The silence is deceptive: about the Berlin Mietendeckel is still a heated argument. Since the draft by city development Senator Katrin Lompscher (left) is present, the crucial debates take place - only behind closed doors.
Experts and associations have been trying for three weeks now to raise their concerns about the draft. Until mid-October they still have time, then their arguments are taken into account or rejected, then the Senate wants the "Law on Rent Restrictions in Housing in Berlin (Berlin RentWoG)" decide and submit to the House of Representatives. If everything goes as Lompscher imagines, the law could take effect in early 2020.
So everything is still under reserve. But three big lines are already emerging.
- Firstly, because of the many exception clauses and hardship regulations, the rent cover has become so complicated that the determination of reasonable rent in individual cases to a complex - and accompanied by dispute - procedures should likely.
- Secondly , far fewer tenants will probably be able to hope for a rent reduction than it first appeared.
- And finally: When the regulation expires in five years, comes the evil awakening.
The first two aspects are quickly explained: The rental cover prohibits the homeowner, initially limited for five years, to increase the rent. Those whose rent exceeds 30 per cent of the disposable net household income may even demand a reduction. Those who earn more benefit from the moratorium.
The cover is to be effective according to the bill even for a limited area. The rent is lowered solely for the "reasonable square footage" stipulated in the Berlin Housing Act. For a one-person household this is 50 square meters, for two persons 65 square meters, 80 for three persons and 90 for four. For each additional household member, twelve square meters are added.
Doubts about compatibility with the Constitution
Exceptions can also claim the landlord. For example, he may ask for surcharges if, for example, he has modernized, but within a narrow framework of necessary measures that the authorities have previously approved. Or he can claim a hardship case if the rental price reduction exceeds his financial capabilities. In individual cases, this must be decided by the competent authorities - or at the end by a court.
It is still unclear what happens when a new tenant moves in. Because how the price is to be put together - whether the cover is therefore for the "appropriate square footage" applies, or for the entire apartment, does not emerge from the draft. It is only stipulated that the doctors couple will then benefit from the low flat-rate prices per square meter.
Of course, the considerations described above only apply if the rental cover withstands the review by the Federal Constitutional Court. Among experts, the question is disputed whether the Berlin Senate has the right to enact such a law. So it could be that all the quarrels, all arithmetic and the exams were ex officio free, if the Federal Constitutional Court shares this legal opinion. The complicated matter raises the fear that it will take some time for their decision.
Incidentally, the consequences of this period of legal uncertainty can easily be imagined: tenants and landlords will only find out in the individual case how high the rent will turn out when they have already dissolved their contractual relationship. And then someone will owe you a lot of money. In everyday life, however, will change little. At least in the sense that the often sought-after penthouse in the distinguished Charlottenburg, with doctor couple and child as residents, will hardly be cheaper. And a family with an average monthly salary will still not get a chance to live in such an apartment.
Abolition unlikely
On the other hand, the structural changes that the rent cover will have on the housing market will continue to take effect. And, according to Harald Simons, member of the executive board of the Empirica research and consulting institute, they will not be so easily reversible: "Even a government of the Union and the FDP will not dare to abolish the rental cover in the future Market rent would be too big and 80 percent of the voters would then be tenants in a cheap apartment. "
His reasoning was that if the rented deck were to expire after five years, or perhaps even ten years (or even earlier, when the courts abolish the law), the tenants are suddenly exposed to the open market unprotected; a change back under the protective cover of the previously applicable Mietspiegelsystems is not seamlessly possible. The result: the rents would rise sharply.
Currently, the rent index is the most important orientation framework for the rent to be paid in each quarter. Lease changes and new lettings are each retrospectively incorporated for a period of four years, as it is regulated in the Civil Code § 558 para 2. Since the rental cover prevents a free-market pricing, for the time being, no law-compliant Mietspiegel more can come about. Only when the market prices have developed again can this "instrument for maintaining social rent peace" (Lompscher) work again.
"It is indeed problematic, because it will not give a rent index for the time being," admitted Wibke Werner, deputy managing director of the Berlin tenants' association in RBB. But she forbids herself to think from the end: "If I already think about the negative consequences, I would of course weaken this instrument Mietendeckel from the very beginning."
Like a drug
The rented cover could seem like a drug: It causes a rush, but you quickly reach a state in which it is no longer possible without him. To withdrawal symptoms that cause great social pain - one can hardly imagine how the rents develop, if even in the current housing shortage, the rent index does not apply.
This is not the only side effect. And maybe not even the most harmful. The changes that are already being observed in the housing market are at least as strong, explains housing expert Simons.
Currently, just under 70 percent of all condominiums in Berlin would be rented, but with the Mietendeckel worth this no longer and the sale of the apartment to self-users would be the better option. Many solvent seekers who can no longer find what they are looking for in the rental market because no one is moving out of their cheap apartment would then decide to buy a condominium in order to use it themselves.
The proponents of the Mietdeckels underestimated how many leased condos already existed today. "In the past, rental houses were usually converted just before they were sold, but for about ten years now, the trend has been to convert buildings but initially to keep the converted units in stock."
The number of such apartments in Berlin, which could be withdrawn from the rental market in a sale to owner-occupier, Simons estimated at just over 330,000 - even in the city of Berlin, this is a huge number that would significantly worsen the shortage in the rental market.
