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Helping to rent a room in apartment of a friend in Germany. Normally a room costs from 600€ in Munich. And it’s cheap. Decade ago same room was going for 300€.
by lnsru 3y ago
Helping to rent a room in apartment of a friend in Germany. Normally a room costs from 600€ in Munich. And it’s cheap. Decade ago same room was going for 300€. Small apartment goes for 1000+€. And for both room for 600€ or 1000€ apartment you get at least 50 applicants. That sounds crazy to me. I would go and protest too, luckily I moved away.
- air7 3y agoIf there are at least 50 applicants, arguably, perhaps the price is too low...
- katbyte 3y agoOr there is not enough housing driving prices up (which then makes everything more expensive)
- Throe8494905 3y agoQuite opposite! We need to bring more migrants, so there are 500 applicants. That will bring price down for sure!
- Helmut10001 3y agoRental prices in Germany are heavily controlled.
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoThere's your problem. You can't regulate your way out of supply shortage by capping prices below their market value. Venezuela tired that, ask them how it's going. You either build more housing to math the demand, or you restrict the demand from the number of people coming to move in.
- Helmut10001 3y agoI said this without judgement as an answer to this comment: > If there are at least 50 applicants, arguably, perhaps the price is too low... Yes, prices are too low. Yes, you cannot increase prices. Status quo. Generally I agree to your point - if demand is high, prices will be high. People should move somewhere else.
- mcntsh 3y agoIn Berlin you'd get hundreds of applicants, and when you go show up to check out the apartment there will be 50+ people waiting in line scheduled at the same time you were. Germany's rental market is absolutely insane. (but obviously this article is not about Germany)
- DangerousPie 3y agoThat's what happens when you artificially cap prices.
- lnsru 3y agoNo. You can rent furnished real estate without any limits.
- DangerousPie 3y agoAren't most properties in Germany unfurnished?
- lnsru 3y agoThey are. But it’s official loophole that if you put a bed, table and shelf from IKEA it’s suddenly furnished and all rent limitations do not apply anymore.
- Dudester230602 3y agoYou wrote "Berlin" in one sentence yet "Germany" in another. Is Germany a city-state?
- mcntsh 3y agoBerlin is actually "cheaper" than many other larger German cities like Munich, Hamburg, Frankfurt. Rent is not so bad in small towns but as you can imagine, neither are the economies.
- DangerousPie 3y agoBasic ecomoic theory tells you that when there is more demand than there is supply, prices will go up. If 50 people are applying for a single room at 600 EUR then even that is probably still too cheap. The only reliable way to change that is to increase supply (build more, create incentives to rent out places) or lower demand (improve transport into the city, make other parts of the country more attractive to live in).
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>or lower demand (improve transport into the city, make other parts of the country more attractive to live in) That's a chicken and egg problem. Most companies want to hire where the labor already is, aka the big expensive cities, and most workers, especially immigrants from abroad, want to live in the big cities as those have the most jobs and the population there is less conservative and racist towards outsiders meaning it's also easier to build relationships and get along with just English without having to struggle with the local language. It's nearly impossible to convince companies and people to invest in small cities on the offshot that they naturally become the successes they dream of later since it's not something the government can guarantee, nor do we live in prosperous times of cheap money pouring from the sky that would enable governments to fund crazy projects of building attractive infrastrucutre.