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I wish Berlin would just build more housing instead. For example when I cross the street there is a supermarket. It's a single story building with a huge parkin

I wish Berlin would just build more housing instead. For example when I cross the street there is a supermarket. It's a single story building with a huge parking lot around it. Why not make it a multistory building with apartments on top of the supermarket and skip the parking space or put it underground? Why does the city give out building permits for such buildings? There could easily be room for thirty families on that lot. A single parking spot is like 12m^2, two parking spots and three storys above them and you have an apartment for two to three people.

mpweiher 6y ago
> ... just build more housing instead. Exactly. And the Mietendeckel caused new construction to essentially stop completely. Way to go!
- mschuster91 6y ago
  This is utterly wrong. https://taz.de/Mehr-Baugenehmigungen-in-Berlin/!5706294/ https://taz.de/Mehr-Baugenehmigungen-in-Berlin/!5706294/
  - mpweiher 6y ago
    Nope. Your article was for the first half of 2020. For the whole year of 2020, the numbers were down again, fourth year running. "16.03.2021: Heute hat das Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg die Baugenehmigungszahlen für das Jahr 2020 veröffentlicht. Die Zahl der Baugenehmigungen sank in Berlin das vierte Jahr in Folge." https://www.immobilien-aktuell-magazin.de/topics/auswirkungen-des-mietendeckels-in-berlin/ https://www.immobilien-aktuell-magazin.de/topics/auswirkunge... https://www.rbb24.de/politik/beitrag/2020/11/berlin-mietendeckel-investitionstopp-immobilienkonzern-vonovia.html https://www.rbb24.de/politik/beitrag/2020/11/berlin-mietende... And the effects already started in 2019, when the law was planned: https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2019-11/berlin-mietendeckel-gesetz-neubau-investitionen-stopp https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2019-11/berlin-mietendeckel-g...
    - yladiz 6y ago
      If it's been happening for four years, how did the Mietendeckel cause it?
      - mpweiher 6y ago
        In 2015, a similar but less draconian "Mietpreisbremse" was enacted at the federal level. 2016 was the year the construction trend turned from yearly increases to declines, and it has been declining consistently ever since. In 2019, in anticipation of the Mietendeckel, the decline became significantly steeper. Several large companies announced that they were halting all new construction and renovation projects. At the same time, inventory has practically disappeared. So instead of "unaffordable" housing[1] for new tenants, we now have no housing for new tenants. (Existing rents were already protected). [1] Berlin is still cheap compared other large German cities and certainly compared to most capital cities of industrialised countries or places like SF. It's just not quite as ridiculously cheap any longer.
throwaway4good 6y ago
But they won't. What does that tell you about the politicians promoting this rent control policy?
- llampx 6y ago
  That all they care about is getting reelected by people who live there and want free stuff, rather than solving real, hard problems?
FlyingSnake 6y ago
Berlin has enough space and I guess the pressure on properties outside the ring (e.g. Marzahn/Marienfeld) is less. However if everyone wants to move to Mitte/kreuzölln, then this creates lots of competition.
flohofwoe 6y ago
That's already happening with two Edeka markets in my neighbourhood, they teared down the old markets, and replace(d) them with new buildings with the market on the bottom floor, and flats on top. Drop in the bucket though I think. I don't think the city is giving out new building permits for this type of stuff, and many of those markets have either been there "forever", or have been built after the reunification (and in the 90's city planners were expecting that the city would shrink further, not grow).
- llampx 6y ago
  You hit on the major problem. That it's hard to build in the city. So many ugly buildings under Denkmalschutz, so many empty concrete spaces and people still want to live where the facilities are, not in the outskirts if they have the choice.
yftsui 6y ago
Because the road and other related infrastructure may not be ready for the increased FAR ratio yet?
- adrianN 6y ago
  The supermarket in question has a bus stop right in front of it and is in walking distance from a train station and an underground station. The city center is a 15 minute bike ride away. It's not a neighborhood where you need a car.
- llampx 6y ago
  Sounds a bit like concern trolling if this is used to stop or delay building new apartments that people would love to move into.
raverbashing 6y ago
Compared to other capitals in Europe, they are doing it. It's of course a slow process, but it exists.
mschuster91 6y ago
> I wish Berlin would just build more housing instead. The problem is: Berlin can't. There is not much free space for new construction in Berlin proper, with the exception of "Nachverdichtung" such as you propose with apartments over parking lots - and these have the downside that they are horribly expensive, simply because it costs potential developers a lot of money to acquire the land! The solution would be to build out internet connectivity and public transport in the suburbs in Brandenburg so that employers don't all concentrate in Berlin.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  Has Berlin built over all its brownfields? If so, very commendable. Here in Prague we have quite a few brownfields that could be home to at least 50 thousand people (Rohanský ostrov, Bubny, Kolbenova), but the development is extremely slow.
  - southerntofu 6y ago
    > Has Berlin built over all its brownfields? If so, very commendable. Well having some undeveloped space is actually quite nice to enjoy in a city. We don't have to live packed narrowly on top of one another. But more specifically, brownfields (previously-industrial spaces) are usually highly polluted. Some are full of heavy metals and chemicals that you really don't want to displace into the air by digging into the soil... Some people are doing it, but it either costs billions of euros in depollution, or greatly affects the health of nearby population, and often both.
    - inglor_cz 6y ago
      Where I was born (Ostrava, a heavy industry city), there was a giant, massively polluted brownfield right next to the city centre. It required several years of sanation works to clean up, but now it is built over and serves the needs of the population. [0] I believe that this is a reasonable use of public money, even though private developers profit from it. Or possibly finance it through a Public-Private Partnership project. The alternative is to let poisoned land within borders of a big city stay poisoned forever. Which does not sound either people- or environment-friendly. [0] https://www.ostrava.cz/en/podnikatel-investor/real-estate/brownfields-1/karolina https://www.ostrava.cz/en/podnikatel-investor/real-estate/br...
oleganza 6y ago
My impression of Berlin (living there for the last 2 years) is that there's plenty of space, plenty of new housing already built and plenty of new construction still going. SF, NY, Paris and London are way more crowded and under-housed in comparison. Shitty one-story supermarkets are really just a sign of abundance of space and not enough demand (yet). Among big European cities the rent seems low. You can buy an super-duper-lux apartment for ~$1M in the very center of the city that in the next 10 years can easily go for $5M if Berlin is to continue to grow the way it does.
- frereubu 6y ago
  Surely a rent cap is a clear sign that there is demand though?
  - southerntofu 6y ago
    A rent cap is a clear sign that the capitalist system is broken and we need a better system to match the housing needs and supply without feeding into heartless vampires who'd rather have empty apartments than rent them at a reasonable price.
    - EdwinLarkin 6y ago
      Quite the opposite actually.Increase capitalism and reduce government control and you get more housing.
      - crumbshot 6y ago
        That's not how it turned out in the UK. As this graph illustrates, when the local government authorities were prohibited from building more housing, from the 1980s onwards, the private sector didn't pick up any of the slack: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MmJ5N.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/MmJ5N.png The capitalists instead decided to optimize for steadily increasing the price of housing by restricting supply, so these are now primarily seen as an investment with nearly-guaranteed returns, rather than places for people to live.
rorykoehler 6y ago
It seems like covid will solve the Berlin housing problem. My building in Schillerkiez is slowly emptying out.
- corty 6y ago
  How does that work, I don't suppose residents are dying away? Does unemployment force them to move out?
  - rorykoehler 6y ago
    Move to the countryside probably. Others move back home. The one person I spoke to was moving his family to a house for more green space
- andreiursan 6y ago
  Any specific reason why is emptying out?
  - rorykoehler 6y ago
    Can’t enjoy the cultural offerings of the city if everything is closed and banned.
frereubu 6y ago
I imagine this might be implicit in your comment, but it's politically much easier to bring in a rent cap ("protecting the hard-working families of Berlin") than hand out building permits ("overdevelopment!") Issuing more building permits also takes a long time to have any effect on rents, so by the time it takes effect the politician who brought it in is likely to be long gone. More permits will only happen if politicians can stop bickering amongst themselves and agree that more housing is the way forward (which it clearly is, compared to rent controls).
- dgellow 6y ago
  I'm not convinced that it is politically easier, the rent cap is a very controversial topic (for good reasons, it's really an extreme measure). A fringe may like that talking point, but that's not how you do effective policies.
  - rndgermandude 6y ago
    In Berlin it is a good talking point. I am not commenting on whether it is effective or good policy, just that you can score politically with it (well, until the court now killed it, I suppose). Concerns about being able to afford rent not just now but in the future is a major concern for a huge chunk of the population. They look at what happens in other large cities with rent prices (be it Munich, be it Paris, be it SF) in fear. Berlin itself uses an unofficial slogan of "Arm aber Sexy" ("poor but sexy/attractive"), coined by a former Berlin major referring to the budget of the city but adopted by the population to mean the people living there as well. They fear that driving out poor people - including themselves - and turn it into yet another place for the rich, and/or fear "over-development" will destroy the character of the city (and the ecological consequences of such developments; the Green party is big in certain parts of Berlin). I can see that with my sisters, who have been living in downtown-ish Berlin for a long time while "poor" (think student, almost-unpaid intern, unemployed), and who constantly complained about the rents (that my parents and later welfare paid) and scarcity of available apartments, but at the same time were e.g. very much against any plans to develop the large area of the old closed Tempelhof airport, where all plans to develop that area were abandoned after multiple public referendums decided that the area has to remain a "park". That alone is 12km² of now entirely unused space close to the heart of the city, space for about at least 50000 people considering Berlins current population density of 4118 people per km². Or develop only half of it, and leave 6km² and that's still a ton of new apartments. But nope.
that_guy_iain 6y ago
They're building housing all the time. There are 3-4 housing blocks being build near me. One office building being built. Everyone keeps acting like they can just build new housing over night. To be fair, construction work in Berlin is super slow.
- sabjut 6y ago
  Well in recent months the Tesla Giga Berlin factory has shown just how fast construction can take place if the people in power actually want it to happen. Building new housing units in the city slows the increase in value of existing real estate, which is why property owners are not rushing to allow the construction of new structures. Lobbyism is a powerful force in real estate.
  - that_guy_iain 6y ago
    To be fair, it's not he people in power it's the construction companies. The amount of workers on a building site in Germany is way lower than in other places. And then you get the ones where they put 2-3 people for 2-3 weeks every 6 months.
    - corty 6y ago
      Depends. Public construction is very different from private and industrial construction. As the industry pays well, on time and demands results, their construction sites are staffed to the fullest amount possible and complete astonishingly fast. Public construction on the other hand goes with the cheapest bidder, so doesn't pay that well. Also, the state will only pay after a lengthy process of inspections and trying to find something wrong with the finished building. So lots of companies just avoid public bids, because they cannot afford to finance all the materials and work pay for the duration of the build. Those that can afford it are companies that specialize in public construction sites, usually designed to be able to go bankrupt at the first sign of trouble. Generally, in a public construction site, all contractors are lowest bidders. Some do intentionally bid lower than cost to get the contract. What they then try to do to recoup their cost is to try to find some problem that wasn't spelled out in the bidding, or to wait for some change of plans or regulations. Because they then can bill a lot more for the additional work and material necessary to fix the problem, or hold up the construction site in lengthy court proceedings. Because everyone knows that something like that will happen at some point, they intentionally go as slow as possible, waiting for the order to drop everything and wait for the courts. Because if they are quick and invest a lot of work and material, they might not survive the delay.
tonyjstark 6y ago
Same here. The city itself should build as many cheap rental apartments as possible, also in more higher-priced areas to keep the pricing there in check. Building more housing is the only way out of this soaring pricing. EDIT: not only rental apartments of course but more housing in general. A second step would be, to make sure that rental housing is used for that instead of AirBNB or any other investment. It would also help to reduce land transfer tax if someone then lives in the bought flat. Speculators and builders anyway get around it in the long term by founding businesses that buy apartment blocks (pay the tax once) and then later only trade the shares of these businesses. And last but not least, they should stop to discuss dispossessing property. It does not solve anything but wastes time and energy.
- mattmanser 6y ago
  So here in the UK, our councils used to build social housing. 300,000 per year. And then Thatcher made it illegal and said privately owned housing associations would fill the gap. In the 30 years since then, the most they've ever managed is 30,000. It's not in private landowner's interest to build cheap social housing. It reduces rents, it suppresses property values. So they don't get built. If they do build anything, it's in their interests to build luxury apartments. They make the most money out of those. I know little about Berlin's housing, but by any chance would there be a lot of expensive apartments being built? Did something similar happen in German history? You'll probably find all the big landowners in Berlin and Germany lobbying very hard to make sure nothing like this ever happens.
  - Tenoke 6y ago
    I'd take them building more expensive housing (as long as it's not used purely as an empty investment vehicle as in London) over barely building anything at all. I know people who would've paid a bit more for a nicer place but their options were too limited, so I'd expect some trickle-up/down effect at least.
    - kokey 6y ago
      There is a point when you run out of people who are willing to spend millions on the empty investment vehicles so I'm hoping even those properties will help with supply when the tide eventually do go out. Unfortunately it could take a very long time before this happens.
dgellow 6y ago
The amount of unused space is Berlin is just so massive. Even in Friedrichstraße, which is a hype neighborhood with great amount of activity, you have hundreds of square meters completely unused, with wild plants growing around and random waste accumulating. From what I understand it is very difficult to do something with that space, either because people refuse to sell or because of bureaucratic red tape.
- spdionis 6y ago
  Wild plants growing around in a city, the horror!
  - corty 6y ago
    Well, either you build over the growing plants in the city, or you raze plants in the outskirts. The former gets complaints because people want greenery in the city, the latter gets complaints because of sprawl, added traffic and unnecessary pollution.
  - dgellow 6y ago
    When you have wasted space in a city with massive rent increase, then yes, it's horror. The land could be easily used to create new park areas, stores, or housing units. Instead you have absolutely nothing other than waste accumulating.
- southerntofu 6y ago
  > The amount of unused space is Berlin is just so massive. What's wrong with that? Enjoy the little green space you have left while it lasts. Have a BBQ with friends over there, maybe? The gentrifiers/developers won't be so long to remove every last bit of green and freedom in your neighborhood, as they did everywhere else.
  - jdasdf 6y ago
    >What's wrong with that? ...The high housing prices.
Asmod4n 6y ago
They are building a massive amount of houses, but they are too expensive for the average Berlin citizen.
- jurip 6y ago
  I don't know the details of the Berlin situation, but as long as someone lives in those new apartments (who would have lived in Berlin anyway), it helps with the housing shortage and prices. Someone moves to the new, most expensive apartment in the city, someone else moves to their now vacant slightly less expensive apartment, etc. At some point in the chain that means there's cheaper housing available. This is a constant discussion in Helsinki, too. I think it's better to build expensive if that translates to good locations and high quality.
  - wsc981 6y ago
    > Someone moves to the new, most expensive apartment in the city, someone else moves to their now vacant slightly less expensive apartment, etc. At some point in the chain that means there's cheaper housing available. In The Netherlands there are actually quite a few people that don't want to upgrade from cheaper social rent housing to more expensive private rent housing. These people are called "scheefwoners", which to a Dutch person's ears make it sound like it's almost a criminal activity: > Scheefwonen is a term that is used in the Netherlands for the living of people in a rental home despite their income being too high for that. So the tenants have an income that is too high for their type of home, so that they actually pay too little rent. With a given housing stock, the downside is that there are people who live in a rented house whose rent is high in relation to their income, which is undesirable for the residents themselves and / or socially in connection with the housing allowance. It can also play a role that the rent is low compared to the characteristics of the home. The Key Publication on the Dutch Housing Survey “Living in Unusual Times”, published in April 2013, showed that the number of households in rental homes with a rent below the deregulation threshold and an income higher than € 33,000 in 2009 was approximately 790 thousand. Of course these people might have pretty good reasons why they prefer to keep living in cheap social housing. Perhaps these people want to save/invest more of their income, perhaps they like their neighbourhood or perhaps private rent housing is just too expensive. Either way, I feel it's wrong to say that these people "pay too little rent based on their income". That almost seems to suggest a certain percentage of income should be spent on rent or mortgage, whether one chooses to or not. Again, this problem could be easily solved by just building more houses, but this is also very difficult to achieve in The Netherlands, due to ground speculation by municipal governments and a plethora of rules that a builder has to conform to when building new houses. This, combined with an average immigration of around 400-500 migrants a week means that for the next 15 years or so I don't believe this problem will be fixed, maybe not even in 30 years, unless some major policy changes are introduced. This situation is good for rent-seekers though, they will be able to ask a premium for a very long time. Source: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheefwonen https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=https:/...
guerrilla 6y ago
Who would do that? The same people with an incentive to restrict supply? Call me cynical but that's how it works elsewhere.
SiNTEx 6y ago
In Prague we have a comparable housing problem to Berlin but all the politicians tend to balme AirBnB and real estate investors and they all focus on some kind of market regulation. Mostly just talking about it because they know any strict regulation would be unconstitutional. From the technical perspective the solution is simple. We should just build more houses in big projects like we did 40 years ago which will drive down the unit price and also provide all the necessary infrastructure like public transport and schools. Pretty big portion (tens of percent) of Prague's housing capacity was build during the 40 years communist era. If we could successfully build huge housing projects like Jižní Město (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ji%C5%BEn%C3%AD_M%C4%9Bsto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ji%C5%BEn%C3%AD_M%C4%9Bsto) during this awful regime whit very limited economic resources then it's surely doable now and in much higher standard. We just lack the political will to think longer then next 4 years till the next elections and to solve the problems instead of just talking about it and blaming someone else.
lqet 6y ago
> Why not make it a multistory building with apartments on top of the supermarket and skip the parking space or put it underground? That's exactly what they are doing at a few places in my city (also with a massive housing problem). We recently found a new apartment here, the process was as follows: (1) We found the apartment online. It was online for exactly 6 hours, listed by an estate agent. (2) Inside the listing (hidden deep in the description) was a short sentence saying that any contact made through the listing website contact form would be ignored and that a secret mail address had to be used. You had to email an application letter (preferably with photos), copies of your latest 3 salary statements, copies of your identity card, proof of your credit-worthiness ("Schufa-Auskunft" in Germany), proof that you had liability insurance, and contact information of previous landlords. This had to be mailed until a deadline the next morning. If any of this was missing, the application would be ignored. (3) A week later, we received an email telling us that we were eligible for an appointment to visit the apartment. But we had to confirm this until the same evening by sending an SMS to a secret number. (4) A few days later, we indeed got a date and time for visiting the apartment (via SMS). It was a 15-minute slot, but there were at least 10 other families there, and they did visits the entire day. When the agent asked us, we indicated strong interest, told him we could rent the place beginning tomorrow and left. (5) A week later, we got the apartment (of course we now have to pay 2 rents for 3 months). When we asked him why the process was so complicated, he told us that they were only 4 people in the agency, and they didn't have the capacity to read (not answer!) > 1000 mails of people interested in the apartment. So they gradually came up with various hoops and obstacles to get this number down to something manageable (they got it down to around 50 families who indicated final interest).
- cbqfund 6y ago
  And (2) means that privacy oriented persons no longer can get an apartment in Germany. BTW, 10% of these data collecting advertisements on the real estate websites are from identity thieves.
  - corty 6y ago
    Actually what they are doing and asking for is illegal. Asking for credit scores, proof of employment and sensitive stuff like that is only legal when an offer to rent is actually being made to that candidate. Just having everybody send in everything is common, but should never happen. However, privacy watchdogs are somewhat toothless and future renters put up with it because they have no other choice.
southerntofu 6y ago
Why build more? There's plenty of abandoned/empty housing everywhere in big cities? Unfortunately i don't speak german so i can't give you stats about Berlin, but in Paris alone it's >200 000 empty housing units according to official statistics. Building more is definitely the wrong solution to housing. Just remove the capitalist vampire landlords making a profit on basic human needs, and let everybody enjoy free housing for life! EDIT: Corrected stat. EDIT2: Funny to see people downvoting without argument. Are you all against Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, stating "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services" ?
- Asdrubalini 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand
  - gjulianm 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition#Idealizing_conditions_of_perfect_competition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition#Idealizing... People can't live without housing so demand is not elastic. Plus the housing market is special regarding spatial location. Applying regular market rules as if the housing market behaved the same as, say, the screwdrivers market, does not make sense at all.
    - EdwinLarkin 6y ago
      In 99% cases it's the government/zoning rules that prevent increasing the supply of housing not private investors not wanting to build enough.
      - gjulianm 6y ago
        And in many cases it's private investors buying houses for speculation (either by increasing rent or by using them for AirBnBs) the ones that drive prices up, not an increase of supply. In any case, my point is that applying market rules to housing does not make sense, it's not a competitive market at all and never can be.
kokey 6y ago
How things have changed. I remember going to Berlin around 15 years ago and was surprised how cheap the property was there. At the time it was a city where the population wasn't growing for a very long time, but had good infrastructure and more supply and demand especially to the East. Large apartments in established neighbourhoods were the norm. There was also not much in the way of jobs going for working in tech, or else I would probably have moved there as soon as I landed an opportunity to do so. The tech jobs and the young talent found each other there and the rest is history and this spike in demand keeps luring in more property speculators. It's a difficult situation to fix, the real fix here is a policy to increase housing supply dramatically. Unfortunately the financial incentives against this is very strong, because a critical mass of people have an interest in even higher prices. Putting controls on the trade of existing properties (e.g. making mortgages less accessible) or taxing landlords higher results in a shortage of rental properties and makes the prices rise even further. Rent control to try curb this leads to further shortages.
the_gipsy 6y ago
Paradoxically, more housing also increases rents. More citizens in the city leads to higher salaries, attracting even more citizens that need more housing...

mpweiher 6y ago

> ... just build more housing instead. Exactly. And the Mietendeckel caused new construction to essentially stop completely. Way to go!

mschuster91 6y ago
This is utterly wrong. https://taz.de/Mehr-Baugenehmigungen-in-Berlin/!5706294/ https://taz.de/Mehr-Baugenehmigungen-in-Berlin/!5706294/
- mpweiher 6y ago
  Nope. Your article was for the first half of 2020. For the whole year of 2020, the numbers were down again, fourth year running. "16.03.2021: Heute hat das Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg die Baugenehmigungszahlen für das Jahr 2020 veröffentlicht. Die Zahl der Baugenehmigungen sank in Berlin das vierte Jahr in Folge." https://www.immobilien-aktuell-magazin.de/topics/auswirkungen-des-mietendeckels-in-berlin/ https://www.immobilien-aktuell-magazin.de/topics/auswirkunge... https://www.rbb24.de/politik/beitrag/2020/11/berlin-mietendeckel-investitionstopp-immobilienkonzern-vonovia.html https://www.rbb24.de/politik/beitrag/2020/11/berlin-mietende... And the effects already started in 2019, when the law was planned: https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2019-11/berlin-mietendeckel-gesetz-neubau-investitionen-stopp https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2019-11/berlin-mietendeckel-g...
  - yladiz 6y ago
    If it's been happening for four years, how did the Mietendeckel cause it?
    - mpweiher 6y ago
      In 2015, a similar but less draconian "Mietpreisbremse" was enacted at the federal level. 2016 was the year the construction trend turned from yearly increases to declines, and it has been declining consistently ever since. In 2019, in anticipation of the Mietendeckel, the decline became significantly steeper. Several large companies announced that they were halting all new construction and renovation projects. At the same time, inventory has practically disappeared. So instead of "unaffordable" housing[1] for new tenants, we now have no housing for new tenants. (Existing rents were already protected). [1] Berlin is still cheap compared other large German cities and certainly compared to most capital cities of industrialised countries or places like SF. It's just not quite as ridiculously cheap any longer.

throwaway4good 6y ago

But they won't. What does that tell you about the politicians promoting this rent control policy?

llampx 6y ago
That all they care about is getting reelected by people who live there and want free stuff, rather than solving real, hard problems?

FlyingSnake 6y ago

Berlin has enough space and I guess the pressure on properties outside the ring (e.g. Marzahn/Marienfeld) is less. However if everyone wants to move to Mitte/kreuzölln, then this creates lots of competition.

flohofwoe 6y ago

That's already happening with two Edeka markets in my neighbourhood, they teared down the old markets, and replace(d) them with new buildings with the market on the bottom floor, and flats on top. Drop in the bucket though I think. I don't think the city is giving out new building permits for this type of stuff, and many of those markets have either been there "forever", or have been built after the reunification (and in the 90's city planners were expecting that the city would shrink further, not grow).

llampx 6y ago
You hit on the major problem. That it's hard to build in the city. So many ugly buildings under Denkmalschutz, so many empty concrete spaces and people still want to live where the facilities are, not in the outskirts if they have the choice.

yftsui 6y ago

Because the road and other related infrastructure may not be ready for the increased FAR ratio yet?

adrianN 6y ago
The supermarket in question has a bus stop right in front of it and is in walking distance from a train station and an underground station. The city center is a 15 minute bike ride away. It's not a neighborhood where you need a car.
llampx 6y ago
Sounds a bit like concern trolling if this is used to stop or delay building new apartments that people would love to move into.

raverbashing 6y ago

Compared to other capitals in Europe, they are doing it. It's of course a slow process, but it exists.

mschuster91 6y ago

> I wish Berlin would just build more housing instead. The problem is: Berlin can't. There is not much free space for new construction in Berlin proper, with the exception of "Nachverdichtung" such as you propose with apartments over parking lots - and these have the downside that they are horribly expensive, simply because it costs potential developers a lot of money to acquire the land! The solution would be to build out internet connectivity and public transport in the suburbs in Brandenburg so that employers don't all concentrate in Berlin.

inglor_cz 6y ago
Has Berlin built over all its brownfields? If so, very commendable. Here in Prague we have quite a few brownfields that could be home to at least 50 thousand people (Rohanský ostrov, Bubny, Kolbenova), but the development is extremely slow.
- southerntofu 6y ago
  > Has Berlin built over all its brownfields? If so, very commendable. Well having some undeveloped space is actually quite nice to enjoy in a city. We don't have to live packed narrowly on top of one another. But more specifically, brownfields (previously-industrial spaces) are usually highly polluted. Some are full of heavy metals and chemicals that you really don't want to displace into the air by digging into the soil... Some people are doing it, but it either costs billions of euros in depollution, or greatly affects the health of nearby population, and often both.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    Where I was born (Ostrava, a heavy industry city), there was a giant, massively polluted brownfield right next to the city centre. It required several years of sanation works to clean up, but now it is built over and serves the needs of the population. [0] I believe that this is a reasonable use of public money, even though private developers profit from it. Or possibly finance it through a Public-Private Partnership project. The alternative is to let poisoned land within borders of a big city stay poisoned forever. Which does not sound either people- or environment-friendly. [0] https://www.ostrava.cz/en/podnikatel-investor/real-estate/brownfields-1/karolina https://www.ostrava.cz/en/podnikatel-investor/real-estate/br...

oleganza 6y ago

My impression of Berlin (living there for the last 2 years) is that there's plenty of space, plenty of new housing already built and plenty of new construction still going. SF, NY, Paris and London are way more crowded and under-housed in comparison. Shitty one-story supermarkets are really just a sign of abundance of space and not enough demand (yet). Among big European cities the rent seems low. You can buy an super-duper-lux apartment for ~$1M in the very center of the city that in the next 10 years can easily go for $5M if Berlin is to continue to grow the way it does.

frereubu 6y ago
Surely a rent cap is a clear sign that there is demand though?
- southerntofu 6y ago
  A rent cap is a clear sign that the capitalist system is broken and we need a better system to match the housing needs and supply without feeding into heartless vampires who'd rather have empty apartments than rent them at a reasonable price.
  - EdwinLarkin 6y ago
    Quite the opposite actually.Increase capitalism and reduce government control and you get more housing.
    - crumbshot 6y ago
      That's not how it turned out in the UK. As this graph illustrates, when the local government authorities were prohibited from building more housing, from the 1980s onwards, the private sector didn't pick up any of the slack: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MmJ5N.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/MmJ5N.png The capitalists instead decided to optimize for steadily increasing the price of housing by restricting supply, so these are now primarily seen as an investment with nearly-guaranteed returns, rather than places for people to live.

rorykoehler 6y ago

It seems like covid will solve the Berlin housing problem. My building in Schillerkiez is slowly emptying out.

corty 6y ago
How does that work, I don't suppose residents are dying away? Does unemployment force them to move out?
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  Move to the countryside probably. Others move back home. The one person I spoke to was moving his family to a house for more green space
andreiursan 6y ago
Any specific reason why is emptying out?
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  Can’t enjoy the cultural offerings of the city if everything is closed and banned.

frereubu 6y ago

I imagine this might be implicit in your comment, but it's politically much easier to bring in a rent cap ("protecting the hard-working families of Berlin") than hand out building permits ("overdevelopment!") Issuing more building permits also takes a long time to have any effect on rents, so by the time it takes effect the politician who brought it in is likely to be long gone. More permits will only happen if politicians can stop bickering amongst themselves and agree that more housing is the way forward (which it clearly is, compared to rent controls).

dgellow 6y ago
I'm not convinced that it is politically easier, the rent cap is a very controversial topic (for good reasons, it's really an extreme measure). A fringe may like that talking point, but that's not how you do effective policies.
- rndgermandude 6y ago
  In Berlin it is a good talking point. I am not commenting on whether it is effective or good policy, just that you can score politically with it (well, until the court now killed it, I suppose). Concerns about being able to afford rent not just now but in the future is a major concern for a huge chunk of the population. They look at what happens in other large cities with rent prices (be it Munich, be it Paris, be it SF) in fear. Berlin itself uses an unofficial slogan of "Arm aber Sexy" ("poor but sexy/attractive"), coined by a former Berlin major referring to the budget of the city but adopted by the population to mean the people living there as well. They fear that driving out poor people - including themselves - and turn it into yet another place for the rich, and/or fear "over-development" will destroy the character of the city (and the ecological consequences of such developments; the Green party is big in certain parts of Berlin). I can see that with my sisters, who have been living in downtown-ish Berlin for a long time while "poor" (think student, almost-unpaid intern, unemployed), and who constantly complained about the rents (that my parents and later welfare paid) and scarcity of available apartments, but at the same time were e.g. very much against any plans to develop the large area of the old closed Tempelhof airport, where all plans to develop that area were abandoned after multiple public referendums decided that the area has to remain a "park". That alone is 12km² of now entirely unused space close to the heart of the city, space for about at least 50000 people considering Berlins current population density of 4118 people per km². Or develop only half of it, and leave 6km² and that's still a ton of new apartments. But nope.

that_guy_iain 6y ago

They're building housing all the time. There are 3-4 housing blocks being build near me. One office building being built. Everyone keeps acting like they can just build new housing over night. To be fair, construction work in Berlin is super slow.

sabjut 6y ago
Well in recent months the Tesla Giga Berlin factory has shown just how fast construction can take place if the people in power actually want it to happen. Building new housing units in the city slows the increase in value of existing real estate, which is why property owners are not rushing to allow the construction of new structures. Lobbyism is a powerful force in real estate.
- that_guy_iain 6y ago
  To be fair, it's not he people in power it's the construction companies. The amount of workers on a building site in Germany is way lower than in other places. And then you get the ones where they put 2-3 people for 2-3 weeks every 6 months.
  - corty 6y ago
    Depends. Public construction is very different from private and industrial construction. As the industry pays well, on time and demands results, their construction sites are staffed to the fullest amount possible and complete astonishingly fast. Public construction on the other hand goes with the cheapest bidder, so doesn't pay that well. Also, the state will only pay after a lengthy process of inspections and trying to find something wrong with the finished building. So lots of companies just avoid public bids, because they cannot afford to finance all the materials and work pay for the duration of the build. Those that can afford it are companies that specialize in public construction sites, usually designed to be able to go bankrupt at the first sign of trouble. Generally, in a public construction site, all contractors are lowest bidders. Some do intentionally bid lower than cost to get the contract. What they then try to do to recoup their cost is to try to find some problem that wasn't spelled out in the bidding, or to wait for some change of plans or regulations. Because they then can bill a lot more for the additional work and material necessary to fix the problem, or hold up the construction site in lengthy court proceedings. Because everyone knows that something like that will happen at some point, they intentionally go as slow as possible, waiting for the order to drop everything and wait for the courts. Because if they are quick and invest a lot of work and material, they might not survive the delay.

tonyjstark 6y ago

Same here. The city itself should build as many cheap rental apartments as possible, also in more higher-priced areas to keep the pricing there in check. Building more housing is the only way out of this soaring pricing. EDIT: not only rental apartments of course but more housing in general. A second step would be, to make sure that rental housing is used for that instead of AirBNB or any other investment. It would also help to reduce land transfer tax if someone then lives in the bought flat. Speculators and builders anyway get around it in the long term by founding businesses that buy apartment blocks (pay the tax once) and then later only trade the shares of these businesses. And last but not least, they should stop to discuss dispossessing property. It does not solve anything but wastes time and energy.

mattmanser 6y ago
So here in the UK, our councils used to build social housing. 300,000 per year. And then Thatcher made it illegal and said privately owned housing associations would fill the gap. In the 30 years since then, the most they've ever managed is 30,000. It's not in private landowner's interest to build cheap social housing. It reduces rents, it suppresses property values. So they don't get built. If they do build anything, it's in their interests to build luxury apartments. They make the most money out of those. I know little about Berlin's housing, but by any chance would there be a lot of expensive apartments being built? Did something similar happen in German history? You'll probably find all the big landowners in Berlin and Germany lobbying very hard to make sure nothing like this ever happens.
- Tenoke 6y ago
  I'd take them building more expensive housing (as long as it's not used purely as an empty investment vehicle as in London) over barely building anything at all. I know people who would've paid a bit more for a nicer place but their options were too limited, so I'd expect some trickle-up/down effect at least.
  - kokey 6y ago
    There is a point when you run out of people who are willing to spend millions on the empty investment vehicles so I'm hoping even those properties will help with supply when the tide eventually do go out. Unfortunately it could take a very long time before this happens.

dgellow 6y ago

The amount of unused space is Berlin is just so massive. Even in Friedrichstraße, which is a hype neighborhood with great amount of activity, you have hundreds of square meters completely unused, with wild plants growing around and random waste accumulating. From what I understand it is very difficult to do something with that space, either because people refuse to sell or because of bureaucratic red tape.

spdionis 6y ago
Wild plants growing around in a city, the horror!
- corty 6y ago
  Well, either you build over the growing plants in the city, or you raze plants in the outskirts. The former gets complaints because people want greenery in the city, the latter gets complaints because of sprawl, added traffic and unnecessary pollution.
- dgellow 6y ago
  When you have wasted space in a city with massive rent increase, then yes, it's horror. The land could be easily used to create new park areas, stores, or housing units. Instead you have absolutely nothing other than waste accumulating.
southerntofu 6y ago
> The amount of unused space is Berlin is just so massive. What's wrong with that? Enjoy the little green space you have left while it lasts. Have a BBQ with friends over there, maybe? The gentrifiers/developers won't be so long to remove every last bit of green and freedom in your neighborhood, as they did everywhere else.
- jdasdf 6y ago
  >What's wrong with that? ...The high housing prices.

Asmod4n 6y ago

They are building a massive amount of houses, but they are too expensive for the average Berlin citizen.

jurip 6y ago
I don't know the details of the Berlin situation, but as long as someone lives in those new apartments (who would have lived in Berlin anyway), it helps with the housing shortage and prices. Someone moves to the new, most expensive apartment in the city, someone else moves to their now vacant slightly less expensive apartment, etc. At some point in the chain that means there's cheaper housing available. This is a constant discussion in Helsinki, too. I think it's better to build expensive if that translates to good locations and high quality.
- wsc981 6y ago
  > Someone moves to the new, most expensive apartment in the city, someone else moves to their now vacant slightly less expensive apartment, etc. At some point in the chain that means there's cheaper housing available. In The Netherlands there are actually quite a few people that don't want to upgrade from cheaper social rent housing to more expensive private rent housing. These people are called "scheefwoners", which to a Dutch person's ears make it sound like it's almost a criminal activity: > Scheefwonen is a term that is used in the Netherlands for the living of people in a rental home despite their income being too high for that. So the tenants have an income that is too high for their type of home, so that they actually pay too little rent. With a given housing stock, the downside is that there are people who live in a rented house whose rent is high in relation to their income, which is undesirable for the residents themselves and / or socially in connection with the housing allowance. It can also play a role that the rent is low compared to the characteristics of the home. The Key Publication on the Dutch Housing Survey “Living in Unusual Times”, published in April 2013, showed that the number of households in rental homes with a rent below the deregulation threshold and an income higher than € 33,000 in 2009 was approximately 790 thousand. Of course these people might have pretty good reasons why they prefer to keep living in cheap social housing. Perhaps these people want to save/invest more of their income, perhaps they like their neighbourhood or perhaps private rent housing is just too expensive. Either way, I feel it's wrong to say that these people "pay too little rent based on their income". That almost seems to suggest a certain percentage of income should be spent on rent or mortgage, whether one chooses to or not. Again, this problem could be easily solved by just building more houses, but this is also very difficult to achieve in The Netherlands, due to ground speculation by municipal governments and a plethora of rules that a builder has to conform to when building new houses. This, combined with an average immigration of around 400-500 migrants a week means that for the next 15 years or so I don't believe this problem will be fixed, maybe not even in 30 years, unless some major policy changes are introduced. This situation is good for rent-seekers though, they will be able to ask a premium for a very long time. Source: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheefwonen https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=https:/...

guerrilla 6y ago

Who would do that? The same people with an incentive to restrict supply? Call me cynical but that's how it works elsewhere.

SiNTEx 6y ago

In Prague we have a comparable housing problem to Berlin but all the politicians tend to balme AirBnB and real estate investors and they all focus on some kind of market regulation. Mostly just talking about it because they know any strict regulation would be unconstitutional. From the technical perspective the solution is simple. We should just build more houses in big projects like we did 40 years ago which will drive down the unit price and also provide all the necessary infrastructure like public transport and schools. Pretty big portion (tens of percent) of Prague's housing capacity was build during the 40 years communist era. If we could successfully build huge housing projects like Jižní Město (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ji%C5%BEn%C3%AD_M%C4%9Bsto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ji%C5%BEn%C3%AD_M%C4%9Bsto) during this awful regime whit very limited economic resources then it's surely doable now and in much higher standard. We just lack the political will to think longer then next 4 years till the next elections and to solve the problems instead of just talking about it and blaming someone else.

lqet 6y ago

> Why not make it a multistory building with apartments on top of the supermarket and skip the parking space or put it underground? That's exactly what they are doing at a few places in my city (also with a massive housing problem). We recently found a new apartment here, the process was as follows: (1) We found the apartment online. It was online for exactly 6 hours, listed by an estate agent. (2) Inside the listing (hidden deep in the description) was a short sentence saying that any contact made through the listing website contact form would be ignored and that a secret mail address had to be used. You had to email an application letter (preferably with photos), copies of your latest 3 salary statements, copies of your identity card, proof of your credit-worthiness ("Schufa-Auskunft" in Germany), proof that you had liability insurance, and contact information of previous landlords. This had to be mailed until a deadline the next morning. If any of this was missing, the application would be ignored. (3) A week later, we received an email telling us that we were eligible for an appointment to visit the apartment. But we had to confirm this until the same evening by sending an SMS to a secret number. (4) A few days later, we indeed got a date and time for visiting the apartment (via SMS). It was a 15-minute slot, but there were at least 10 other families there, and they did visits the entire day. When the agent asked us, we indicated strong interest, told him we could rent the place beginning tomorrow and left. (5) A week later, we got the apartment (of course we now have to pay 2 rents for 3 months). When we asked him why the process was so complicated, he told us that they were only 4 people in the agency, and they didn't have the capacity to read (not answer!) > 1000 mails of people interested in the apartment. So they gradually came up with various hoops and obstacles to get this number down to something manageable (they got it down to around 50 families who indicated final interest).

cbqfund 6y ago
And (2) means that privacy oriented persons no longer can get an apartment in Germany. BTW, 10% of these data collecting advertisements on the real estate websites are from identity thieves.
- corty 6y ago
  Actually what they are doing and asking for is illegal. Asking for credit scores, proof of employment and sensitive stuff like that is only legal when an offer to rent is actually being made to that candidate. Just having everybody send in everything is common, but should never happen. However, privacy watchdogs are somewhat toothless and future renters put up with it because they have no other choice.

southerntofu 6y ago

Why build more? There's plenty of abandoned/empty housing everywhere in big cities? Unfortunately i don't speak german so i can't give you stats about Berlin, but in Paris alone it's >200 000 empty housing units according to official statistics. Building more is definitely the wrong solution to housing. Just remove the capitalist vampire landlords making a profit on basic human needs, and let everybody enjoy free housing for life! EDIT: Corrected stat. EDIT2: Funny to see people downvoting without argument. Are you all against Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, stating "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services" ?

Asdrubalini 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand
- gjulianm 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition#Idealizing_conditions_of_perfect_competition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition#Idealizing... People can't live without housing so demand is not elastic. Plus the housing market is special regarding spatial location. Applying regular market rules as if the housing market behaved the same as, say, the screwdrivers market, does not make sense at all.
  - EdwinLarkin 6y ago
    In 99% cases it's the government/zoning rules that prevent increasing the supply of housing not private investors not wanting to build enough.
    - gjulianm 6y ago
      And in many cases it's private investors buying houses for speculation (either by increasing rent or by using them for AirBnBs) the ones that drive prices up, not an increase of supply. In any case, my point is that applying market rules to housing does not make sense, it's not a competitive market at all and never can be.

kokey 6y ago

How things have changed. I remember going to Berlin around 15 years ago and was surprised how cheap the property was there. At the time it was a city where the population wasn't growing for a very long time, but had good infrastructure and more supply and demand especially to the East. Large apartments in established neighbourhoods were the norm. There was also not much in the way of jobs going for working in tech, or else I would probably have moved there as soon as I landed an opportunity to do so. The tech jobs and the young talent found each other there and the rest is history and this spike in demand keeps luring in more property speculators. It's a difficult situation to fix, the real fix here is a policy to increase housing supply dramatically. Unfortunately the financial incentives against this is very strong, because a critical mass of people have an interest in even higher prices. Putting controls on the trade of existing properties (e.g. making mortgages less accessible) or taxing landlords higher results in a shortage of rental properties and makes the prices rise even further. Rent control to try curb this leads to further shortages.

the_gipsy 6y ago

Paradoxically, more housing also increases rents. More citizens in the city leads to higher salaries, attracting even more citizens that need more housing...