But does it matter who owns the place as long as someone lives there? I mean I assume that the investors are renting them out. If not, surely they're losing out on a very nice income stream, and it's hard to believe it's all that popular. There are probably some empty apartments — that's a requirement for a working housing market, given that people need empty places to move into — but the proportion of empty investment vehicles in a city as large as Berlin can't be that large.
From what I've heard, the problem here is a bit with expectations.
Institutional investors have higher expectations of return of investment and are more likely willing to forego a small rent in the hope for a larger future rent. They have more deep pockets.
And on top of that, expectations from an international market, which Berlin did not match. Investors are expecting that to change in the long run.
And the funny thing, with a limited supply in housing and an increase of investors with such a behaviour, it is a self-fulfilling promise.
The number of empty apartments in Berlin is hard to guess. Not an expert in that matter, but from a quick search, the number is anywhere between 0.8% and 2%.
Yes, it is important to have apartments empty for some time, so people can actually move, but as I understand, that is excluded from those considerations/statistics. We are looking at apartments which are empty for more than three months (which is theoretically illegal in Berlin).
Ah, all right. A significant stock of empty apartments would certainly be suboptimal in a city like Berlin. I'm not a big fan of bans on things that don't cause direct harm to people, but I don't see any reason to not heavily tax apartments that are kept empty.
Sparked from the the post, I read a bit up on it, and actually 0.8%-2% is actually on the lower side. 2-3% is supposedly the right amount for a well functioning market according to a local government source.
Keep in mind, what I wrote about investors is what I heard from people living there complaining about. So more a reflection of the emotions there, then necessarily factual.
