zlacker

>>halduj+(OP)
The dynamic is a little different than in most other cities. What's really happening here is that cheap rent is a kind of entitlement in Berlin: rent controls extend across tenants so getting an apartment is really about persuading a landlord to take you rather than bidding at an appropriate price point. AirBnB gets around this by allowing rentals at arbitrary price points. This is true whether it's an owner or a renter doing the leasing, which is very different from other markets in which it's mostly a concern of renters abusing their leases.

> "The Berlin Senate’s ruling nonetheless reflects a general feeling across a city in which homes are getting harder to find: Berliners have had enough and they want their city back."

Translation: There is no pricing mechanism on rents in the city and it is becoming increasingly impossible to find an apartment.

While it's certainly true that AirBnB essentially allows landlords to flout the law, it's worth noting that the adverse effects of price ceilings on supply are the root cause of Berlin's problems and this will not solve the underlying problem of rents being far from equilibrium.

>>jvm+ih
Capitalism always exists, whether you want to admit it or not. You can pretend there are no such things as prices by adding more and more epicycles to your model, or just admit they exist and then (for example) have a welfare state to compensate the non-winners.

>>daniel+1k
The easiest solution is always capitalism, I agree, I'm fairly certain however it's harder to find somewhere to rent in London and paying more in Berlin still reaps results (having lived there as an IT contractor for 4 months from London I should know). I think these things can be solved in Berlin much more easily than most capital cities (i.e. there is substantial space to build new homes that simply doesn't exist in London or New York say).

Simply saying "be more capitalist" might work, but I'd say build more quality homes on all the scratchy pieces of land that exist round Berlin is an equally good option above firing people into the weird world of London property.

Finally the AirBnB/rentals thing is a result I'd guess of the massive number of people who hate having tourists traipsing through their buildings. My experience at least centrally was of large shared blocks of high quality flats and a lot of suspicion around strangers being granted entry to said gated communities.

>>andy_p+il
Being more capitalist is how you create the incentives that result in more quality homes being built on the scratchy pieces of land that exist around Berlin.

>>quanti+xq
It doesn't, actually. In the US, there are just a few apartment consortiums which own the lion's share of the fleet of newer construction units. Anarchist capitalism encourage supply-side monopolist hegemony, not competition. Competition is undesirable for capitalists when supplying goods and services and optimally minimized, it is desirable by buyers but this is mostly irrelevant in an artificially-controlled supply market where demand is inelastic. If Hyperloop were rolled out across most continents, empty land could be "closer" to economic centers and housing supply would be effectively increased by widening the commute radius, making it more affordable.

>>dispos+Ut
How do you think these capitalistic monopolies enforce their monopolies?

They do it through the government by creating arbitrary regulations and barriers to entry.

We are already living in a world where the housing monopolies are enforcing their will on the population.

Getting rid of these regulations, and allowing people to build so many houses that the market price gets driven into the ground, is how we take the market back for the people.

>>stale2+Zu
They do it through the fact that being a monopoly or oligopoly is inherently more profitable than not being one, so if you don't play along you're basically leaving money on the floor.

>>makomk+0D
When monopolies exist, that means that there is currently money being left on the table.

Someone ELSE can come it, charge less, and get all the customers to go to them instead.

This is what allowing more houses to be built would do.

>>stale2+gE
>Someone ELSE can come it, charge less, and get all the customers to go to them instead.

Except there are huge entry costs, and all that theoretical ROI disappears as soon as you enter the market, because the existing monopoly starts competing.

To make a profit, you need some advantage over the them, like efficiency, innovation or goodwill. If all you can do is exactly what they do but at market price, well... they can do that too.

>>aninhu+cQ
How would that apply to the Bay Area Housing market?

If someone started building a whole bunch of housing in SOMA, do you believe that this ROI would disappear quickly, due to housing prices hitting rock bottom?

Do you really believe that would happen?

>>stale2+2J2
No, I was mostly arguing generally, that a monopoly can exist without it being the government's fault. But I think it's fairly clear that the housing market is indeed strongly influenced by regulation.