Federal Justice Minister Buschmann (FDP) has given up his opposition to the extension of the rent cap. An association sharply criticizes the project.
Berlin – After extensive debates, the parties in the government coalition have agreed to extend the rent cap by another five years until 2029. It should target new and re-lettings in tense housing markets. According to the original plans, the rent cap, which has been in effect since 2015, would have expired at the end of next year.
Rent control curbs rents in difficult housing markets
The rule means that when the rental agreement is concluded, the rent may not be more than ten percent above the local comparative rent. The respective state government decides whether it is used in cities and municipalities. With this measure, the traffic light coalition is reacting to the persistently difficult situation in many housing markets, explained FDP MP Thorsten Lieb on Wednesday (April 10).
Although the extension of the rent cap was already regulated in the coalition agreement, Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (FDP) had blocked it for a long time - and expected concessions from Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) on data retention. After the traffic light coalition agreed to store communication data for law enforcement in the “quick freeze” process, Buschmann gave up his resistance to extending the rent control. And announced a corresponding bill.
Traffic light coalition emphasizes that extension is an “extremely important sign”
The SPD and the Greens welcomed the extension. For tenants, it is “very good news that the coalition partners have now given up their mutual blockade,” said Green Party parliamentary group leader Katharina Dröge to
Deutschlandfunk
.
The agreement is both “an extremely important signal” to tenants and a “declaration of war on overpriced rents,” said deputy SPD parliamentary group leader Verena Hubertz on Wednesday. And you can also hear from FDP construction politician Daniel Föst as a result of the agreement on rent controls: “With the agreement we have reached, we are now creating legal certainty.”
Tenant associations are calling for “exceptions and loopholes” to be closed as a result of the extension
So far, there have been a number of different reactions from the associations to the extension of the rent cap. The German Tenants' Association (DMB), for example, welcomed the "overdue" agreement on its extension - but also emphasized that the rent control still has "numerous exceptions and loopholes" that "urgently need to be closed as part of the extension," explained the president of the German Tenants' Association (DMB), Lukas Siebenkotten, in a press release on Wednesday.
For example, the rent control does not apply to houses that were used for the first time after October 1, 2014. With this exception, the government at the time wanted to keep building houses attractive for the housing industry. In addition, the rent cap can also be suspended as a result of extensive modernization measures.
Meanwhile, the Munich tenants' association also agreed with the DMB's point of view. Its chairwoman, Beatrix Zurek, emphasized that the numerous exceptions and loopholes in the previous rent cap regulations in Munich are particularly evident in short-term rental agreements - or, "if the rent was already above the permissible limit," as she told the
Münchner Abendzeitung
. There is another problem with apartments that are rented out furnished. Although the rent cap also applies here, it is not possible to exclude the furniture from the rent as a tenant. In order to be able to “really apply the rent cap reliably,” “the furniture surcharge must be shown separately,” explains Zurek in the association’s Munich Tenant Magazine.
Haus & Grund association wants to have the extension of the rent cap examined by the Federal Constitutional Court
However, the planned extension of the rent cap is met with strong resistance from the Haus & Grund owners' association. Association President Kai Warnecke announced in the
Bild
newspaper on Thursday that he even wanted to take them to the Federal Constitutional Court. The court had already accepted the first rent control “only because it was limited to five years,” he said. “With the second extension, the traffic light government is clearly violating the constitution,” added Warnecke.
Warnecke also criticized the fact that the rent cap had massively exacerbated the housing shortage. “Since the introduction of the rent cap, the number of missing apartments has increased. There are now said to be almost 900,000. It is clear that the rent control is primarily to the detriment of tenants who are looking for affordable housing,” he said.
In 2019, the Karlsruhe Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the rent cap was not constitutionally objectionable for particularly desirable residential areas. The court also found that the regulation introduced four years earlier did not violate the guarantee of ownership, freedom of contract or the general principle of equality.
Building Minister Geywitz: Housing construction is stalling due to increased building interest rates
Meanwhile, Federal Construction Minister Klara Geywitz (SPD) has no doubts that the planned extension of the rent cap is legally legitimate. On
Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg
(RBB) she expressed confidence that she would withstand legal scrutiny. It took the Ministry of Justice more than two years to extend the regulation. She therefore assumes that the ministry has “examined an extension of the rent cap “sufficiently thoroughly,” explained Geywitz.
The federal government also decided to extend the rent cap until 2029 because the hoped-for relaxation in the housing market had not occurred across the board. “I think it is clear to everyone that we have a very tight rental market in the big German cities,” emphasized the Federal Construction Minister.
Meanwhile, she rejected the argument from the owners' association Haus & Grund that the housing shortage had become massively worse as a result of the rent cap. There is no empirical evidence for this. According to Geywitz, the fact that most construction projects are currently difficult is due to the sharp rise in building interest rates. “And certainly not the rent control,” she added.
(fh)