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Comment by j7ake | Hacker News Reader

Germany also has reasonable tenant laws so that landlords cannot raise rent arbitrarily, making being a tenant more pleasant than in the USA.

As a tenant in Germany, it is just as secure or more compared with owning. You have tenant laws and you know you can call someone to get things fixed any time.

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Yes it's nice for current tenants. Some times their rent is so low that they rather leave the apartment empty for a whole year and go vacation instead of giving up the contract. However, it's not so nice if you don't have an apartment to rent. Almost nobody wants to move out of their sweet deal. People (at least in Berlin) will stay in the contract even if they have bought a new home. They just sublease it to a friend at that lower rate plus some profit even.

I'm not free market absolutist but living in Berlin has shown me too much tenant protection can end up hurting actual home seekers.

>I'm not free market absolutist but living in Berlin has shown me too much tenant protection can end up hurting actual home seekers.

Pretty much. It limits mobility a lot while creating a neo-feudal gentry who lucked out on market timing/conditions and get to exploit it for their benefits and the expense of others.

> neo-feudal gentry who lucked out on market timing/conditions and get to exploit it for their benefits and the expense of others

You're saying this about the tenants? Not the landlords?

It’s not the tenant protections that cause the problems, but rent price inequality(old contracts vs new contracts) due to the landlord increasing the price when the previous tenant leaves. Especially in Berlin many landlords charge illegally high rents. If this equality didn’t exist, people wouldn’t hold on to flats like they do.

In other words regulations (the allowed rent increases) mismatches the reality (real inflation) which is causing this weird marketplace

Many US cities have similar laws...

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