According to Senate plans, rents in Berlin may increase by up to 1.3 per cent per annum from 2021, provided that they do not exceed the planned upper limits. This is what the lecturer's draft for the rented cover looks like, which can now be viewed online. If it becomes law, the so-called rent stop applies retroactively to the 18th of June. Seasonal rents are also affected.
Depending on the age of the construction, the upper rent limits are between 3.92 and 9.80 euros net per square meter, plus modernization charges of no more than 1.40 euros per square meter. If you spend more than 30 percent of your net household income on rent, you can apply for a reduction to the ceiling.
The new draft allows surcharges on the maximum rent if the apartment is in a one- or two-family house or has been modernized in the past 15 years. A hardship regulation is also planned for landlords, who can prove permanent losses or a substance endangerment of their houses.
Stop the market economy
Excluded from the rent cover are new buildings from 2014 on, publicly subsidized housing, dormitories and living space private welfare institutions. The Senate wants to finalize the draft in mid-October, since Monday, associations are being consulted. The law is to apply for the next five years.
The landlord association Haus und Grund sees in the Mietendeckel plans an attack on private property and the basic values of the social market economy. "Instead of working on solutions, an ideological struggle is waged, which only aggravates the problems of the tenants," said Association President Kai Warnecke. A planned CO2 pricing in the building sector sees Warnecke critical.
The German Tenants' Association had welcomed the plans of the Left-politician and city Senator Katrin Lompscher. "In Berlin, the new contract rents have increased in the last 10 years by 100 percent," said President Lukas Siebenkotten last week. "Here, politics can no longer stand by idly, something must happen here now."
Poorer households will not benefit
The German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) regards Lompscher's initiative as critical. "The Berlin Senate Administration is trying to use the rental cover back to old times around the turn of the millennium," it said. At that time, the rents had been favorable, the German capital was considered an Eldorado for young and creative people. "These times are over, however, because the attractiveness Berlin was also the fatal." Housing shortage can not be changed by decree.
Even the boss of the largest German real estate company Vonovia is against the Mietendeckel. According to Rolf Buch, poorer households would not benefit from it: "The single mother or similarly socially weak will have nothing at all from the rents stop," said Buch. "Anyone who will have something of it is first and foremost the middle earner who gets a room for the same rent."
The head of Vonovia warned that more flats could be leased by hand under the cover and could no longer be offered on the market: "We will generate black markets." The company has around 43,000 apartments in the Berlin area