifying the situation is that there simply isn't enough space. And that is partially true, there are real physical limits here. But it's not like Berlin is a super high density city, so I find it hard to believe that we're anywhere close to reaching those limits.

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

#314

Post by corty »

patrickk wrote: post #129
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...

The whole Anglosphere seems to have issues with housing, in addition to those places you mention. It seems to be a common cultural issue where people gamble on property like crazy. I'm from Ireland, and this is true there (in the desirable urban areas where semi-decent jobs exist), it's true in the UK[1], it's true in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand banned foreigners from buying property[2]. Am…

All the western countries go through urbanisation, and have been for the last few decades. Back in the days, industry would build a factory in a smaller country town with a few thousand inhabitants and employ half the population there. Nowadays, this rarely happens anymore, only big cities get any industrial development of larger scales. All the office-based parts of the economy also gravitate towards larger cities (often unnecessarily).

So demand for big-city-housing is rising permanently. This wasn't as much of a problem in the last decades. But then, central banks flooded the market with cheap money, making most "safe" investments unviable. Therefore the only "safe" investment left is real-estate which also drives up prices in addition to the increase in demand.

And here we are.

How do we fix it? Get central banks to stop printing cheap money. No idea how that will work out, because it also has other consequences beside the housing market. And stop urbanisation, make the countryside more viable for industry, commerce, office space. Improve transport around the countryside and suburbs. Curb speculation by promoting home-ownership (for the home you live in, not the 20 you rent out) through tax incentives and other measures (currently, in Germany, you pay lower taxes when renting out a property than when living in the same property, because when renting it out the mortgage payments are "business expenses").

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

#315

Post by luckylion »

avh02 wrote: post #136
cbmuser wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

technically, yes. but the reality is that the population is changing. I've only been here a few years but basically everybody who's been here longer says "it's not what it used to be" in that the vibe of the city has changed greatly with it's increasing attractiveness to foreign (tech?) workers. The "original" inhabitants of the city are priced out in "favour" of expats. The "real market" itself is obviously both com…

> everybody who's been here longer says "it's not what it used to be" in that the vibe of the city has changed greatly with it's increasing attractiveness to foreign (tech?) workers.

Meh. The people who say that have displaced the people who lived there before they moved to Berlin. And the people who lived there before they came also said that when they arrived. The people complaining about this the most aren't "original" inhabitants, they moved to Berlin 10-20 years ago because it was cheap, hip, and had less rules around things. They've changed Berlin. Now it's changing again. The circle of change, if you will. They've done it to others, now it's being done to them. Sucks every time, but claiming some sort of "the indigenous population gets removed" is false.

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

#316

Post by JoeAltmaier »

patrickk wrote: post #129
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...

The whole Anglosphere seems to have issues with housing, in addition to those places you mention. It seems to be a common cultural issue where people gamble on property like crazy. I'm from Ireland, and this is true there (in the desirable urban areas where semi-decent jobs exist), it's true in the UK[1], it's true in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand banned foreigners from buying property[2]. Am…

This has to change, with the diminishing birth rates. Growth will stop then reverse. Housing maybe become an issue of dealing with empty buildings and abandoned neighborhoods.

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

#317

Post by chakhs »

varispeed wrote: post #294
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 sacr…

or change rules for social housing to something like singapore. anyone who doesn't already own a house is illegible to buy a social housing unit (paid as rent). but it requires huge investments. I also don't want to work my ass off just to end up paying the same % of my salary to the landlord.

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

#318

Post by ceilingcorner »

luckylion wrote: post #315
avh02 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

technically, yes. but the reality is that the population is changing. I've only been here a few years but basically everybody who's been here longer says "it's not what it used to be" in that the vibe of the city has changed greatly with it's increasing attractiveness to foreign (tech?) workers. The "original" inhabitants of the city are priced out in "favour" of expats. The "real market" itself is obviously both com…

> everybody who's been here longer says "it's not what it used to be" in that the vibe of the city has changed greatly with it's increasing attractiveness to foreign (tech?) workers. Meh. The people who say that have displaced the people who lived there before they moved to Berlin. And the people who lived there before they came also said that when they arrived. The people complaining about this the most aren't "orig…

Cities change, often for the worse. Replacing the people that made a city’s culture notable because they can’t afford it is not good for anyone.

Lower Manhattan is a shining example of this. That area is built on the memory of artists who can no longer afford to live there. It’s a weird sort of fossilization and museumification.

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

#319

Post by llampx »

qayxc wrote: post #227
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…

A few years ago I would've agreed. Today I'm leaning more towards - "so what?". As long as there's obviously enough space to waste on detached houses and land speculation in the middle of the city, it can't be all that bad. If it was really such a big deal, "someone" would've paid "somebody" already to relocate the animals "after business hours", if you catch my drift. There's more going on behind the scenes for sure…

It is that bad, but the people who are affected are not the ones making the decisions. Just like with the Mietendeckel. The politicians have nice apartments and villas already and high incomes, same with the ones who want to reduce welfare payments. They are rarely affected by the policies they enact.

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

#320

Post by codekansas »

crumbshot wrote: post #159
gambiting wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not, rent caps are a great idea in principle but in reality it just massively constrains the supply which means that yeah, if you find a place to rent you will pay a "reasonable" rate, but there's 200 people willing to rent any place so when landlords aren't allowed to compete on price they compete on everything else. It leads to insanities like landlords requiring 6+ months of rent upfront, very long contracts,…

It all depends on how it's implemented. The usual method of controlling rent is to cap only a subset of properties in an area - for example, leaving new builds or new tenancies exempt. Which tends to create a two-tier system that benefits one set of tenants at the expense of the other, while discouraging reallocation for downsizing and suchlike. And as you allude to, without further restrictions on tenancy contract t…

In some US cities like Portland the construction costs for public housing are typically double costs for comparable private housing. The government has little motivation or expertise to reduce the cost since the bill is footed by the public. Seems much more parasitic in my opinion
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