The "free market" (which has been demonstrated to not be free at all) has no place in basic needs such as housing.
Rent extraction is utterly counterproductive for a society.
Housing should not be a commodity.
Rent extraction is utterly counterproductive for a society.
Housing should not be a commodity.
Housing right now is the opposite of a commodity: it's a boutique investment for individuals whose price is propped up by regulations that artificially limit supply.
>> The "free market" (which has been demonstrated to not be free at all)
The Berlin rental market suffers under strong government intervention, and would benefit from being much freer.
- Tax empty flats to death
- Disallow corporate ownership of residential property
That enables mass buyouts of housing from corporation which leads to rent extraction and a myriad of woes.
It's not corporate lawyers who show up to protest new housing, it's retiree homeowners.
Housing in many countries is not part of a free market but part of a monopoly where the government decides how much, how many, the what and the when the houses can be built. If it was a real free market, the issue would have been long solved.
P.s. the EU already decides how much, how many, what and when will be planted, through subsidising. And it's going quite well.
Also government formed co-ops. Find people who want a flat and agree on rent before you build it. As the loan is paid off rent becomes substantially cheaper. The second best time to plant a tree is today.
It also doesn't need to be the entire housing stock, just enough to help keep rent low (see Vienna).
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/10/the-soc...
> an income maximum for applicants of €57,600
and can't be bought, only rented
as for the "only rented" part, again, at this level of low rent it does not matter. you're better off renting. And Europeans have actual pension systems, we are nowhere near as reliant on real estate always appreciating in value.