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It seems like it's the same story everywhere I look. Housing is the main driver of inequality and there is little change happening. We have the same problem her

It seems like it's the same story everywhere I look. Housing is the main driver of inequality and there is little change happening. We have the same problem here in Germany. I am currently living in Munich to finish my CS Master's at TUM and build a startup, and it is absolutely impossible to find anything remotely affordable. I am supported by two startup scholarships and make enough to get by, but no landlord even gives me the chance in the first place after they see my income and plans. Right now I am paying 940€ for ~20sqm, and only because my mom co-signed my contract - which is incredibly humiliating as a 24 year old guy. And even with high-paying jobs it's impossible to get anything remotely affordable. My girlfriend just finished her degree and makes 75k straight out of college and still gets rejected either for her financial situation or because the rental contract is already set to increase 8% each year - which we simply cannot afford. And it's not just Munich. Every city in Germany has this problem. How the hell are we ever supposed to build up some savings, settle down and have a comfortable life? It really feels like being born 15 years too late for this. Germany paid a lot for our education but offers us little reason to stay. We are already looking to move to other places and created a university-wide google sheet where we compare different countries and cities around the world for those kinds of categories. Sorry for the rant.

maxFlow 4y ago
> We are already looking to move to other places and created a university-wide google sheet where we compare different countries and cities around the world for those kinds of categories. Could you share a few places at the top of your list? As you yourself pointed out, it looks like the same story is playing out everywhere one looks, especially in the West. Given the current situation, the more I think about it, the more I conclude that going fully remote from a low-COL location may be the better answer. Unfortunately I think this complicates things for founders to raise. Also, this makes me think how utterly unprepared Germany is to receive all those immigrants needed to keep the economy working. Best of luck with your plans.
G3rn0ti 4y ago
> And it's not just Munich. Every city in Germany has this problem. Well, rising cost of living is a reality everywhere (it’s called inflation). But Munich is really extreme. You might want to consider moving to Eastern Germany. If you pursue an academic career, you might want to watch for positions in Magdeburg, Greifswald or Leipzig. > How the hell are we ever supposed to build up some savings ETFs (exchange traded funds i.e. index funds) give you better yield than just paying into a savings account. You also might want to invest some percent in more risky positions like BTC and ETH (10%) bc now is a good time to do that. Also give it a couple of more months. Housing price increases are already decelerating and start to decline in some areas. The last 10 years were exceptional in low interest rates and money printing in the EUR zone. If you can avoid it, don’t own a car — it’s always a money drain. :)
- barbazoo 4y ago
  If eastern Germany is still affordable like that then it might be for a reason. Don't move there unless you pass as a German and speak the language.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    >If eastern Germany is still affordable like that then it might be for a reason. I'm not German, but you can't complain there's no affordable housing when there actually is, but you just don't want it. Just because you only want to move only to a specific city you like, that has the "right vibe", where others also want to live, it's not society's fault you're too picky and you think you're too good for other more affordable cities. Beggars can't be choosers. That's like complaining about starving with a plate of Big Macs next to you because it's not what you like to eat. >Don't move there unless you pass as a German and speak the language. That's total nonsense. Plenty of foreigners who don't "pass as German" live in East German cities just fine. And why is it so bad that you have to learn the local language when you move somewhere? Do you not need to speak English when you move to the UK/US? The official language in Germany is German, not English. Best learn it if you move there out of respect for the host country and to integrate and become part of society. If you're lazy about integration and learning German, and only want to move somewhere just to make money and party in expat bubbles secluded from the German society, in cities where English is the majority spoken language, then you can't complain they're unaffordable when everyone other white collar yippie expat wants to do the same. Again, beggars can't be choosers. That's like complaining there's rush hour traffic jams, when you're part of the traffic jam. And I got news for you (not you specifically, but others who have this mentality): whenever you move to a new country as a foreigner, you'll always be at a disadvantage for housing, especially if you don't speak the language, and just because you got a visa for a white collar job at some startup making the fifth best food delivery app, doesn't make you a special snowflake worthy of the German society to turn itself upside down for you and roll the red carpet and make life super easy for you. It's still your job to integrate in the country you choose to move including dealing with the unpleasant things. You(We)'re not special. 99% chance you were given a visa and got hired there not because you've got some super rare skills nobody there had, but because of wage dumping. You moving there puts downward pressure on wages and upward pressure on rents, meaning the government, landlords, and business owners can profit from your presence there. We're basically cattle in the economic machine. You should be aware of these facts and factor them into your decision when it comes to immigrating somewhere, as it's never a free ticket to El Dorado as many delusional white collar expats (tech workers especially) think.
robocat 4y ago
> We are already looking to move to other places Moving doesn’t necessarily help much. That is because usually house prices are directly driven by how much people can loan on a mortgage, which is directly driven by earnings. Cheaper housing often means lower earnings potential. Conversely, saving in a high earning country can mean you have a deposit for a house in a cheaper country. Edit: Counterintuitively, high interest rates can help middle class people that don’t have homes. House prices drop, so you need less deposit. And usually you can work harder for a few years to nail principal (I know people that bought in the 80s - one friend had an interest rate of 28%). Some remote workers can earn in a wealthy country and live in a cheaper country. Meanwhile, watch out for the most unaffordable cities: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/least-affordable-cities-to-buy-a-home/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/least-affordable-cities-to-... https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2017/jan/23/10-most-unaffordable-cities-housing-in-pictures https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2017/jan/23/10-mo... Canada, New Zealand, and Australia have some batshit insane unaffordable real estate (stop whinging about SF - 9th place on Guardian list!). As a New Zealander I would struggle to recommend moving here without already having a nest egg - although if you are willing to move to rural areas you might find something cheap (but usually not find a job too - house prices are driven by median incomes in most places, sometimes driven by investors, wealthy immigration, or movement of people such as retirees) https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/property/residential/sale https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/property/residential/sale
- drunkenmagician 4y ago
  Wow… Singapore is not even on the list. As a Kiwi expat I can tell you Singapore is at Hong Kong levels of unaffordableness for non locals. The Singapore government housing scheme skews theses statistics significantly. If you are a local here, great. Everyone else is paying top dollar (2 bedroom condo units renting for 50% of the median household monthly salary)
  - nmfisher 4y ago
    That list was from 2021 when rents were high, but not ridiculous. Back then, the slightly higher rents were offset by the lower income tax rate. In the last 12 months, though, it's become obscene. It would definitely top the list.
ZephyrBlu 4y ago
Your GF gets rejected on a financial basis while making 75k euros? How expensive are the places she's trying to rent? > We are already looking to move to other places and created a university-wide google sheet where we compare different countries and cities around the world for those kinds of categories It seems like if you want to live anywhere that's desirable you have to pay an arm and a leg for rent, no matter what country you're in.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Tokyo is pretty affordable. Certainly enough to have a whole range of options for €75000.
  - throeaway38a 4y ago
    She was offered that salary in Germany, and is probably adjusted to the high cost of living. If she moved to Tokyo there's no guarantee that she would get the same offer from her new employer.
  - epivosism 4y ago
    I like this video about the cost of housing in Tokyo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGbC5j4pG9w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGbC5j4pG9w
- danjac 4y ago
  75K is a good salary in Germany, well above the average of 49K: https://housinganywhere.com/Germany/average-salaries-in-germany-2021 https://housinganywhere.com/Germany/average-salaries-in-germ...
  - ZephyrBlu 4y ago
    Yes, that's my point. 75k euros is a good salary yet his GF was being rejected on financial grounds, which seems odd.
  - KeplerBoy 4y ago
    You are not competing with the nationwide average when trying to rent in munich.
voisin 4y ago
> Housing is the main driver of inequality Low interest rates and endless money is the main driver of inequality. Housing was just one manifestation of the root cause.
- whitemary 4y ago
  Capital accumulation and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall are the objective fundamental causes of inequality in every capitalist society, which is why every capitalist society depends on a plethora of ostensible efforts to counter these fundamental characteristics of capitalism. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_accumulation https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_accumulation https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit_to_fall https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit_to...
  - dogcomplex 4y ago
    If the tendency of the rate of profit to fall was the underlying problem, basic needs and housing would be dirt cheap. That's not a problem - it's a good thing for consumers (and therefore the lower classes). It's the plethora of efforts to counter this which capitalists employ (mainly monopolization) to inflate prices anyway despite underlying increased efficiency (and less labor) that's the problem. The main problem though is that labor is perpetually kept desperate enough to accept bargains which favor investors, and consumers have no other means of gaining capital, even as they get automated out of the job market. It's a fundamentally unfair system which inevitably maximizes inequality. It's untenable without a government-enforced wealth-redistributing tax to offset that.
    - csomar 4y ago
      > It's untenable without a government-enforced wealth-redistributing tax to offset that. I find it interesting that you point the problem (this is not capitalism but rather the lack of it) and then suggest that the government (which made this whole system possible) somehow fixes this. The government is the problem and a top down approach doesn't work (it didn't work for the soviets and it's not going to work now). The solution is capitalism, and liberalization of the markets. In other words, letting people and capital build houses and live in them.
Bellend 4y ago
I believe we are in a time where everyone is milking the 90s-20s real estate bubble and no one wants to be first to fold. Internationally, not just on a per country basis. As soon as say, French real estate collapses (or UK or USA or Germany etc), the whole rotten castle of cards will fold as well. If it doesn't you can enjoy the expensive property, but you won't be eating farmed foods, won't be in a clean environment and wont have nurses to look after you since no one can afford to be in any relative area and I mean just for shelter from the elements.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  Why would it collapse? There’s insatiable demand for extreme limited property. Interest rate hikes may lower the price of property but the interest will rise proportionately. Do people really think at sone point no one will want premium property and I’ll finally get it cheap? Of course that will never happen.
  - kshacker 4y ago
    You can twist the supply demand imbalance only so much. Go farther than required for longer than required, and some cracks will eventually show up. Like they did for Silicon Valley bank. So it is hard to say when those cracks appear since the global market is quite a big market and can sustain imbalances for a long time, but then the bigger the bubble the bigger the crash. Foreigner limits, tax on no. Residents, start of uncontrolled construction - these are only some ways I can think it may break and my ideas are based only on reading the internet, you never know what dynamics come and break the housing. Or they break the world or its money supply. Not trying to fear monger just saying the dance will end.
    - kfarr 4y ago
      I think the difference here is fundamentally there is insufficient supply for the demand of housing globally, or at least US, UK and EU. The previous generation made new builds extremely difficult or impossible in many jurisdictions.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> still gets rejected either for her financial situation or because the rental contract is already set to increase 8% each year - which we simply cannot afford. And it's not just Munich. Every city in Germany has this problem. The logical step, when individuals cannot afford their own rent, companies that need workers will be providing housing to their workers. And they will be able to evict them whenever they feel like it. Then we will finally return to feudalism in all but name- you will have a lord, live on his land , and he will be able to control your life far beyond what a job normally does.
- notch898a 4y ago
  I would be curious to see what kind of studies in Svalbard have been done on this. Virtually all workers are in company housing. Has it devolved into feudalism in all but name?
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    The Shard in the centre of London has 5 times more employees than Svalbard does. They probably have family and/or property in Norway, and some of the best employee protections in the world?
- fijiaarone 4y ago
  And you will be happy.
- ricardobayes 4y ago
  This case is different though, 75k is a very, very good salary in Germany so if they can't find rent with that then they are looking at the wrong properties. 75k is great but it won't buy luxury penthouses (same as everywhere else in the world.) If OP is telling me they can't find a normal 2 bed apartment in Munich on a 100k (assuming) income something is wrong in their search or their expectations.
  - beebeepka 4y ago
    Are these numbers pre or post taxes?
throwaway22032 4y ago
As a newcomer you can't live (properly) in a top tier city in any major Western country that I can think of unless you manage to accumulate significant wealth. I doubt that "every" city in Germany has this problem, but I believe you that all of the ones that I could name as a non-German do. The 50th percentile Brit can't afford to live in London. Nottingham, well that's easy. It's the same everywhere.
- danielrpa 4y ago
  In the US it's still possible to work as a Software Engineer in major cities and buy property. Great Atlanta/Houston aren't exactly dirt cheap, but you can buy a decent house by paying less 2500/month mortgage (not hard on a Software Engineer salary). In the Midwest there are even more affordable cities.
TulliusCicero 4y ago
> It seems like it's the same story everywhere I look. Housing is the main driver of inequality and there is little change happening. It's a way of transferring money from younger adults to older adults, and older adults vote. It's basically an intergenerational pyramid scheme where each generation pays to the previous one, and each time they pay more. Of course, like any pyramid scheme, you can only keep it up so long.
- peterashford 4y ago
  This is it. Nailed it
- dumbotron 4y ago
  Imagine if votes were weighted by life expectancy
  - ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
    I'd imagine political parties would then be poisoning their opponents' voters or encouraging diseases so that they could win/remain in power.
  - jopsen 4y ago
    Imagine if votes were weighted by life experience I guess that would sort of even things out :D
- chewz 4y ago
  > It's a way of transferring money from younger adults to older adults, and older adults vote. Always makes me wonder where these younger adults come from? Don't they have parents who invested their saving in a few apartments for rent? Can't they get some financial help from their parents?
  - dan_mctree 4y ago
    This is how a lot of the younger adults are keeping their head above water. Not everyone has this luxury though, it's not like everyone's parents made bank
erur 4y ago
It's definitely not every city in Germany that has this problem. You're trying to live in one of the objectively best parts of Germany by a lot of stats and thus you're competing with a lot of folks. I'm honestly sick of this whining about rent in top-tier areas. Living there is a luxury, given the major move to cities and scarcity, driven by insane regulations and basic logic. There are plenty of cities in Germany with very cheap rent, where apartment buildings get torn down because they're vacant. But of course the entitlement seems stronger than the willingness to compromise.
- caconym_ 4y ago
  Are the opportunities in those other cities comparable? I don't know Germany, but usually when I see people saying this about places I do know the answer is a resounding 'no'. So it would seem to be a little more complicated than entitled kids these days who simply will not compromise.
  - LeanderK 4y ago
    somewhat. You still have Hamburg, Frankfurt, Berlin etc. Maybe Munich has slightly better opportunities, really depends on you specific niche, but then probably Zurich has even better opportunities but is even costlier. Or Copenhagen. I really somewhat agree. You really have to see that living in munich is a luxury that a lot of people can not enjoy because it's too expensive. Since you major in CS your social bubble is very well of (75k salary for the first job?) so you see it as somewhat given that you also belong there. And at the TUM they constantly tell you how much of an elite you are. It's a bit entitled I would say. Many Germans can't really live in munich and therefore have access to the opportunities there, it's just the most expensive place in germany you can rent in. You can always try to find a flat to share with roommates, this is still possible in munich.
- froh 4y ago
  this is glossing over corporate investment into rental housing past the 2008 crisis. there are drivers beyond "Munich is sexy + supply and demand"
- 4y ago
tmnvix 4y ago
> Housing is the main driver of inequality and there is little change happening. Have hope. Things are changing as I see it. Fundamentally, I believe that we have seen a multi-decade boom because property prices are closely linked with interest rates. People borrow according to their capacity to service the loan. For most home buyers affordability is measured by monthly repayments, not the ticket price. As prices rose, capital gains became a more significant consideration. This meant that some people who would not have purchased investment properties did so. They would not have done this if they were only looking at the income earning potential of the asset. Rental yields have been getting much worse over time. People stopped investing for yield and started to speculate - doing well with favourable tax regulations and the leverage opportunities that mortgages provide. In the past, if you owned a second home (holiday home, convenient apartment in the city, etc) it would cost you money if its value didn't appreciate at a quick enough rate. For decades now that hasn't been the case - property prices have been appreciating so quickly that owning a property has been a good financial bet even if it hasn't been earning any income. It was no longer the preserve of those wealthy enough to maintain more than one property just for the lifestyle it allows. Naturally this means that the number of people that have been doing this has increased considerably. There is no doubt in my mind that the proportion of underutilised properties has increased in correlation with the rise in property values and the steady decline in interest rates. For many, this is hard to accept as it doesn't fit with the naive assumption that prices have been rising because there is somehow more demand for homes. What they forget to factor in is that there is a difference between demand for homes and demand for investment opportunities. To put it another way, a speculative boom creates artificial demand. A few points to back this up: - In the UK, the proportion of underutilised properties is highest in areas with a higher average property value. - In Melbourne, Australia, it has been shown (through examining water usage) that the proportion of empty properties is highest in areas that have experienced the highest capital gains. - In NZ, the ratio of households to dwellings has decreased since the mid-90s (the start of NZ's boom). All of this suggests that the rise in prices is not due to a shortage of dwellings for people to live in. It is a shortage of available dwellings. The wheels came flying off NZ's property market at the start of 2022. This was caused by rising interest rates. Where I live, this resulted in a flood of properties getting listed for sale and an increase in available rentals at lower rents. Where did those extra rentals come from? Another factor in all of this is the rise in short term rentals (AirBnB, etc). AirBnB effectively allows property investors to take properties out of the housing stock and still collect rent. Many cities around the world (especially major European tourist destinations) suffer from this. Ideally it would be regulated much more tightly in future, but I think there is a small chance that that may not be necessary. Prices are now so high in many places, and servicing loans so costly, that even the higher rents that can be achieved in this market may not be enough to make yields worthwhile. A lot of these properties may make their way back to the regular housing stock as investors are forced to sell up. So, the big question in all of this is, we know what happens when interest rates drop and property prices appreciate - what happens when interest rates rise and capital gains are off the table (or negative gains become the norm)?
john61 4y ago
The solution is obvious. Just look at Vienna, not far away from Munich. A lot of flats belong directly to the city of Vienna and a lot of subsidized and owner restricted flats exist. The prices on the free market were also rising the last years but much lower than in other cities. Red Vienna got it right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Vienna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Vienna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemeindebau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemeindebau
kanbara 4y ago
this is crazy. in 2015 i paid 480 eur in berlin for a 20qm room, then 1050 for 101 qm (on 48k eur in a 3 person WG) and then 1355 for 50 qm in hamburg (neubau). never had an 8% increase tho, that’s rough. it was a different world in 2005 for sure
f6v 4y ago
> Germany paid a lot for our education but offers us little reason to stay. Yet many-many people come to Germany every year to join tech companies.
- brodo 4y ago
  It‘s the “the grass is always greener” phenomenon.
MonaroVXR 4y ago
Same for the Netherlands
tannhaeuser 4y ago
> And it's not just Munich. Every city in Germany has this problem. That's nonsense. Larger Munich is the most expensive place to live in Germany (except for the island of Sylt), and has been for many years, but is still nowhere near London, NYC, or SF. In contrast, you can purchase entire houses in abandoned (but well connected) places in east Germany for as little as 10k EUR.
- ricardobayes 4y ago
  Why is the area around Dresden so affordable compared to others? I've seen ready to move in single family houses for 70k.
  - dan00 4y ago
    The wages in east germany are still quite a bit lower compared to west germany.
  - est31 4y ago
    A lot of people leave the east in general, while a lot of people come to Munich. Tech is an exception here.
  - jonp888 4y ago
    The openly racist, climate change denying, far right Alternative for Deutschland party won almost all districts in the last federal elections. It was the launching pad of the anti- Islam PEGIDA movement, and had the lowest covid vaccination levels and consequently the districts with the highest number of cases. The economy isn't great either. Geographically it's kind of a dead end, and transport links are fairly poor, so few companies want to locate there. Would you want to live there?
    - swah 3y ago
      The worse parts of Germany might be better than most of the 3rd world so...
- justincormack 4y ago
layer8 4y ago
> And it's not just Munich. Every city in Germany has this problem. No, Munich is an outlier. You generally can find apartments under 10€/m² without too much trouble, at least in mid-sized cities. However, it’s true that rents have been rising significantly over the past decade or so.
- bobolino123 4y ago
  Frankfurt and Stuttgart are pricey too.
SergeAx 4y ago
By "driving", you mean "helps create inequality", right? But inequality is already there. Someone now pays that high rent already; otherwise, landlords would lower prices to avoid empty units. You are competing with many people from all parts of the EU and, to an extent, the world for the same limited resource. Someone who built their startup and banked on it already came to Germany to work and live there because it is a very comfortable place to live. Refugees without any money at all are willing to go to Germany instead of Greece or Italy, not to mention Bulgaria or Hungary. I am trying to be a devil's advocate now, but landlords are interested in getting paid as much as possible; it is Economy 101, rational agent behavior. Otherwise, it would be a charity, not a business. I think moving away, or at least moving your business away, is rational behavior on your side. Take a look at said Bulgaria: Sofia is a dull place compared even to smaller German cities. Still, they have 10% flat taxes for companies and individuals, and for 1000 EUR, you will have a 150 sq.m. two-level apart in the historical city center with 3 bedrooms, a separate dining room, and a large study with a real fireplace. They have a subway to the airport and several budget airlines flying from there to any part of the EU. Source: several people from the company I work for are living there.
- beebeepka 4y ago
  Sofia is a dirty, badly maintained city. Quality of life is low, air is horrible and there's dirt/mud almost everywhere. It's pretty bad overall. But it's not dull, at all. Not bad for young folks because almost nobody cares about the things in their 20s. Plovdiv is 1000x better than Sofia in any conceivable way. Older, cleaner, cultured. Built on top of an ancient Roman city. It's by far the best big place in Bulgaria
  - SergeAx 4y ago
    This is mostly the question of tastes. I lived in Sofia for two months, mostly in the city center. For me an international mobility is important and I don't drive, so the well connected airport and good means of transportation towards it were paramount. Thus Plovdiv and also Varna and Burgas are not an option for me. But from the business perspective it is a real tax haven. Also, there is an IT community there, and offices of large companies including Microsoft and Uber.
ricardobayes 4y ago
If you are able to work remotely, Spain is fantastic at the moment. Relatively low real estate rent/purchase prices. You can still get a nice 3 bedroom house with a pool under 200k by the Mediterranean sea (of course well, not in Marbella). There are some surprisingly high-tech jobs locally as well, the space industry is booming right now. Lots of programming jobs in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia even if you don't speak Spanish. Just had two acquaintances move over and they both found tech jobs within a month (in English). There is startup culture and events as well. Surprisingly, Spanish companies are really hiring at the moment unlike most of Europe. It's not been hit as hard with inflation either. Plus, government and population are for the most part pretty grown-up and progressive. Universal base income, focus on equality etc...
- Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago
  > government and population are for the most part pretty grown-up and progressive. Universal base income, focus on equality etc... This may well have an expiration date on May 28. Voting intention polls currently predict a shift to a right-wing majority (and this has been so for long), and the right in Spain is not moderate as in e.g. Germany. Although Pedro Sánchez has proven to be a tough nut to crack with a tendency to resurrect when everyone thinks him dead, so let's see what happens.
  - Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago
    Sorry, I've just noticed that May 28 is the date for the municipal and regional elections. The general election (which is what I was referring to) will be later in the year, no later than December 10.
- BossingAround 4y ago
  Anecdata, but the vast majority of European new hires I'm seeing in my team are from Spain (though they are Spanish) and work remotely from mid-sized cities or islands (like Mallorca). It feels like Central Europe is slowly losing steam while Spain is, unexpectedly, gaining some steam.
  - 4y ago
dgellow 4y ago
Munich is the most expensive place in Germany, by far. It’s not as extreme everywhere.
- bobolino123 4y ago
  Actually it's Sylt, Frankfurt then Munich. The problem with Munich is that the metropolitan area is f.. expensive as well.
parker_mountain 4y ago
American here, in silicon valley. I'm actually a bay area native, and the only reason I'm able to stay close to my parents is that I make a "tech salary". I bought a moderately sized condo, and it was a huge stretch at the time when I bought it - now that I've advanced my career, it's not such a huge load. But, the fact that, at $110k a year, a two bedroom (yet small) place was a huge stress. And that was not even in not one of top 3 most expensive cities in the bay area, which should say something. I'm extremely grateful that I can live close to my parents, and will be able to help take care of them as they age. Something is broken when it's a financial pressure for someone in the top 10% of income to live within an hour drive of where they want to be. And, that's kind of a luxury, tbh. I have extreme sympathy for the working class. There's something fundamentally broken with our housing policy.
- nlitened 4y ago
  > Something is broken when it's a financial pressure for someone in the top 10% of income to live within an hour drive of where they want to be That’s a place where probably billion other people would love to be.
  - parker_mountain 4y ago
    Sure, but there's so much open, empty, and underutilized space. With some more aggressive building and well implemented transit policy, we could really fit a lot more people into the area without creating a decrease in quality of life. Not even like a huge amount of people, like 10% more.
Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago
Same thing in Spain, compounded by the fact that not only the generation of people over 60 own the housing and receive the rents, but they actually make more from pensions than new workers make as a salary (the latter is, I think, not true in Germany). This is a really toxic situation because it seems that for many young people, objectively speaking, career matters quite little. You can be unambitious, get a mediocre job, need your parents' help to survive and expect most of your wealth to eventually come from inheritance... or you can be ambitious and hard-working, get a better job, but still need your parents' help to survive (only somewhat less) and still expect most of your wealth to eventually come from inheritance. It's a sad situation, and I say this as someone who is not that young anymore and owns an apartment, so it's not personal whining but genuine worry about where society is heading.
dunefox 4y ago
> How the hell are we ever supposed to build up some savings, settle down and have a comfortable life? You're not. The system is working as intended, just not for us.
dukeyukey 4y ago
Germany confuses me a lot here because the population is actually _declining_. Granted, more in rural area than rich urban areas, but even then.
- est31 4y ago
  The overall population of Germany is not declining yet, in fact last year the German population has never been as high. In general, if Germany wants to keep its economy the population has to continue increasing until the boomers are dead. So yes, counter intuitively, for now there is going to be a major pressure on the housing market at least until the peak. Germany is a major immigration target inside the EU so it's not met with the same fate as poorer european economies like Russia, Ukraine, or Italy. The high rents in places like Munich are due to the urban areas seeing a major boom: that's where the jobs are, that's where the immigrants are going, that's where the young people from the countryside are going.
- layer8 4y ago
  It’s not (anymore), due to immigration: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2023/01/PE23_026_124.html https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2023/01/PE23_026_124.html There was a slight decline in the late aughts.
reustle 4y ago
Any way to get a peek at that spreadsheet? Very curious how you’ve laid it out.
salzig 4y ago
IMHO Germany is killing its social stability and its future by having this situation right now. And I‘m afraid this will bring more votes to AFD and similar rightwing parties. Kinda similar to a century ago.
- bobolino123 4y ago
  Already killed its future tbh but yeah it can be worse
madballster 4y ago
You have to carefully analyze if you absolutely need to live in Munich - the most expensive city in Germany - in order to run and build your startup once you graduate. Is the extra cost and low quality of life worth it over the long term? There are dozens of smaller cities in Northern or Eastern Germany which offer very affordable living and office space while still being very attractive to young families.
inglor_cz 4y ago
I (a Czech) moved from highly desirable Prague to Ostrava, a postindustrial city I was born in. Remote work was a huge boon, because our family income is independent on our location and housing costs in Ostrava are literally half the costs in Prague. We have a nice newly built house not far from public transport (6 tram lines stop on a major intersection in a 15-minute walking distance), with a garden, pretty calm and several minutes of walking from two huge supermarkets that are open till 9 and 10 pm, respectively. Even a small apartment at the outskirts Prague (two rooms) would be about as expensive. But it came at a cost, yes. The restaurant scene is a shadow of Prague's, and a lot of personal connections had to be weakened, if not severed. People seem to be forgetting that everything is a tradeoff. If a city like Munich or Prague is highly attractive for students, workers and connosieurs of urban life, there will be a huge demand for housing there, and few regions in the developed world have escaped the enormous NIMBYfication of construction regulations, so the supply will be lacking. Or you can have a really nice place for living, but not in a major and growing urban area. What about Dresden or Meissen? Nowhere near as expensive as Munich, but still urban enough to have some doctors and other opportunities. Yes, you will have a lot more AfD voters around, but everything is a trade-off. Living in a mostly B90/Grüne-voting neighbourhood may be the most costly privilege in entire Germany, and is it really worth the added cost? I surely wouldn't like to be held hostage to my neighbour's political preferences.
whiddershins 4y ago
This is all about regulation, although each layer of regulation tends to be popular. Many things typically seen as good add to the cost of housing. Building is difficult because of zoning restrictions. Building is expensive because of labor and zoning and construction and accessibility and many other regulations. Renting also is risky for a landlord because of eviction protection laws. And so forth. Housing doesn’t need to be so expensive and scarce. We made it so. We have far better technology than in the past, we can build better, safer, faster, cheaper. Except we can’t.
_trampeltier 4y ago
"How the hell are we ever supposed to build up some savings, settle down and have a comfortable life?" The idea is, you pay so much rent, you never will have enough money to buy something. So you have to spend all your money the whole life just for rent and still own enything when you are old.
anovikov 4y ago
Question must be - in a country where population doesn't grow at all and haven't been for a generation+, and housing is not being torn down on a massive scale so supply of it probably still increases a bit, why is there a need for any new housing at all? Basically, why can't people on average just live in their grandparents' apartments once they die? Housing construction standards have been decent for at least 60 years so these apartments are good and are probably better located than their parents' just because of city growth since.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

maxFlow 4y ago

> We are already looking to move to other places and created a university-wide google sheet where we compare different countries and cities around the world for those kinds of categories. Could you share a few places at the top of your list? As you yourself pointed out, it looks like the same story is playing out everywhere one looks, especially in the West. Given the current situation, the more I think about it, the more I conclude that going fully remote from a low-COL location may be the better answer. Unfortunately I think this complicates things for founders to raise. Also, this makes me think how utterly unprepared Germany is to receive all those immigrants needed to keep the economy working. Best of luck with your plans.

G3rn0ti 4y ago

> And it's not just Munich. Every city in Germany has this problem. Well, rising cost of living is a reality everywhere (it’s called inflation). But Munich is really extreme. You might want to consider moving to Eastern Germany. If you pursue an academic career, you might want to watch for positions in Magdeburg, Greifswald or Leipzig. > How the hell are we ever supposed to build up some savings ETFs (exchange traded funds i.e. index funds) give you better yield than just paying into a savings account. You also might want to invest some percent in more risky positions like BTC and ETH (10%) bc now is a good time to do that. Also give it a couple of more months. Housing price increases are already decelerating and start to decline in some areas. The last 10 years were exceptional in low interest rates and money printing in the EUR zone. If you can avoid it, don’t own a car — it’s always a money drain. :)

barbazoo 4y ago
If eastern Germany is still affordable like that then it might be for a reason. Don't move there unless you pass as a German and speak the language.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  >If eastern Germany is still affordable like that then it might be for a reason. I'm not German, but you can't complain there's no affordable housing when there actually is, but you just don't want it. Just because you only want to move only to a specific city you like, that has the "right vibe", where others also want to live, it's not society's fault you're too picky and you think you're too good for other more affordable cities. Beggars can't be choosers. That's like complaining about starving with a plate of Big Macs next to you because it's not what you like to eat. >Don't move there unless you pass as a German and speak the language. That's total nonsense. Plenty of foreigners who don't "pass as German" live in East German cities just fine. And why is it so bad that you have to learn the local language when you move somewhere? Do you not need to speak English when you move to the UK/US? The official language in Germany is German, not English. Best learn it if you move there out of respect for the host country and to integrate and become part of society. If you're lazy about integration and learning German, and only want to move somewhere just to make money and party in expat bubbles secluded from the German society, in cities where English is the majority spoken language, then you can't complain they're unaffordable when everyone other white collar yippie expat wants to do the same. Again, beggars can't be choosers. That's like complaining there's rush hour traffic jams, when you're part of the traffic jam. And I got news for you (not you specifically, but others who have this mentality): whenever you move to a new country as a foreigner, you'll always be at a disadvantage for housing, especially if you don't speak the language, and just because you got a visa for a white collar job at some startup making the fifth best food delivery app, doesn't make you a special snowflake worthy of the German society to turn itself upside down for you and roll the red carpet and make life super easy for you. It's still your job to integrate in the country you choose to move including dealing with the unpleasant things. You(We)'re not special. 99% chance you were given a visa and got hired there not because you've got some super rare skills nobody there had, but because of wage dumping. You moving there puts downward pressure on wages and upward pressure on rents, meaning the government, landlords, and business owners can profit from your presence there. We're basically cattle in the economic machine. You should be aware of these facts and factor them into your decision when it comes to immigrating somewhere, as it's never a free ticket to El Dorado as many delusional white collar expats (tech workers especially) think.

robocat 4y ago

> We are already looking to move to other places Moving doesn’t necessarily help much. That is because usually house prices are directly driven by how much people can loan on a mortgage, which is directly driven by earnings. Cheaper housing often means lower earnings potential. Conversely, saving in a high earning country can mean you have a deposit for a house in a cheaper country. Edit: Counterintuitively, high interest rates can help middle class people that don’t have homes. House prices drop, so you need less deposit. And usually you can work harder for a few years to nail principal (I know people that bought in the 80s - one friend had an interest rate of 28%). Some remote workers can earn in a wealthy country and live in a cheaper country. Meanwhile, watch out for the most unaffordable cities: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/least-affordable-cities-to-buy-a-home/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/least-affordable-cities-to-... https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2017/jan/23/10-most-unaffordable-cities-housing-in-pictures https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2017/jan/23/10-mo... Canada, New Zealand, and Australia have some batshit insane unaffordable real estate (stop whinging about SF - 9th place on Guardian list!). As a New Zealander I would struggle to recommend moving here without already having a nest egg - although if you are willing to move to rural areas you might find something cheap (but usually not find a job too - house prices are driven by median incomes in most places, sometimes driven by investors, wealthy immigration, or movement of people such as retirees) https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/property/residential/sale https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/property/residential/sale

drunkenmagician 4y ago
Wow… Singapore is not even on the list. As a Kiwi expat I can tell you Singapore is at Hong Kong levels of unaffordableness for non locals. The Singapore government housing scheme skews theses statistics significantly. If you are a local here, great. Everyone else is paying top dollar (2 bedroom condo units renting for 50% of the median household monthly salary)
- nmfisher 4y ago
  That list was from 2021 when rents were high, but not ridiculous. Back then, the slightly higher rents were offset by the lower income tax rate. In the last 12 months, though, it's become obscene. It would definitely top the list.

ZephyrBlu 4y ago

Your GF gets rejected on a financial basis while making 75k euros? How expensive are the places she's trying to rent? > We are already looking to move to other places and created a university-wide google sheet where we compare different countries and cities around the world for those kinds of categories It seems like if you want to live anywhere that's desirable you have to pay an arm and a leg for rent, no matter what country you're in.

Aeolun 4y ago
Tokyo is pretty affordable. Certainly enough to have a whole range of options for €75000.
- throeaway38a 4y ago
  She was offered that salary in Germany, and is probably adjusted to the high cost of living. If she moved to Tokyo there's no guarantee that she would get the same offer from her new employer.
- epivosism 4y ago
  I like this video about the cost of housing in Tokyo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGbC5j4pG9w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGbC5j4pG9w
danjac 4y ago
75K is a good salary in Germany, well above the average of 49K: https://housinganywhere.com/Germany/average-salaries-in-germany-2021 https://housinganywhere.com/Germany/average-salaries-in-germ...
- ZephyrBlu 4y ago
  Yes, that's my point. 75k euros is a good salary yet his GF was being rejected on financial grounds, which seems odd.
- KeplerBoy 4y ago
  You are not competing with the nationwide average when trying to rent in munich.

voisin 4y ago

> Housing is the main driver of inequality Low interest rates and endless money is the main driver of inequality. Housing was just one manifestation of the root cause.

whitemary 4y ago
Capital accumulation and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall are the objective fundamental causes of inequality in every capitalist society, which is why every capitalist society depends on a plethora of ostensible efforts to counter these fundamental characteristics of capitalism. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_accumulation https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_accumulation https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit_to_fall https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit_to...
- dogcomplex 4y ago
  If the tendency of the rate of profit to fall was the underlying problem, basic needs and housing would be dirt cheap. That's not a problem - it's a good thing for consumers (and therefore the lower classes). It's the plethora of efforts to counter this which capitalists employ (mainly monopolization) to inflate prices anyway despite underlying increased efficiency (and less labor) that's the problem. The main problem though is that labor is perpetually kept desperate enough to accept bargains which favor investors, and consumers have no other means of gaining capital, even as they get automated out of the job market. It's a fundamentally unfair system which inevitably maximizes inequality. It's untenable without a government-enforced wealth-redistributing tax to offset that.
  - csomar 4y ago
    > It's untenable without a government-enforced wealth-redistributing tax to offset that. I find it interesting that you point the problem (this is not capitalism but rather the lack of it) and then suggest that the government (which made this whole system possible) somehow fixes this. The government is the problem and a top down approach doesn't work (it didn't work for the soviets and it's not going to work now). The solution is capitalism, and liberalization of the markets. In other words, letting people and capital build houses and live in them.

Bellend 4y ago

I believe we are in a time where everyone is milking the 90s-20s real estate bubble and no one wants to be first to fold. Internationally, not just on a per country basis. As soon as say, French real estate collapses (or UK or USA or Germany etc), the whole rotten castle of cards will fold as well. If it doesn't you can enjoy the expensive property, but you won't be eating farmed foods, won't be in a clean environment and wont have nurses to look after you since no one can afford to be in any relative area and I mean just for shelter from the elements.

nemo44x 4y ago
Why would it collapse? There’s insatiable demand for extreme limited property. Interest rate hikes may lower the price of property but the interest will rise proportionately. Do people really think at sone point no one will want premium property and I’ll finally get it cheap? Of course that will never happen.
- kshacker 4y ago
  You can twist the supply demand imbalance only so much. Go farther than required for longer than required, and some cracks will eventually show up. Like they did for Silicon Valley bank. So it is hard to say when those cracks appear since the global market is quite a big market and can sustain imbalances for a long time, but then the bigger the bubble the bigger the crash. Foreigner limits, tax on no. Residents, start of uncontrolled construction - these are only some ways I can think it may break and my ideas are based only on reading the internet, you never know what dynamics come and break the housing. Or they break the world or its money supply. Not trying to fear monger just saying the dance will end.
  - kfarr 4y ago
    I think the difference here is fundamentally there is insufficient supply for the demand of housing globally, or at least US, UK and EU. The previous generation made new builds extremely difficult or impossible in many jurisdictions.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

> still gets rejected either for her financial situation or because the rental contract is already set to increase 8% each year - which we simply cannot afford. And it's not just Munich. Every city in Germany has this problem. The logical step, when individuals cannot afford their own rent, companies that need workers will be providing housing to their workers. And they will be able to evict them whenever they feel like it. Then we will finally return to feudalism in all but name- you will have a lord, live on his land , and he will be able to control your life far beyond what a job normally does.

notch898a 4y ago
I would be curious to see what kind of studies in Svalbard have been done on this. Virtually all workers are in company housing. Has it devolved into feudalism in all but name?
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  The Shard in the centre of London has 5 times more employees than Svalbard does. They probably have family and/or property in Norway, and some of the best employee protections in the world?
fijiaarone 4y ago
And you will be happy.
ricardobayes 4y ago
This case is different though, 75k is a very, very good salary in Germany so if they can't find rent with that then they are looking at the wrong properties. 75k is great but it won't buy luxury penthouses (same as everywhere else in the world.) If OP is telling me they can't find a normal 2 bed apartment in Munich on a 100k (assuming) income something is wrong in their search or their expectations.
- beebeepka 4y ago
  Are these numbers pre or post taxes?

throwaway22032 4y ago

As a newcomer you can't live (properly) in a top tier city in any major Western country that I can think of unless you manage to accumulate significant wealth. I doubt that "every" city in Germany has this problem, but I believe you that all of the ones that I could name as a non-German do. The 50th percentile Brit can't afford to live in London. Nottingham, well that's easy. It's the same everywhere.

danielrpa 4y ago
In the US it's still possible to work as a Software Engineer in major cities and buy property. Great Atlanta/Houston aren't exactly dirt cheap, but you can buy a decent house by paying less 2500/month mortgage (not hard on a Software Engineer salary). In the Midwest there are even more affordable cities.

TulliusCicero 4y ago

> It seems like it's the same story everywhere I look. Housing is the main driver of inequality and there is little change happening. It's a way of transferring money from younger adults to older adults, and older adults vote. It's basically an intergenerational pyramid scheme where each generation pays to the previous one, and each time they pay more. Of course, like any pyramid scheme, you can only keep it up so long.

peterashford 4y ago
This is it. Nailed it
dumbotron 4y ago
Imagine if votes were weighted by life expectancy
- ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
  I'd imagine political parties would then be poisoning their opponents' voters or encouraging diseases so that they could win/remain in power.
- jopsen 4y ago
  Imagine if votes were weighted by life experience I guess that would sort of even things out :D
chewz 4y ago
> It's a way of transferring money from younger adults to older adults, and older adults vote. Always makes me wonder where these younger adults come from? Don't they have parents who invested their saving in a few apartments for rent? Can't they get some financial help from their parents?
- dan_mctree 4y ago
  This is how a lot of the younger adults are keeping their head above water. Not everyone has this luxury though, it's not like everyone's parents made bank

erur 4y ago

It's definitely not every city in Germany that has this problem. You're trying to live in one of the objectively best parts of Germany by a lot of stats and thus you're competing with a lot of folks. I'm honestly sick of this whining about rent in top-tier areas. Living there is a luxury, given the major move to cities and scarcity, driven by insane regulations and basic logic. There are plenty of cities in Germany with very cheap rent, where apartment buildings get torn down because they're vacant. But of course the entitlement seems stronger than the willingness to compromise.

caconym_ 4y ago
Are the opportunities in those other cities comparable? I don't know Germany, but usually when I see people saying this about places I do know the answer is a resounding 'no'. So it would seem to be a little more complicated than entitled kids these days who simply will not compromise.
- LeanderK 4y ago
  somewhat. You still have Hamburg, Frankfurt, Berlin etc. Maybe Munich has slightly better opportunities, really depends on you specific niche, but then probably Zurich has even better opportunities but is even costlier. Or Copenhagen. I really somewhat agree. You really have to see that living in munich is a luxury that a lot of people can not enjoy because it's too expensive. Since you major in CS your social bubble is very well of (75k salary for the first job?) so you see it as somewhat given that you also belong there. And at the TUM they constantly tell you how much of an elite you are. It's a bit entitled I would say. Many Germans can't really live in munich and therefore have access to the opportunities there, it's just the most expensive place in germany you can rent in. You can always try to find a flat to share with roommates, this is still possible in munich.
froh 4y ago
this is glossing over corporate investment into rental housing past the 2008 crisis. there are drivers beyond "Munich is sexy + supply and demand"
4y ago

tmnvix 4y ago

> Housing is the main driver of inequality and there is little change happening. Have hope. Things are changing as I see it. Fundamentally, I believe that we have seen a multi-decade boom because property prices are closely linked with interest rates. People borrow according to their capacity to service the loan. For most home buyers affordability is measured by monthly repayments, not the ticket price. As prices rose, capital gains became a more significant consideration. This meant that some people who would not have purchased investment properties did so. They would not have done this if they were only looking at the income earning potential of the asset. Rental yields have been getting much worse over time. People stopped investing for yield and started to speculate - doing well with favourable tax regulations and the leverage opportunities that mortgages provide. In the past, if you owned a second home (holiday home, convenient apartment in the city, etc) it would cost you money if its value didn't appreciate at a quick enough rate. For decades now that hasn't been the case - property prices have been appreciating so quickly that owning a property has been a good financial bet even if it hasn't been earning any income. It was no longer the preserve of those wealthy enough to maintain more than one property just for the lifestyle it allows. Naturally this means that the number of people that have been doing this has increased considerably. There is no doubt in my mind that the proportion of underutilised properties has increased in correlation with the rise in property values and the steady decline in interest rates. For many, this is hard to accept as it doesn't fit with the naive assumption that prices have been rising because there is somehow more demand for homes. What they forget to factor in is that there is a difference between demand for homes and demand for investment opportunities. To put it another way, a speculative boom creates artificial demand. A few points to back this up: - In the UK, the proportion of underutilised properties is highest in areas with a higher average property value. - In Melbourne, Australia, it has been shown (through examining water usage) that the proportion of empty properties is highest in areas that have experienced the highest capital gains. - In NZ, the ratio of households to dwellings has decreased since the mid-90s (the start of NZ's boom). All of this suggests that the rise in prices is not due to a shortage of dwellings for people to live in. It is a shortage of available dwellings. The wheels came flying off NZ's property market at the start of 2022. This was caused by rising interest rates. Where I live, this resulted in a flood of properties getting listed for sale and an increase in available rentals at lower rents. Where did those extra rentals come from? Another factor in all of this is the rise in short term rentals (AirBnB, etc). AirBnB effectively allows property investors to take properties out of the housing stock and still collect rent. Many cities around the world (especially major European tourist destinations) suffer from this. Ideally it would be regulated much more tightly in future, but I think there is a small chance that that may not be necessary. Prices are now so high in many places, and servicing loans so costly, that even the higher rents that can be achieved in this market may not be enough to make yields worthwhile. A lot of these properties may make their way back to the regular housing stock as investors are forced to sell up. So, the big question in all of this is, we know what happens when interest rates drop and property prices appreciate - what happens when interest rates rise and capital gains are off the table (or negative gains become the norm)?

john61 4y ago

The solution is obvious. Just look at Vienna, not far away from Munich. A lot of flats belong directly to the city of Vienna and a lot of subsidized and owner restricted flats exist. The prices on the free market were also rising the last years but much lower than in other cities. Red Vienna got it right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Vienna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Vienna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemeindebau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemeindebau

kanbara 4y ago

this is crazy. in 2015 i paid 480 eur in berlin for a 20qm room, then 1050 for 101 qm (on 48k eur in a 3 person WG) and then 1355 for 50 qm in hamburg (neubau). never had an 8% increase tho, that’s rough. it was a different world in 2005 for sure

f6v 4y ago

> Germany paid a lot for our education but offers us little reason to stay. Yet many-many people come to Germany every year to join tech companies.

brodo 4y ago
It‘s the “the grass is always greener” phenomenon.

MonaroVXR 4y ago

Same for the Netherlands

tannhaeuser 4y ago

> And it's not just Munich. Every city in Germany has this problem. That's nonsense. Larger Munich is the most expensive place to live in Germany (except for the island of Sylt), and has been for many years, but is still nowhere near London, NYC, or SF. In contrast, you can purchase entire houses in abandoned (but well connected) places in east Germany for as little as 10k EUR.

ricardobayes 4y ago
Why is the area around Dresden so affordable compared to others? I've seen ready to move in single family houses for 70k.
- dan00 4y ago
  The wages in east germany are still quite a bit lower compared to west germany.
- est31 4y ago
  A lot of people leave the east in general, while a lot of people come to Munich. Tech is an exception here.
- jonp888 4y ago
  The openly racist, climate change denying, far right Alternative for Deutschland party won almost all districts in the last federal elections. It was the launching pad of the anti- Islam PEGIDA movement, and had the lowest covid vaccination levels and consequently the districts with the highest number of cases. The economy isn't great either. Geographically it's kind of a dead end, and transport links are fairly poor, so few companies want to locate there. Would you want to live there?
  - swah 3y ago
    The worse parts of Germany might be better than most of the 3rd world so...
justincormack 4y ago

layer8 4y ago

> And it's not just Munich. Every city in Germany has this problem. No, Munich is an outlier. You generally can find apartments under 10€/m² without too much trouble, at least in mid-sized cities. However, it’s true that rents have been rising significantly over the past decade or so.

bobolino123 4y ago
Frankfurt and Stuttgart are pricey too.

SergeAx 4y ago

By "driving", you mean "helps create inequality", right? But inequality is already there. Someone now pays that high rent already; otherwise, landlords would lower prices to avoid empty units. You are competing with many people from all parts of the EU and, to an extent, the world for the same limited resource. Someone who built their startup and banked on it already came to Germany to work and live there because it is a very comfortable place to live. Refugees without any money at all are willing to go to Germany instead of Greece or Italy, not to mention Bulgaria or Hungary. I am trying to be a devil's advocate now, but landlords are interested in getting paid as much as possible; it is Economy 101, rational agent behavior. Otherwise, it would be a charity, not a business. I think moving away, or at least moving your business away, is rational behavior on your side. Take a look at said Bulgaria: Sofia is a dull place compared even to smaller German cities. Still, they have 10% flat taxes for companies and individuals, and for 1000 EUR, you will have a 150 sq.m. two-level apart in the historical city center with 3 bedrooms, a separate dining room, and a large study with a real fireplace. They have a subway to the airport and several budget airlines flying from there to any part of the EU. Source: several people from the company I work for are living there.

beebeepka 4y ago
Sofia is a dirty, badly maintained city. Quality of life is low, air is horrible and there's dirt/mud almost everywhere. It's pretty bad overall. But it's not dull, at all. Not bad for young folks because almost nobody cares about the things in their 20s. Plovdiv is 1000x better than Sofia in any conceivable way. Older, cleaner, cultured. Built on top of an ancient Roman city. It's by far the best big place in Bulgaria
- SergeAx 4y ago
  This is mostly the question of tastes. I lived in Sofia for two months, mostly in the city center. For me an international mobility is important and I don't drive, so the well connected airport and good means of transportation towards it were paramount. Thus Plovdiv and also Varna and Burgas are not an option for me. But from the business perspective it is a real tax haven. Also, there is an IT community there, and offices of large companies including Microsoft and Uber.

ricardobayes 4y ago

If you are able to work remotely, Spain is fantastic at the moment. Relatively low real estate rent/purchase prices. You can still get a nice 3 bedroom house with a pool under 200k by the Mediterranean sea (of course well, not in Marbella). There are some surprisingly high-tech jobs locally as well, the space industry is booming right now. Lots of programming jobs in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia even if you don't speak Spanish. Just had two acquaintances move over and they both found tech jobs within a month (in English). There is startup culture and events as well. Surprisingly, Spanish companies are really hiring at the moment unlike most of Europe. It's not been hit as hard with inflation either. Plus, government and population are for the most part pretty grown-up and progressive. Universal base income, focus on equality etc...

Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago
> government and population are for the most part pretty grown-up and progressive. Universal base income, focus on equality etc... This may well have an expiration date on May 28. Voting intention polls currently predict a shift to a right-wing majority (and this has been so for long), and the right in Spain is not moderate as in e.g. Germany. Although Pedro Sánchez has proven to be a tough nut to crack with a tendency to resurrect when everyone thinks him dead, so let's see what happens.
- Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago
  Sorry, I've just noticed that May 28 is the date for the municipal and regional elections. The general election (which is what I was referring to) will be later in the year, no later than December 10.
BossingAround 4y ago
Anecdata, but the vast majority of European new hires I'm seeing in my team are from Spain (though they are Spanish) and work remotely from mid-sized cities or islands (like Mallorca). It feels like Central Europe is slowly losing steam while Spain is, unexpectedly, gaining some steam.
- 4y ago

dgellow 4y ago

Munich is the most expensive place in Germany, by far. It’s not as extreme everywhere.

bobolino123 4y ago
Actually it's Sylt, Frankfurt then Munich. The problem with Munich is that the metropolitan area is f.. expensive as well.

parker_mountain 4y ago

American here, in silicon valley. I'm actually a bay area native, and the only reason I'm able to stay close to my parents is that I make a "tech salary". I bought a moderately sized condo, and it was a huge stretch at the time when I bought it - now that I've advanced my career, it's not such a huge load. But, the fact that, at $110k a year, a two bedroom (yet small) place was a huge stress. And that was not even in not one of top 3 most expensive cities in the bay area, which should say something. I'm extremely grateful that I can live close to my parents, and will be able to help take care of them as they age. Something is broken when it's a financial pressure for someone in the top 10% of income to live within an hour drive of where they want to be. And, that's kind of a luxury, tbh. I have extreme sympathy for the working class. There's something fundamentally broken with our housing policy.

nlitened 4y ago
> Something is broken when it's a financial pressure for someone in the top 10% of income to live within an hour drive of where they want to be That’s a place where probably billion other people would love to be.
- parker_mountain 4y ago
  Sure, but there's so much open, empty, and underutilized space. With some more aggressive building and well implemented transit policy, we could really fit a lot more people into the area without creating a decrease in quality of life. Not even like a huge amount of people, like 10% more.

Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago

Same thing in Spain, compounded by the fact that not only the generation of people over 60 own the housing and receive the rents, but they actually make more from pensions than new workers make as a salary (the latter is, I think, not true in Germany). This is a really toxic situation because it seems that for many young people, objectively speaking, career matters quite little. You can be unambitious, get a mediocre job, need your parents' help to survive and expect most of your wealth to eventually come from inheritance... or you can be ambitious and hard-working, get a better job, but still need your parents' help to survive (only somewhat less) and still expect most of your wealth to eventually come from inheritance. It's a sad situation, and I say this as someone who is not that young anymore and owns an apartment, so it's not personal whining but genuine worry about where society is heading.

dunefox 4y ago

> How the hell are we ever supposed to build up some savings, settle down and have a comfortable life? You're not. The system is working as intended, just not for us.

dukeyukey 4y ago

Germany confuses me a lot here because the population is actually _declining_. Granted, more in rural area than rich urban areas, but even then.

est31 4y ago
The overall population of Germany is not declining yet, in fact last year the German population has never been as high. In general, if Germany wants to keep its economy the population has to continue increasing until the boomers are dead. So yes, counter intuitively, for now there is going to be a major pressure on the housing market at least until the peak. Germany is a major immigration target inside the EU so it's not met with the same fate as poorer european economies like Russia, Ukraine, or Italy. The high rents in places like Munich are due to the urban areas seeing a major boom: that's where the jobs are, that's where the immigrants are going, that's where the young people from the countryside are going.
layer8 4y ago
It’s not (anymore), due to immigration: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2023/01/PE23_026_124.html https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2023/01/PE23_026_124.html There was a slight decline in the late aughts.

reustle 4y ago

Any way to get a peek at that spreadsheet? Very curious how you’ve laid it out.

salzig 4y ago

IMHO Germany is killing its social stability and its future by having this situation right now. And I‘m afraid this will bring more votes to AFD and similar rightwing parties. Kinda similar to a century ago.

bobolino123 4y ago
Already killed its future tbh but yeah it can be worse

madballster 4y ago

You have to carefully analyze if you absolutely need to live in Munich - the most expensive city in Germany - in order to run and build your startup once you graduate. Is the extra cost and low quality of life worth it over the long term? There are dozens of smaller cities in Northern or Eastern Germany which offer very affordable living and office space while still being very attractive to young families.

inglor_cz 4y ago

I (a Czech) moved from highly desirable Prague to Ostrava, a postindustrial city I was born in. Remote work was a huge boon, because our family income is independent on our location and housing costs in Ostrava are literally half the costs in Prague. We have a nice newly built house not far from public transport (6 tram lines stop on a major intersection in a 15-minute walking distance), with a garden, pretty calm and several minutes of walking from two huge supermarkets that are open till 9 and 10 pm, respectively. Even a small apartment at the outskirts Prague (two rooms) would be about as expensive. But it came at a cost, yes. The restaurant scene is a shadow of Prague's, and a lot of personal connections had to be weakened, if not severed. People seem to be forgetting that everything is a tradeoff. If a city like Munich or Prague is highly attractive for students, workers and connosieurs of urban life, there will be a huge demand for housing there, and few regions in the developed world have escaped the enormous NIMBYfication of construction regulations, so the supply will be lacking. Or you can have a really nice place for living, but not in a major and growing urban area. What about Dresden or Meissen? Nowhere near as expensive as Munich, but still urban enough to have some doctors and other opportunities. Yes, you will have a lot more AfD voters around, but everything is a trade-off. Living in a mostly B90/Grüne-voting neighbourhood may be the most costly privilege in entire Germany, and is it really worth the added cost? I surely wouldn't like to be held hostage to my neighbour's political preferences.

whiddershins 4y ago

This is all about regulation, although each layer of regulation tends to be popular. Many things typically seen as good add to the cost of housing. Building is difficult because of zoning restrictions. Building is expensive because of labor and zoning and construction and accessibility and many other regulations. Renting also is risky for a landlord because of eviction protection laws. And so forth. Housing doesn’t need to be so expensive and scarce. We made it so. We have far better technology than in the past, we can build better, safer, faster, cheaper. Except we can’t.

_trampeltier 4y ago

"How the hell are we ever supposed to build up some savings, settle down and have a comfortable life?" The idea is, you pay so much rent, you never will have enough money to buy something. So you have to spend all your money the whole life just for rent and still own enything when you are old.

anovikov 4y ago

Question must be - in a country where population doesn't grow at all and haven't been for a generation+, and housing is not being torn down on a massive scale so supply of it probably still increases a bit, why is there a need for any new housing at all? Basically, why can't people on average just live in their grandparents' apartments once they die? Housing construction standards have been decent for at least 60 years so these apartments are good and are probably better located than their parents' just because of city growth since.

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