throwaway12903

Confirms my thinking that everyone wants to live in the middle and there isn't enough supply and really not enough space for new supply.

From my anecdotal experience, if all listed rents were double the rent cap, all apartments would still be filled, but lots of people would be locked out of the market.

Classic gentrification problem. I don't know the solution.

I think for foreigners it just means paying a ton more, and just accepting that the value-for-money trade-off when seeing cheaper but more desirable places is not real - because they are mostly unattainable.

Gentrification is real though. And a lot of Berlin's culture is built by people who don't earn that much.

I'd be interested to know for how many people it actually helps at the margins and how many its just a handout for.

But yeh - I can imagine a lot of middle-class folks saw its as virtue signalling and free money at the same time.

1.5 years to find an apartment, that is not cheap but bordering the acceptable

Curious - how far outside of the center of Berlin did your search extend, and what was your parameters for an acceptable place/rent?

it is not going to happen if they allow systematic exclusion* and abuse of expats that are trying to settle in the city.

I don't think its deliberate exclusion/racism as you say.

When we looked we always found that there were other people more deserving than us. Like a pregnant couple with baby always needs more room more than us. If you are German, speak German, and are going to live here a long time, it makes more sense for landlord. If you don't earn a tech salary you will struggle to find anything within the city, so you are probably more deserving.

The tech foreigners usually can pay more, they just see cheaper rents that they can't get because of rent control and feel hard done-by.

If Berlin was your city, Germany your country, would you prioritize apartments for the wealthy tech people over the teachers for example?

I don't think it's about housing supply. People want to live in the city and in desirable suburbs. These suburbs have existing tenants who could not afford the market rate of rent today. Gentrification basically.

The question is how much should existing tenants be entitled to their apartments just because they lived there for a long time, balanced against the impact on investment in new real-estate because of lack of incentives due to earning caps.

I moved to Berlin with partner in late 2019. We were looking for 3 rooms for < 1800 in East (Pberg/Xberg/Friedrichshain).

After long, tiring search of 20+ places with 100+ people at each, through a friend of friend we got a place for 1400 because we were the only ones that looked at it. Then rent control happens and now we pay 1000.

And we would have paid 2000+...

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If you find something you like, it doesn't matter because there would be 20 other people applying. Landlords want to rent for a long time, so they prefer Germans over foreigners/expats, and people with long-term stable jobs (government, teachers, etc.) instead of startup people, so we were at the back of the queue.

When we found a place we liked, we would have been prepared to pay way more than the asking rent, and put down multiple years of rent in advance just to get it - like happens in NYC for example. But no landlord/agent is interested in this in Berlin. I guess this is an example how well-paid tech ppl are driving rents up. Even though "well-paid tech" in Berlin is not that much.

Only at rent levels of 2200+ do you start to find places you really like in good areas, but there are lots of places advertised at ~1500 that were even more ideal but unattainable due to demand, which is frustrating.

I really don't know how anyone can get an apartment in Berlin now after rent-control.

When we move out, we will most certainly find a friend to hand over to.

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Re: Rent control

Before it was impossible to find a place, now it must be insane. For existing tenants though, it's like an unexpected yearly bonus - but for us, completely unnecessary. It's like a middle-class handout.