
Berlin now home to soaring rents and rising tensions - mrzool
https://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-germany-berlin-property-20180424-story.html
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collyw
Isn't this happening to everywhere where jobs are? Barcelona rents are soaring
but the salaries aren't going up much.

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zerr
Yes, Barcelona is even worse - I see senior devs are paid 35-45K.

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nkkollaw
In Italy, 15-20k

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mantas
I assume that's after taxes? But even then, eastern europe is paying more...

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dogma1138
You want good pay go to Romania IT pays more than in some W. Europe countries
and you pay little to no tax due to incentives.

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ccozan
Yes, but in Cluj the rents are also quite high, since the hitech hub expanded
there.

Not sure about Iași or Brașov. Bucharest was expensive before and not quite to
recommend.

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poloniculmov
You can get a 2 room apartment close to the subway/city center for around 300
euro and there are plenty of apartments on the market.

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ben_w
I spent a few months last year in AirBnBs in Berlin, looking for a permanent
place.

From an outsider’s perspective, Berlin rents are _ridiculously low_ unless
you’re in the inner ring. Low enough I could cover the rent with money left
over entirely from the rent I was collecting from a one bed flat I own in a
small village in the UK, at the worst point of the €-£ exchange rate. Heck, I
could usually do that with the AirBnBs too, despite their markups.

Yes, there is definitely a housing shortage, but as they have rent control the
problem I experienced was too many people viewing each place. In one case,
there were about 80-100 people viewing the same appartment as me while I was
there. Not that my experience is at all incompatible with locals having more
problems from high unemployment or low wages.

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Swinx43
Out of interest, where in Berlin were the rents so cheap? I recently moved to
the Berlin area and found rents to be on par with London for a 3 bedroom
place.

I have been visiting Berlin for the better part of 8 years and I am astounded
at the increase I have seen in living costs. Food and entertainment has also
gone WAY up.

In my opinion Berlin is by no means the "cheap" city that it once was. When
you combine that with the average salary in Berlin being lower than in other
big German cities (and a lot lower than London) then it has become a real
issue as of late for most people.

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ben_w
From memory: Prenzlauerberg, Pankow, Freidrichshain, Keukölln, Friedenau,
Steglitz, Wedding, and Alt-Treptow.

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playing_colours
In no way Prenzlauer Berg is cheap: it's a hip area, one of the most
expensive, with Mitte in leaders. The cheap are Moabit, Wedding, Neukolln,
Pankow. You can move further to Steglitz, Marzahn, Lichtenberg.

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ben_w
The places I saw in Prenzlauerberg were cheap. Can’t comment on averages as I
wasn’t looking to invest in the general market, just get a place for myself.

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erikb
Well, it's not like the rents stay static until death. As the owner you can
still find enough reasons to increase the rent for 2.5-3% each year which is
above the official inflation rate.

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1ba9115454
The problem with rent control is that it causes more harm than good.

Great for the lucky few that get a rent controlled apartment. Bad for people
that don't and for landlords that now can't charge enough rent to cover the
mortgage.

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distances
In Germany mortgages are with fixed rates, so no surprises in interests. It's
a somewhat incompetent landlord that takes higher mortgage than what the rent
covers.

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eriken
It seems rather far fetched to have such low rents over time in a big EU city
like Berlin. It is unavoidable that capital will flow into the city and
compete for real estate. Not only that, but how they expect to get investments
if you cannot increase rent?

Having a housing market based mostly on rent obfuscates the other side of
housing, namely the owners need to take care of said house.

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ben_w
If transportation is good enough, it isn’t _that_ unreasonable. While I am
impressed by Berlin’s public transport, that’s by comparison with the UK —
Berlin shares one problem with the UK, however, and that is that high speed
intercity trains feom nearish cities take an hour, but so to do internal
trams, trains, S-Bahns and U-Bahns coming from the inside edge of the city.

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zerr
But salaries are stalled at 60-70K, right?

EDIT: I mean for experienced engineers.

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ido
€60k/year is generally speaking a significantly above average salary for
Berlin.

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sqidyyy
Very far above average.

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dredmorbius
Iron Law of Wages meet Law of Rent.

David Ricardo rides again.

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JanSt
German rents go up in most places. There was an influx of 1-2 million migrants
and refugees, all of which need living space. Additionaly, it's very expensive
to build living space because of very high special requirements for insulation
and energy efficiency. It's not worth it / possible for investors to build
profitable cheap living spaces, so mostly luxury apartments are build. There
are also high ancillary cost (10-15% of price) - i.e. taxes, notary etc.

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izacus
1-2 million refugees are a tiny blip on German population and most of them
came nowhere near Berlin. Poor people can't raise rents, the exploding tech
sector and Berlin as a place for high-paid techies to move to has probably
more to do with it.

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JanSt
It's happening all over Germany. They are getting the apartments paid by the
state, so high rents are being paid for them. 1-2 million is a huge number of
people if you're lacking living space. Where to put them?

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rjtavares
It's happening all over Europe. We have very low influx of refugees/poor
immigrants in Portugal, but rents in Lisbon/Porto are skyrocketing.

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Malarkey73
ditto the UK. Took virtually no refugees but rents still increasing ... hmmm
something wrong with this theory?

Seriously though in the UK we have had immigration over the last 20 years and
that must have led to higher demand and prices. Best estimates are about 20%
in 20 years in England.

[https://fullfact.org/immigration/have-house-prices-risen-
bec...](https://fullfact.org/immigration/have-house-prices-risen-because-
immigrants/)

BUT

English house prices have risen by 320% on average over this period.

Other factors are - getting married later, more single people, more divorced
couples, and financialisation of housing.

Probably a similar story in Berlin.

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ccozan
Munich is very simptomatic of this "singles" issues. More than half of the
people there are singles, thus the housing need is quite high.

However, since the cheap money from the banks, more people are orienting to
buy than rent, which is quite different from the past.

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golergka
Renting in some place for a long time doesn't give you any leverage against
another potential renters. If I want to move to Berlin and am willing to pay
more than existing renters, I don't see any reason why I shouldn't be able to
do so.

> Lustig pays $300 a month from her $800 disability check for the 570-square-
> foot apartment, located in a newly fashionable district only a mile from
> Tiergarten, a leafy city park that's one of Berlin's most popular.

$300 per month for even a small apartment in a good district is incredibly
cheap. Why on Earth would you expect to be able to afford such a place on a
disability check?

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sqidyyy
tbh this is a very bad example. $300 (247€) for 570 square-foot (53m²) are
just not realistic for a city like Berlin. The real price for such an
appartment (in that district) is around 700-800€.

Not to be "that guy" with the unpopular opinion here, but I'm not even sure if
the landlord can even cover the costs for the apartment from what she's
paying.

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jashmatthews
The landlord knew exactly what he was getting into buying a tenanted property
rented by someone on WBS social housing. Using your sister to evict your
existing tenant is dodgy. I have zero sympathy for trying to game the system
and getting caught out by your sister inconveniently dying.

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sqidyyy
I couldn't find any information in the article that it's WBS social housing.
It says "located in a newly fashionable district" which doesn't sound like
social housing.

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jashmatthews
It's not. I missed the 32 years bit and assumed it was WBS because she's
receiving long-term disability. Either way, you can't simply buy a building
and evict the tenant in Germany. The landlord knew what he was getting into.

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lopmotr
It's an endlessly recurring phenomenon of people that when they don't have any
legal right to something but use it for a long time, they believe they have a
permanent right to it. If you really value living somewhere, you can pay for
that privilege and exclude other people who don't want it as much as you do.
Somebody has to miss out when there's limited supply of housing.

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dx034
Berlin actually has a lot of potential supply, there's little geographical
restriction and generally good public transport. Zoning laws are also
comparably friendly (at least compared to SF and London). But real estate
projects still take 3-5 years to complete.

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lopmotr
That seems to be a common problem. In New Zealand, especially Auckland,
there's a housing shortage so the local governments have relaxed zoning
restrictions. But there's also a shortage of builders so they can't build fast
enough and housing will stay expensive for years until that catches up.

