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I'm currently searching in Berlin and the market has become insane. Here's a response I got yesterday: "With more than 1200 prospective tenants, it was really
by aqme28 5y ago
I'm currently searching in Berlin and the market has become insane. Here's a response I got yesterday:
"With more than 1200 prospective tenants, it was really difficult for the landlord to make a decision.
Unfortunately, we have to inform you that the landlord has decided on other prospective tenants.
Thank you for your understanding!
"
- baobabKoodaa 5y agoThis sounds like rent caps.
- ghaff 5y agoMy initial reaction was that it sounds as if they're not charging nearly enough. You may want to be picky but that's ridiculous. But you may be right.
- wildmanx 5y agoThese 1:1200 are exceptional anecdotes that happen if you have some idealistic landlord that doesn't max out the allowed rent but rents it out at some price point that they consider reasonable, which is perhaps the rent from 20 years ago. Of course they get flooded with applications. If they'd max out, they'd still get multiple applications, but maybe 10-30 of those, half of them from people with bad credit rating. Still bad, but not as extreme as it sounds like.
- aqme28 5y agoThat’s part of it. The place was far below market.
- TillE 5y agoRents have absolutely skyrocketed over the past 15 years or so (3-4x), despite mild controls, so no not really.
- pacetherace 5y ago1:1200 is probably worse than most selective universities. I know it is not apples to apples comparison but it’s the first thing that came to my mind.
- csa 5y ago> 1:1200 is probably worse than most selective universities By two orders of magnitude. Ivies range from about 1:20 to 1:10 in non-covid times.
- ghaff 5y agoIt's sort of a meaningless comparison though. A huge amount of self-selection goes on before an application to an elite university is even filled out.
- csa 5y ago> A huge amount of self-selection goes on before an application to an elite university is even filled out Probably a lot less self-selecting out than you think.
- ghaff 5y agoI must say the list is a little bit surprising to me. https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/lowest-acceptance-rate https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/lowest-accepta... I guess I would have expected a few top Ivies to have significantly lower acceptance rates on the grounds that one could imagine a lot of average-ish students putting one of those schools down just in case they hit the lottery. But actually, the top Ivies, MIT, West Point, top music schools, and a couple of schools I've never even heard of (!) are all in the 5 to 10% admissions range.
- csa 5y ago> I guess I would have expected a few top Ivies to have significantly lower acceptance rates on the grounds that one could imagine a lot of average-ish students putting one of those schools down just in case they hit the lottery. There are many, many of these applicants who have roughly a 0% chance of admission. I am not saying that elite schools are easy to get in (they are not), but someone who is a strong all-around applicant will most likely get into at least one elite school. Most applicants are challenged by the fact that they only have one or two strong points (like grades and scores), and those “strong points” often aren’t even that strong. Athletics, community involvement, leadership, above-and-beyond academics, etc. go a long way.
- novocantico 5y agoYou gotta get creative. Walking down the street I met this one guy who's like 70, eccentric, military vet, owns the house, and rents it out individual rooms for $550/month. He's paid off the mortgage, just needs to pay taxes, and he's clearly making a profit since he's retired and constantly has new projects working on the house. For context that's 1/3 asking price out here.
- jthrowsitaway 5y agoIt's great that worked out for you. It'd be great if people didn't have to get creative to find basic housing.
- sl3232323 5y agoSince when did housing become a right?
- zabzonk 5y agoSince the UN was founded, and human rights were stated.
- MikePlacid 5y agoA bit earlier than that, actually: [In 1917] the government spearheaded great changes in people’s lives, starting with housing. The Soviets nationalized private property and started the so-called “уплотнение” (housing compaction), giving rooms to working-class families in large central apartments that used to belong to [previous owners]. Note that renters were “compacted” too. This project officially laid the groundwork for the often bizarre kommunalka housing - a resilient symbol of the Soviet past. https://www.rbth.com/lifestyle/331621-lenin-putin-soviet-russian-housing https://www.rbth.com/lifestyle/331621-lenin-putin-soviet-rus... So you are having problems looking for a 2bd apartment for a family of 3? What about one room in an apartment with a bath shared by 4 other families?
- Veen 5y ago
- TillE 5y agoYou pretty much have to buy an apartment in Berlin, that's been the case for the past 10 years or so. Landlords took them off the market and put them up for sale. You might still be able to find something decent for around 100k euro, I'm not sure.
- b20000 5y agowhy did landlords take their units off the market in berlin? because renting out is no longer interesting?
- theplumber 5y agoPerhaps due the regulation of the renting business.
- TillE 5y agoDunno, it doesn't really make sense to me. Sale prices were around 20 years' of rent, so it seems like a great asset to hold. I assume they just wanted to cash out on rising prices.
- OJFord 5y ago> Sale prices were around 20 years' of rent That's the same thing as 5% yield right? (Just that that's the way around I usually hear it, might be a regional thing.) That sounds like perhaps the high end of normal range, but not extraordinary?
- wildmanx 5y agoBecause a law called "Mietpreisbremse" makes it entirely unattractive to rent out. That's a strict regulation on how much rent you are allowed to take. And that's just the direct financial aspect. Once a tenant lives in your place, it's really hard to get rid of them. Even if they act like total scumbags, trash the place, disturb the neighbors, pay their rent late. No reasonable investor finds it attractive to build new rentals in German cities. Result is a shortage. And because of the shortage, rents skyrocket. And because of that, you have "Mietpreisbremse". And because of that, there is even less rentals and even more shortage. If only anybody would understand that you can't fight the market like that.
- sonicggg 5y agoThe pandemic allowed remote work to flourish. Why are people still crowding the cities? And of all the places, specially Berlin. Not even that great of a city. A lot of my friends fled the city.
- closeparen 5y agoAny place I can’t walk on well-traveled sidewalks to a coffee shop, restaurant, grocery store, etc. is a place not fit for human habitation.
- jfk13 5y agoI wonder how humans survived for the first, oh, 99% or so of the time we've been on earth?
- tayo42 5y agoWe've been driving to costco since neanderthals walked the earth
- not2b 5y agoFor all that time, people had to walk to wherever they needed to get to, so yes, they had to pick places where what they needed was close by.
- megous 5y agoBarely. The humans certainly would not survive in the current numbers/concentrations, without all the civilization around them.
- closeparen 5y agoPrior to the automobile era, we were all pedestrians. A small town was a town you could walk the length of. Europe is dotted with old villages denser than contemporary North American cities.
- ghaff 5y ago
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoPopulation of Berlin has hardly changed in the past 30 years, it grows at an annual a rate of like 0.2%. How is this madness possible? Edit: There were 3.5 million residents in 1993. It is projected to reach 3.6 million residents in 2029 [1] It's got to be something to do with financial markets and foreign investment 1 - https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/204296/berlin/population https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/204296/berlin/population
- extesy 5y agoThe simple answer is rent control: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-02/berlin-s-rent-controls-are-proving-to-be-the-disaster-we-feared https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-02/berlin...
- ng55QPSK 5y agoThe same old lie over and over again. Rent control is limiting the profit you can make with renting out. It doesn't stop profit in the first place. And btw: new built appartments have almost free price setting.
- JumpCrisscross 5y agoI have friends who used to let their Berlin flat. They stopped doing it after the apartment-seizure law passed [1]. Better to lose the income than lose the property (or be caught fighting an illegal law). [1] https://www.npr.org/2021/12/03/1061333538/berlin-voted-for-the-city-to-seize-apartments-owned-by-developers-to-lower-rent- https://www.npr.org/2021/12/03/1061333538/berlin-voted-for-t...
- ascar 5y agoWhat you're referencing is not a law it's a referendum that most likely will never be adopted as it's illegal. On top of that, how does that referendum affect your friends unless they run a giant business with thousands of apartments (to be exact 3000 or more)? And at that scale it's certainly cheaper to fight in court.
- noahtallen 5y agoPortland, OR solved that problem by making landlords accept the first offer which matches the stated requirements. Which leads to some… interesting incentives :p
- selestify 5y agoPlease do say, what interesting incentives appear? :)
- coolspot 5y agoHigh-frequency apartment trading. If you don’t submit your application in first 50ms after listing is up - you lose.
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoSeattle has this also. It leads to very stringent requirements, with little room for flexibility, you also have to the first qualified person to respond to an ad. It has also led to a lot of rental supply not being advertised, relying on personal connections to find tenants instead.
- Root_Denied 5y agoIt's also difficult to nail landlords on, so it goes largely unenforced (at least in Seattle). Most renters aren't going to be able to afford to take a landlord to court over an apartment they didn't get, they're just going to keep hunting because they're usually on a strict timeframe to move.
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoMost landlords are sophisticated enough to follow the rules, but it does affect corporate landlords (who always advertise and whose employees can lose their jobs if they don't follow the rules) more than private ones.
- wildmanx 5y agoThis is not a representative case though. A few years back, I was looking for a rental in a German city with a similarly hot market. One place I looked at was not very modern but had quite low rent, so there were 300 applicants and I didn't even try. Another place was put on the market 3 days prior, there were 5 people looking at it with me, 3 of them applied (including me), and I got it. It was more expensive though (not insane, mind you) and very modern, recently renovated. So, of course there will be crazy places, but if you only shoot for the ones with top demand, then of course you can come with anecdotes that sound insane.
- pph 5y agoAs I am also looking for a flat in Berlin I can only say: At least you got a response. It's nearly impossible to find anything below 20€/m² cold rent and some people are trying to (illegally) sell on old, cheap contracts for 6000€ and more.
- bogomipz 5y agoCan I ask what is cold rent here, does that does not include utilities or similar? Also how does the second illegal thing work, is that subletting basically?
- gmueckl 5y agoCan't answer the second question. As for the first one: in Germany, you pay rent plus an advance for certain utilities (heating, cold and hot water, trash collection, general maintenance of common areas etc.). The rent without the advance is commonly called "cold" rent (Kaltmiete). The advance is variable based on actual usage. So the common way to compare rents is by excluding that.
- MinorTom 5y ago> Also how does the second illegal thing work, is that subletting basically? I'm not sure if this is what gp meant, but: In some cases the current tenant (who is looking to move out) offers you the landlord's contact details if you agree to buy their kitchen for way too much money. This works because for a landlord looking for new tenants is a lot of hassle so they're likely to take you if you contact them.
- dghughes 5y agoAnd don't Germans traditionally prefer renting over owning? Or so I've heard (but I'm not German).
- ng55QPSK 5y agoI'm german and i can save roughly 15k€ per year (and that's a lot in german context). A freestanding house in this area (think Munich) costs a little bit north of 1.5Mio. Do the math.
- mikojan 5y agoLOL you get answers back?!