Berlin is the emergent Manhattan of Europe, it's cultural (and in this case, political) hub. It won't be cheaper than Paris, London or New York.
Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
351–360 of 370 posts
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In Germany, the environment gets far far better protection than the people. So how come Glyphosat wasn't banned immediately then? How come nitrate in drinking water goes up [0] and treatment becomes ever more expensive while at the same time industrial livestock farming still gets heavily subsidised? German politics still bends a knee to industrial farming, chemical industry, and heavy industry more than the enviro…
Well, yes. Because environmental activism is basically an instrument of NIMBYism, not anything based on facts, evidence or logic. Nobody really protests when farmers spread their poison, because that would be inconveniently far away, lots of work, etc. But protesting about the destruction of the neighbouring daisy habitat is an easy feel-good measure, and if you can NIMBY you way into higher value of your real estate…
And you don't see the contradiction there? On the one hand you say that the environment is protected more than the people yet here you argue that it's actually the people who benefit instead of nature.
Which is it?
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
So here in the UK, our councils used to build social housing. 300,000 per year. And then Thatcher made it illegal and said privately owned housing associations would fill the gap. In the 30 years since then, the most they've ever managed is 30,000. It's not in private landowner's interest to build cheap social housing. It reduces rents, it suppresses property values. So they don't get built. If they do build anything…
The dichotomy between "cheap housing" and luxury housing needs to end. (I might be wrong but) if I had to bet why councils could build more places it's that they would have a streamlined approval process with councils (denying a social housing project would look bad) while the private developers have to follow the mood of the deparments and several "appeals" and "NIMBYs" (same as in the US today) But a new "luxury ap…
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Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#354I 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…
Same here. The city itself should build as many cheap rental apartments as possible, also in more higher-priced areas to keep the pricing there in check. Building more housing is the only way out of this soaring pricing. EDIT: not only rental apartments of course but more housing in general. A second step would be, to make sure that rental housing is used for that instead of AirBNB or any other investment. It would a…
"The city itself should build as many cheap rental apartments as possible"
Government should never be in charge of what the market can do.
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
This is something that irks me too. If you're an authority implementing paid parking, price it appropriately so that most of the potential clients would rather chose to park and pay instead of hunting for free parking in some other parts of the city. Once you have that parking lot full most of the time, only then you may juggle around with the price in order to bring it closer to a more desirable level.
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#356Keep in mind that when they say Berlin's rents are soaring, it's still comparatively cheap for large cities in Germany.
It's not truly affordable, because even if you have enough to pay the rent, you have a difficult time finding an apartment, resulting in many people with enough income to afford the nominal rental rates ending up not being able to get a rental.
Price controls lead to shortages at the price point that the government dictates is the ceiling. It's a silly work around based on the fallacy that the problem with high prices is people charging too much, as opposed to the supply of the good in question being insufficient relative to the demand for it. The high price is actually the most effective solution to the problem of scarcity, and price controls prevent that solution from working.
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>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
> less housing construction, that leads to less affordable housing You mean that decreasing housing supply correlates with increasing price? Because that's exactly what inelastic demand is: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/inelastic.asp
Demand might be inelastic, but supply and price are not.
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, and maybe most important: In the majority(?) of cases it did not work. Landlords found absurd ways to work around it. Many not necessary fully legal but only in a way that if no one who is "hurt" by it sues the state can not act. There where enough people which where open to pay the de-facto increased "not so legal" Rent, and as such would definitely not sure. A common trick was to pair the rent contract with R…
> A common trick was to pair the rent contract with Renting some token furniture for completely unreasonable That's a problem with the Mietpreisbremse, but not so much with the Mietendeckel, which also sets limits on furnished flats. You also can't just throw in an IKEA BILLY shelf and call it furnished (in the words of my lawyer).
This is correct, however:
> Again if both renter and rentee are happy with it there is nothing which the state could have done.
Landlords will cheat, and clients will do everything in order to get an apartment.
I've seen rental appointments with landlords, with 30/40 prospective clients, and I've always wondered if price is really the problem. I've even done a sort of test, and offered more than requested - and it didn't work.
Observing so many people competing for housing, intuitively makes me think that the housing problem is not of economic nature (but I suppose that the situation is complex).
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a point when you run out of people who are willing to spend millions on the empty investment vehicles so I'm hoping even those properties will help with supply when the tide eventually do go out. Unfortunately it could take a very long time before this happens.
Isn't it widely used for money laundering and wealth sheltering? Don't think there's an end to that money.
An endless supply of money sounds like a great source of tax revenue. It's rather difficult to evade a property tax.
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to live in Dubai - i got there at almost peak rent/real estate... I look at rents now, and they're just under half what i was paying. Sometimes tides turn the other way too.
Yeah but who wants to live in Dubai anyway. The only reason to be there is to not pay income tax.
Honestly, one great advantage it had was a good airport (and at least two other major hubs nearby for cheap transit flights with virtually no layover (e.g: there were ~25 flights a day to Doha at some point))
I made some great trips from Dubai - in Berlin now, every trip is a choice between crappy layovers or expensive airlines. There have been a few surprising exceptions (finnair being one)