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Demo in Berlin in September 2021
Photo: Jean MW / imago images / Future Image
With an alternative proposal, the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) wants to bring movement into the deadlocked dispute over affordable housing in the capital.
The researchers are in favor of a rent tax.
This is an interesting alternative to the expropriation of large real estate groups, as demanded by the referendum in September.
As the institute writes, net cold rents that are more than 10 percent above the local comparable rent could be taxed with a surcharge of 10 to 30 percent - the higher the rent, the higher the tax rate.
According to DIW, apartment owners could also be included via a fictitious rent.
Berlin could thus collect a total of around 205 million euros a year.
With this sum, "for example, the rents of 100,000 apartments could be reduced by 2.50 euros per square meter per month or 7500 new apartments could be financed annually," the researchers write.
This would relax the housing market in Berlin and thereby lower rents for everyone, argued the DIW.
The institute pointed out that almost 100 years ago, property owners' profits were skimmed off in a similar way with the house interest tax in Prussia.
The money went to new housing estates.
(Here you can find the detailed DIW report on the idea of a rent tax.)
In hardly any other city have rents risen as sharply for years as in Berlin - albeit initially from a lower starting level compared to Munich or Frankfurt.
On average over all years of construction and locations, the square meter rent in the capital is now 10.49 euros - excluding ancillary costs.
In Berlin at the end of September, a majority of voters voted in a referendum that large housing associations should be expropriated.
However, the vote is not legally binding for politicians.
Even before the election, the Berlin Senate pointed out that there were constitutional concerns about the property guarantee against the public initiative aimed at socializing apartments.
The DIW researchers are also critical of expropriations: "With the failure of the rent cap and the other moderately successful political measures to ease the pressure on the housing market, this is another dubious attempt to counteract the housing rents in the capital, which have been rising significantly for a good ten years now." , you write.
They argue that the amount of compensation that is likely to be required for expropriations is around 40 billion euros and thus far exceeds the financial possibilities of the Berlin state budget.
"Regardless of whether the practices of large corporations or the behavior of individual adventurers offend against morality, it can be said that property owners are among the big winners in the boom in the property market in recent years," the researchers write.
With a rent tax, "all property owners would be" expropriated "moderately via the tax - preferably those who take high rents and have thus benefited from the considerable price increases on the Berlin housing market," is how the DIW promotes its idea.
mmq / dpa
