Berlin's New Rent Freeze Echoes Its Soviet Past
Lots of people want to move to Germany’ s capital; now fewer will be able to find a place to live.
Marx would be proud of Berlin’s leftist government.
Photographer: Tobias Schwarz/AFP/Getty Images
The leftist coalition running Berlin’s city government has agreed on the final version of a five-year rent freeze, and it will likely become the German capital’s law on Tuesday. While the resulting legislation is less onerous than previous proposals, it will still distort the market, benefiting existing tenants at the expense of newcomers, shrinking the supply of apartments for rent and making landlords less likely to maintain properties in good condition.
The city government is run by three parties — the Social Democrats, the far-left Die Linke and the Greens. All three have been sympathetic to complaints from the city’s renters — who occupy about 82% of all apartments — about what’s come to be known as “rent madness.” Rents in the capital have been going up by an average of 2.8% a year since 2000.