Tag Archives: Apartments

German Of The Day: Enteignung

April 7, 2019 By in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

That means confiscation or dispossession. You know, like confiscating private property?

Greens

And the German Greens hold this to be denkbar – another cool German word meaning conceivable or possible.

After all, the world must be fair and if rising property rents in cities like Berlin – caused by city governments like Berlin (Social Democrats and Greens for decades) – are creating hardship for the 85 percent (!) of Berliners who don’t own property – the government does everything it can to discourage owning property here – then the government that created this mess will simply confiscate the private property of those currently developing new housing and… And what? Give it to the poor? Been there, done that. We all know how that turns out. And who foots the bill. Robin Hoodlums never learn. They have no intention of learning.

Thousands took to the streets of Berlin on Saturday in protest against rising property rents and called for properties of large-scale landlords with more than 3,000 houses to be taken over by the government.

“Das Grundgesetz sieht Enteignungen zum Allgemeinwohl ausdrücklich vor.”

Keep Berlin Poor!

April 25, 2018 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

And sexy, of course.

It all used to be so easy. But now property prices are rising like mad. This is not sexy, I am told. Unless, of course, you own property here, which practically nobody does. And that brings us back to poor…

Poor

About 85% of Berlin’s 3.4 million residents live in rentals and homeownership remains remarkably low — a condition fostered by the city’s turbulent history, Cold War division and five decades of communist rule in East Berlin. Almost by nature, Berliners tend to have a low regard for property owners…

Though still modest compared with other cities in Europe, rents in Berlin have risen 75% in the last five years. A recent survey by the property consultant group Knight Frank showed that property prices in Berlin rose 21% in 2017, the steepest rate in its survey of 150 cities around the world and far above the average increase of 4.5%. The biggest increases that year in the United States were Seattle, where rent rose 12.7%, and San Francisco, where they were up 9.3%.

“Once you move into an apartment in Germany, you are basically in the lease for life unless you cancel it yourself.”

Secret Swagger Or Bausünde?

March 20, 2016 By in High Art, Higher Education, History, Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

I know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that but I think I’ll still go with Bausünde here.

Bausünde

Berlin’s post-war high rises were built with practicality, not beauty, in mind. The hulking buildings were designed to house as many families as possible, and though they were once desirable, today they aren’t generally considered great places to live. But photographer Malte Brandenburg casts them in a new light with his series Stacked…

The photographer started the project late last year, and shot over a dozen high rises throughout Berlin. He lives in Copenhagen and scouts locations whenever he visits Berlin, seeking out buildings set against an uncluttered skyline. Brandenburg shoots from nearby buildings, parking garages, and other elevated spots so he can capture the towers as directly as possible, using a telephoto lens to help correct the perspective. “I would ring the doorbells of the tower buildings across the street and ask the people to let me in so I could shoot from the stairways,” he says.

Cheapness is what we want

March 14, 2010 By in Heconomy Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Still. But it looks like we’re not going to be getting it anymore. Here in Berlin, I mean. When it comes to cheap rent.

The average rent for new rentals has gone up nearly 5 percent since 2008, in some of the angesagte (hot) districts nearly 7 percent.

So much for finding your cheap ecologicial, I mean economical niche in Berlin, I guess. Although it’s still WAY cheaper to live here than in other German cities or gar (even) in “real” cities like London, Paris, New York, etc.  And it will probably stay that way for a while yet, maybe, I hope.

This trend will continue, however, the smart guys say. There are ever more renters out there looking for apartments in a stagnant market – and only about 13 percent of Berliners actually own their own. Ich bin ein Berliner, they must be thinking, but I don’t necessarily want to own a piece of it.

Dieser Trend wird anhalten, so der Marktbericht, den die GSW am Donnerstag vorstellte. Denn in Berlin konkurrieren immer mehr Haushalte um die stagnierende Zahl der Mietwohnungen – und Wohneigentum leistet sich nur eine Minderheit (13 Prozent).