
No City Hates Its Landlords Like Berlin Does - JumpCrisscross
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-04/no-city-hates-its-landlords-like-berlin-does
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Phil_Latio
> Cerberus Capital Management, backed by Goldman Sachs, bought Berlin’s public
> housing association, paying $448 million for 66,700 housing units—about
> $6,700 per unit.

Actually it was 2 billion because the deal included debt of 1.5 billion.

A decade later Berlin bought back 6,000 units for 1 billion...

All of that under leftist government.

Berlin is a joke!

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megablast
If they don't have the debt anymore, then that was good for Berlin.

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hcknwscommenter
I agree with megablast here. It seems like Cerberus did a terrible job, lost
money, and the municipality got a great deal. What am I missing?

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chaorace
6,000 =/= 60,000

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hcknwscommenter
Ugg. Thanks.

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Zenst
Mortgages are harder to get due to the amount banks have historically loaned
against the property value, drive in demand and associated increase in
property values see that 30-50% deposit being beyond the many. So you will
naturally see a rise in the Us vs Them play out, with Landlords being low
hanging fruit targets for such angst when the issue is system that has been
historically welcome of renting culture and now pensions being seen more as
bricks and mortar over anything else. That first step upon the property run is
a huge step and it is that, which is always the area needing solutions. But if
the people drive that angst at Landlords, they become a low hanging fruit for
the Government. So you see solutions to the effects and not the cause.

Germany is not unique in this, it is a growing problem in many parts of the
World.

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ddmma
When they say 2% owns the other’s wealth I guess they were reffering on
controlling the rest. Renting it’s a form of barrowing on highest interest
possible, similar to bank monthly morgage pay. And this is just sick.

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foogazi
> For people looking to buy rather than rent, it’s at least as bad—in 2017
> alone, property values jumped 20.5%

Are they going to start shaming those that sold for 20% higher?

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amiga_500
If you only own the property you live in a rise doesn't leave you better off.
However if you own multiple properties, like landlords do, you can cash out
your unearned gains.

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foogazi
If what you say is true then why are homeowners in Berlin selling their homes
for 20% higher gains ?

If it’s all the same why not sell for the same price they bought it for?

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amiga_500
No that's not what I said at all.

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neonate
[https://archive.md/E1kvn](https://archive.md/E1kvn)

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lxmorj
It's a real shame that housing supply is fixed and it's impossible to build
more.

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epistasis
> And while many factors are at play—most notably, a giant influx of new
> residents and a shortage of housing—Berliners tend to see greedy landlords
> as the problem.

This is a much better direction to focus their anger than other residents, at
least.

There's a lot of NIMBYism in all of us, and in SF that hatred of change has
found a lot of people having the newcomers, rather than the landlords that set
the prices, or the politicians that set the markets so that landlords have
massively growing profits.

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xvedejas
When will people stop looking for scapegoats and start finding solutions?
Needlessly high rents are an economics problem, and there's a lot of evidence
that a combination of expanding housing supply and imposing a Land Value Tax
would be an actual economic solution. You could have the most evil landlords,
corrupt politicians, and aloof newcomers, and an economic solution would still
fix the problem. Sometimes I wonder whether nobody cares to try and solve the
problem, symbolic political wars being more urgent.

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toomuchtodo
Only allow individuals to own, not companies. If you want to let a unit, rent
control with rate increases permitted annually that peg to inflation.
Mandatory reporting and regulation through the local housing authority.

That’s about all you can do if there’s no will to build but you don’t want
corporate or private landlords gouging renters when demand outstrips supply.
Life ain’t fair, everyone isn’t going to be able to live exactly where they
want to. Scarcity leads to rationing.

Disclaimer: Landlord who charges reasonable rents and tries to upzone where I
operate.

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xvedejas
You're going to have major problems no matter what when there's demand and no
political ability to build. A Land Value Tax can still in this situation put
the landlord surplus back into city welfare/projects without raising rents.

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toomuchtodo
The tax is unhelpful if it isn’t used to increase supply; it’s simply
government rent seeking instead of landlord rent seeking.

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rayiner
> Even more radically, tenant groups and thousands of activists are demanding
> that large corporate landlords be expelled from the city altogether, their
> property expropriated.

Coming soon to San Francisco!

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treis
That's just going to make everything worse. At least with a corporation there
is the possibility of a joint lawsuit making it worth a lawyers time. With
small time landlords they can nickle and dime their tenants because it's not
worth a lawyer's time to go after $500 here and $1,000 there.

~~~
hcknwscommenter
You just made me chuckle. At least in SF, Landlords make great lawsuit
targets. They have massive assets that are literally unmovable and unhidable.
All land/building based financing is highly tracked and easily subpoenable.
Just put a lien on the property and payment is pretty much guaranteed. Also
damages can be astronomical. I've seen lawsuits end in 500K in damages for a
single resident in a single rent controlled unit of a 2 unit building that was
illegaly evicted. When you calculate the net present value of the rent control
vs. market rent differential, that number is pretty much spot on. Lesson is:
don't screw your tenant.

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amiga_500
People know leeches when they see them. And what a surprise, the first leech
is based in London and using the British Virgin islands to avoid tax!

