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Far-left party wins Berlin election, pledging to nationalise housing

72 points · 152 comments · theanonymousone

soonnow · 1789971698 · focus · HN ↗
To add a b it of context. They do not want to confiscate housing. They do want to pay landlords, though below current (very high) rates. Also this would only apply to private real-estate companies not individual owners.
And they can't govern alone, so I think it's unlikely that this plan is actually implemented as originally planned. The likely coalition would contain 3 parties.
1. aurareturn · 1789974034 · focus · HN ↗
  They do want to pay landlords, though below current (very high) rates.
  In San Francisco, NIMBYs secretly support laws like this. This basically guarantees that many builders will do the math and conclude that it doesn't make sense to build housing in San Francisco.
  New large condo buildings have to sell 30% of the units at below market rate. This causes many viable projects to never get built.
  So laws like this are sold to renter voters as a way to lower housing costs, but NIMBYs secretly love it. Over time, renters pay more in rent because there is less supply due to builders not building. However, a lucky few renters who were here early will get below market rents.
  Perfect examples of voters voting for a short term fix but pay more in long term. And voting for themselves while screwing future renters.
  1. vrganj · 1789974268 · focus · HN ↗
    The fix is for the city to be the builder, like it is in Vienna.
    The City of Vienna is the largest landlord in Europe. It is also the only major European capital without a rent cost crisis.
    specproc · 1789974488 · focus · HN ↗
    Similarly UK cities built their own housing, up until Thatcher and Right to Buy. Costs spiralled out of control after that.
    Most urgent intervention required in the UK, IMO. We're choking to death on the cost of housing.
    mschuster91 · 1790069697 · focus · HN ↗
    > Most urgent intervention required in the UK, IMO. We're choking to death on the cost of housing.
    Every country in the Western world is. And it seriously hits our economies as well - when companies have to pay wages to match what landlords are asking of their employees, places like China with a massive oversupply of housing are far, far more competitive.
    fileeditview · 1789978093 · focus · HN ↗
    You would think that people could learn from examples. Sadly it rarely happens.
    spwa4 · 1789999520 · focus · HN ↗
    The example here being that they would pay a lot more city tax, never own a home, and over a period of decades this would make rent prices go down.
    If this is what people want, then it seems like the right solution. Short term the only change will be increased taxes and maybe a few lucky renters getting apartments with the number slowly increasing over years and years.
    Which is pretty much the situation in Vienna (rents are low in Vienna, but for the 20% that get city-owned apartments the rents are very low. Quality is ... let's call it "very old", and there's no choice (can't move up if you have a kid, say). Then housing associations pay like 30% more but less than private. Private rents are about double city-owned apartments as they're called. Only way to become a city renter is to earn less than 58000 in a given year, then wait 5+ years).
    MrMember · 1789986346 · focus · HN ↗
    The fix is to let the companies who want to build, build. For some reason a lot of cities won't support new construction if a private company might make a profit on it.
    blahblaher · 1789986648 · focus · HN ↗
    Most private construction is dedicated to luxury condos because that's where the big money is. If you let the "market" decide on its own it will always decide on the most profitable items, even if that's not what is needed.
    vrganj · 1789987018 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes. The market is a great optimizer, sure, but the question is always what do you actually want to optimize for? And that might not always be the same optimization function as a market.
    aurareturn · 1789992192 · focus · HN ↗
    Define "needed". Those luxury condos will still have people living in them whether it's a renter or owner.
    vrganj · 1789993777 · focus · HN ↗
    Well, that's what a democracy should be used to decide, since people might have different things they want to optimize for.
    Personally, I believe Berlin has more issues with a lack of affordable housing than with a lack of luxury condos.
    bluecalm · 1789994600 · focus · HN ↗
    Adding luxury housing helps with supply of affordable housing. Just a few citations I quickly googled: <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094119021000656" rel="nofollow">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00941...
    <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119022001048" rel="nofollow">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009411902...
    <a href="https://archive.is/2026.02.23-212725/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/02/housing-crisis-rich-poor-building/686086/" rel="nofollow">https://archive.is/2026.02.23-212725/https://www.theatlantic...
    vrganj · 1789998776 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm sure it does, to some extent that is <100%. But the real limit in a city is land. If we want to use it efficiently, we should check what we want to optimize use of that resource for.
    IMO, in Berlin the most lacking thing is the supply in affordable housing, so it makes sense to optimize for that directly instead of a side effect of some other optimization.
    Why not build something like Alt-Erlaa? [0] [1]
    Cities can just build stuff. And if private developers are not as incentivized to invest, that makes it cheaper for the city to do so itself. As somebody from Vienna, it's crazy to me this is even up for debate.
    [0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alterlaa" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alterlaa [1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxuACFQBwxs" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxuACFQBwxs
    bluecalm · 1790017261 · focus · HN ↗
    >> But the real limit in a city is land.
    I am not sure how it is in Berlin. I haven't visited in a while. I think it's too general an assessment though. In many cities the limit is not land but permits - both being permitted to build at all and then build high enough.
    >>Cities can just build stuff. And if private developers are not as incentivized to invest, that makes it cheaper for the city to do so itself. As somebody from Vienna, it's crazy to me this is even up for debate.
    I hear a lot of good things about housing in Vienna. Are those city build apartments readily available for anyone? The problem with public housing when I am from is that it turns the city population into lucky few who get access and the rest who not only have to subsidize it but then need to buy on private market themselves.
    bluecalm · 1789994439 · focus · HN ↗
    Building luxury condos help with housing market as well. I don't think this is controversial (there are tons of studies that support the conclusion).
    >>If you let the "market" decide on its own it will always decide on the most profitable items, even if that's not what is needed.
    How do you define "not needed"? Businesses will build what they can sell - the very definition of needed. The problem is that it's difficult to build. A lot of cheaper housing projects don't get build because some restrictions (like height, number of apartments, parking places) that are not necessary.
    bryanlarsen · 1790010416 · focus · HN ↗
    Most of the affordable rentals in my city and many others is luxury housing that was built ~100 years ago. They built lots of cheap housing back then too, but it was junk that was torn down a long time ago. The luxury stuff was built better and lasted.
    The affordable housing from ~50 years ago was single family housing and is crazy expensive today.
    We should be building lots of high density luxury condos today. Those are the affordable apartments of the future.
    bruckie · 1790056419 · focus · HN ↗
    It's pretty well established that building luxury condos freeze up lots of other housing at different price points. The person who moves into the luxury condo had to come from somewhere. This video is a pretty good overview of how this works: <a href="https://youtu.be/rQW4W1_SJmc" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/rQW4W1_SJmc
  2. nextaccountic · 1789992711 · focus · HN ↗
    There's a way to get yourself out of that gridlock: just subsidize housing. The builder gets money from both the buyer and the government, so he will be happy. The buyer will have low income and wouldn't be able to buy a house otherwise, so he will be happy too. And the government will actually have fulfilled its role for a change.
    aurareturn · 1789996036 · focus · HN ↗
    Subsidizing housing... money will have to come from somewhere - usually the middle class.
    I shouldn't have to subsidize my neighbor's rental just because they chose to live in my city.
    InsideOutSanta · 1790020370 · focus · HN ↗
    I mean, that's how taxes work. I don't have children, and yet I pay for schools. I barely ever drive anywhere, and yet I pay for roads.
    As a society, we decide what we value, and then we pay for it. If you don't like what the group decides, it's your choice to move elsewhere.
    em-bee · 1790032423 · focus · HN ↗
    you are not going to find a city where no such people want to live. or, if you do then forget anyone there wanting to do any minimum wage jobs. because they can't afford to live there. that includes waiters and teachers among many others.
    you could of course pay them more, and everything would become more expensive. might work. but i bet you don't want that either.
    aurareturn · 1790042750 · focus · HN ↗
    If they can't afford to live there, then the rich people living there won't be happy and they'll pay a higher wage to those people.
    snapplebobapple · 1789996064 · focus · HN ↗
    The other, better way is to lower government cost of building by having loose zoning and approving everything that fits the zon*ng fast with minimal expense. The non government cost side you should not be broadly subsidizing (you should be fixing market abuses that drive prices up lile making it disadvantageous to sit on unproductive land but thats a complex side topic)
    iamnothere · 1790001579 · focus · HN ↗
    Georgist-style LVT would also solve the problem, fairly quickly. Many owners would rush to sell to developers or build additional units where space allows.
    em-bee · 1790032113 · focus · HN ↗
    that's what vienna has been doing for a century, and it works. current status is that 2/3rd of any new built housing must be subsidized.
  3. illiac786 · 1790002954 · focus · HN ↗
    Is there data that market rate has zero margin left when it comes to renting?
    Genuinely interested. Where I live, I have received direct reports that there is almost zero margin between building cost and market price (buying). But buying and then renting still has a good ROI, although a longer term one.
    I don’t get it, it goes against the market self regulation, but real estate is very twisted in this respect.

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