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

72 points · 152 comments · theanonymousone

  1. soonnow · · 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. dirasieb · · focus · HN ↗
      >it's not confiscation, you're just forced to sell at a price i decide is fair

      sound logic

      1. mschuster91 · · focus · HN ↗
        Most of the affected housing used to be government owned, sold at firesale prices after the CDU Diepgen government thoroughly wrecked the state finances with a banking scandal at the end of the 90s.

        The large investor landlords purchased the homes and often didn't even do the bare minimum in upkeep. The real estate nevertheless appreciated massively because of Berlin getting more and more popular.

        It therefore makes sense to nationalize this housing stock, and I'd see a value comprised of "original purchase price, upkeep and inflation-plus-3%-tied appreciation" as fair value. Maybe even less because they extracted 20 years worth of rent payments from the properties already.

        1. tirant · · focus · HN ↗
          The reality is that the actual large-scale sell-off of public housing was carried out under the SPD–PDS (now The Left) red-red coalition led by Klaus Wowereit in 2004. for prices of around 30.000€ per unit.
          1. mschuster91 · · focus · HN ↗
            Which is precisely what I said:

            > sold at firesale prices after the CDU Diepgen government thoroughly wrecked the state finances with a banking scandal at the end of the 90s.

            Wowereit didn't have much of an alternative, the cash coffers were drained.

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