5 ms·

> But rents are high — and rising — in Fürstenfeldbruck. Why are rents to high? Why are they raising? And _who_ exactly is rising them? I can't see the econom

by watt 5y ago

> But rents are high — and rising — in Fürstenfeldbruck. Why are rents to high? Why are they raising? And _who_ exactly is rising them? I can't see the economic reason why such a large chunk of income needs to go to "landlords". Rents could just as well be very low, set to extremely reasonable level (they should be negligible, maybe 10% of monthly income at most, really). If you are a land-owner, that's about the level of taxation you see. I just don't see why we accept current state of things as the way to be.

axiosgunnar 5y ago
The rents are rising because the building code is ridiculously prohibitive (NIMBY and because the German state loves bureaucracy, everything takes 10x longer). This is the one and only reason. Everything else is political smokescreen.
VortexDream 5y ago
Same as anywhere else. Lack of supply caused by zoning and an interest in keeping property values high by existing owners.
lispm 5y ago
> I can't see the economic reason The market creates the price: little supply and very high demand. Fürstenfeldbruck is one of the most attractive regions in the country. Generally this is the case for the rest of the metropolitan region of Munich. Fürstenfeldbruck is a small town (< 40k people) near Munich.
- watt 5y ago
  By "reason" I mean I don't see how it's justified. The government could work on both the supply and demand side of equation, and increase the quality of life of residents, by allowing a way larger chunk of income stay in their hands.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    It's hardly defensible, but since the neoliberal turn in the 80s/90s most global north governments have started to dismantle their public services. That's why they're not working on both sides of the equation: because governments work directly against the interest of the people. Governments and elections are the exact opposite of democracy, because it's delegating powers to representatives instead of exerting "power of the people, by the people, for the people".
    - lispm 5y ago
      Last I've been to Munich public services seemed not to be dismantled. Munich has other problems: it's too successful and attracts people and investors.
      - southerntofu 5y ago
        > public services seemed not to be dismantled It's a very progressive process, not a binary flag. See for example David Graeber's CCC talk on "Managerial feudalism and the revolt of the caring classes". All in all most of the global north appears to have strong public services and cultivate that image to please the middle classes who are happy to pay taxes for that, but they've worked hard to make them harder to reach and impossible to sustain (see also, Covid crisis and public hospitals) in order to "attract people and investors". There's no way a society with good public services can be attractive to private investors, because good public services provide better services at a much lower price than private services. It's either one or the other, and the presence of investors and gentrification is a factor that the social fabric and public services have already been heavily damaged.
  - lispm 5y ago
    How could they?
kharak 5y ago
I know someone who wants to rebuild his one level apartments into a four level apartment block. Good district in Hamburg. Exactly the kind of thing the city needs. More apartments, increased density, private investment. He's trying to get the allowance to do so for up to two years by now. Every plan his architect makes gets denied for different, petty reasons. Once he manages to fulfill all requirements of the bureaucracy, the true battle will begin. Residents in the area have already said they will do everything in their power to stop this rebuilding from happening. No matter the outcome of this legal battle, that'll add another couple of years until this apartment building becomes reality. Germany has a problem. It's becoming impossible to execute in physical space.
- suction 5y ago
  If you put yourself in the position of those neighbours, they do have a point though: New apartments usually means luxury apartments, hence gentrification.
  - berlin_build 5y ago
    So basically “fuck you, I got mine”?
chrisseaton 5y ago
Does 10% cover the cost of building and maintaining the housing? If not, who's paying for it instead?
- watt 5y ago
  Building "code" and bureaucracy around it seems to be some kind of weird cult. I bet in this day and age it is actually quite cheap to build, if you look at what costs in term of materials and actual wages of construction workers. Everything else around it is inflated to hell on other hand.
  - cabraca 5y ago
    Due to low interest rates companies(even foreign)are buying land and buildings like crazy, building new ones and rebuilding like crazy trying to raise their return. Prices are skyrocketing. Construction companies have more projects than they can work on. Those new buildings are expensive as hell and rent is rising as well. The average rent in the village i live in doubled in the last 10 years and thats probably due to some restrictions on how much rent can be raised in a certain interval.
    - candiodari 5y ago
      But without (extremely) low interest rates government spending would have to be cut A LOT ... so who decides interest rates again? Oh wait ... Expecting an increase in rates is like expecting the government to decide it's too big (and not a little bit). Good luck with that. Even very rightist parties in Europe don't even try to make that point any more.
bennysomething 5y ago
The prices are what people on mass are agreeing to pay. There isn't a land lord conspiracy raising the rent. Should some third party decide this instead? Should this apply to to every transaction, not just rents? Instead, in a free market people make decisions on their own, do they want to live close to town where it's expensive or would they prefer out of town where it's cheaper etc. Having some third party decide prices sounds reasonable at first but the freedom it removes is huge. Also price fixing always has the same impact. Reduced supply.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  It's not exactly a worldwide conspiracy of landlords, because there's not a single table gathering them all to drive this plan. But there is a great amount of coordination between landlords and local politicians in the process of gentrification. Gentrification is something a single owner can't achieve, and that a disorganized group of owners can't achieve. It requires a strong coordination with public authority to deploy efforts to "clean the neighborhood", "evict squats and replace them with nice-looking artistic venues" or "setup new transport connections". See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification > Reduced supply I'd like to see evidence of that. Despite their glaring architectural issues, many public housing programs in Europe after WWII have led to cheap housing for many people. Here in France public housing in big cities, my approximation is that public housing rents are 10-40% the private market rents. Also, the waiting lists are long nowadays (was not already the case) because our governments are dismantling public housing programs and slowly privatizing anything. Finally, why would "reduced supply" matter when there's already an abundance of empty apartments/houses? Without even mentioning vacant office space which is a scandal on its own, there's millions of empty living spaces in the global north. According to official french gov. statistics it's 2.6M empty apartments.
  - bennysomething 5y ago
    You think there is an abundance of empty apartments? Based on what?
    - 5y ago

by watt 5y ago

axiosgunnar 5y ago

The rents are rising because the building code is ridiculously prohibitive (NIMBY and because the German state loves bureaucracy, everything takes 10x longer). This is the one and only reason. Everything else is political smokescreen.

VortexDream 5y ago

Same as anywhere else. Lack of supply caused by zoning and an interest in keeping property values high by existing owners.

lispm 5y ago

> I can't see the economic reason The market creates the price: little supply and very high demand. Fürstenfeldbruck is one of the most attractive regions in the country. Generally this is the case for the rest of the metropolitan region of Munich. Fürstenfeldbruck is a small town (< 40k people) near Munich.

watt 5y ago
By "reason" I mean I don't see how it's justified. The government could work on both the supply and demand side of equation, and increase the quality of life of residents, by allowing a way larger chunk of income stay in their hands.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  It's hardly defensible, but since the neoliberal turn in the 80s/90s most global north governments have started to dismantle their public services. That's why they're not working on both sides of the equation: because governments work directly against the interest of the people. Governments and elections are the exact opposite of democracy, because it's delegating powers to representatives instead of exerting "power of the people, by the people, for the people".
  - lispm 5y ago
    Last I've been to Munich public services seemed not to be dismantled. Munich has other problems: it's too successful and attracts people and investors.
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      > public services seemed not to be dismantled It's a very progressive process, not a binary flag. See for example David Graeber's CCC talk on "Managerial feudalism and the revolt of the caring classes". All in all most of the global north appears to have strong public services and cultivate that image to please the middle classes who are happy to pay taxes for that, but they've worked hard to make them harder to reach and impossible to sustain (see also, Covid crisis and public hospitals) in order to "attract people and investors". There's no way a society with good public services can be attractive to private investors, because good public services provide better services at a much lower price than private services. It's either one or the other, and the presence of investors and gentrification is a factor that the social fabric and public services have already been heavily damaged.
- lispm 5y ago
  How could they?

kharak 5y ago

I know someone who wants to rebuild his one level apartments into a four level apartment block. Good district in Hamburg. Exactly the kind of thing the city needs. More apartments, increased density, private investment. He's trying to get the allowance to do so for up to two years by now. Every plan his architect makes gets denied for different, petty reasons. Once he manages to fulfill all requirements of the bureaucracy, the true battle will begin. Residents in the area have already said they will do everything in their power to stop this rebuilding from happening. No matter the outcome of this legal battle, that'll add another couple of years until this apartment building becomes reality. Germany has a problem. It's becoming impossible to execute in physical space.

suction 5y ago
If you put yourself in the position of those neighbours, they do have a point though: New apartments usually means luxury apartments, hence gentrification.
- berlin_build 5y ago
  So basically “fuck you, I got mine”?

chrisseaton 5y ago

Does 10% cover the cost of building and maintaining the housing? If not, who's paying for it instead?

watt 5y ago
Building "code" and bureaucracy around it seems to be some kind of weird cult. I bet in this day and age it is actually quite cheap to build, if you look at what costs in term of materials and actual wages of construction workers. Everything else around it is inflated to hell on other hand.
- cabraca 5y ago
  Due to low interest rates companies(even foreign)are buying land and buildings like crazy, building new ones and rebuilding like crazy trying to raise their return. Prices are skyrocketing. Construction companies have more projects than they can work on. Those new buildings are expensive as hell and rent is rising as well. The average rent in the village i live in doubled in the last 10 years and thats probably due to some restrictions on how much rent can be raised in a certain interval.
  - candiodari 5y ago
    But without (extremely) low interest rates government spending would have to be cut A LOT ... so who decides interest rates again? Oh wait ... Expecting an increase in rates is like expecting the government to decide it's too big (and not a little bit). Good luck with that. Even very rightist parties in Europe don't even try to make that point any more.

bennysomething 5y ago

The prices are what people on mass are agreeing to pay. There isn't a land lord conspiracy raising the rent. Should some third party decide this instead? Should this apply to to every transaction, not just rents? Instead, in a free market people make decisions on their own, do they want to live close to town where it's expensive or would they prefer out of town where it's cheaper etc. Having some third party decide prices sounds reasonable at first but the freedom it removes is huge. Also price fixing always has the same impact. Reduced supply.

southerntofu 5y ago
It's not exactly a worldwide conspiracy of landlords, because there's not a single table gathering them all to drive this plan. But there is a great amount of coordination between landlords and local politicians in the process of gentrification. Gentrification is something a single owner can't achieve, and that a disorganized group of owners can't achieve. It requires a strong coordination with public authority to deploy efforts to "clean the neighborhood", "evict squats and replace them with nice-looking artistic venues" or "setup new transport connections". See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification > Reduced supply I'd like to see evidence of that. Despite their glaring architectural issues, many public housing programs in Europe after WWII have led to cheap housing for many people. Here in France public housing in big cities, my approximation is that public housing rents are 10-40% the private market rents. Also, the waiting lists are long nowadays (was not already the case) because our governments are dismantling public housing programs and slowly privatizing anything. Finally, why would "reduced supply" matter when there's already an abundance of empty apartments/houses? Without even mentioning vacant office space which is a scandal on its own, there's millions of empty living spaces in the global north. According to official french gov. statistics it's 2.6M empty apartments.
- bennysomething 5y ago
  You think there is an abundance of empty apartments? Based on what?
  - 5y ago