Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze
As much as I can sympathise with the predicament, this decision, and the Berlin housing market in general, absolutely baffles me.<p>When I moved here I was warned of 100 people turning up to a flat viewing, and laughed it off as some hyperbole. Only later did I find out that it <i>actually happens</i>, albeit the maximum viewing I went to was around a meagre 50. Having come from the UK, I found the situation in Berlin to be absolutely ridiculous. There are <i>already</i> strict rental price limitations in place (based on location, size of the property etc.), and although these can be skirted, in general they&#x27;re clearly very effective.<p>Again, I sympathise with city housing being very expensive, and don&#x27;t believe that purely gentrified city centres are likely to be a good thing. Still, economics 101 seems to suggest that merely putting rental freezes in doesn&#x27;t fix the problem. It just (as is already the case in Berlin), leads to excess demand. The solution is to <i>build houses</i>, but what kind of investor is going to throw their money at Berlin, where their opportunity to make a return on their investment is severely hampered? I just don&#x27;t understand this stance at all.