Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

Marx Resurfaces in the Berlin Housing Market

The city may soon hold a referendum on whether to expropriate its biggest landlords.

April 5, 2019 at 4:30 AM UTC

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

Booming.
Photographer: Geoff Garrett/Mirrorpix/Getty Images

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Berlin, home to one of the world’s most regulated housing markets with formidable tenant protections, is considering an even more radical step: nationalization.

On Saturday, signature collection begins for a citywide referendum in the German capital on whether to nationalize the residential properties owned by big landlords. The top target, Deutsche Wohnen, is one of Europe’s largest property companies with 116,000 units in Berlin.